Module A houses our Senior School (students in years 5 and 6). The Senior Module is set up to encourage collaborative learning, use of a growth mindset and curiosity. The Victorian Curriculum will continue to be used to plan student learning programs at individual point-of-need. The learning program incorporates the curriculum areas of English, Mathematics, Science, LOTE (Japanese), Humanities – History and Geography, Health and Physical Education, Arts – Visual and Performing and Social and Emotional Learning.
In English, senior students focus on expanding their vocabulary, improving accuracy and fluency skills, and refining and developing higher level comprehensions strategies. Students are immersed in reader’s workshops, guided reading groups and reciprocal reading circles to actively practise their reading strategies. We encourage the students to read a wide range of different text types but to also ensure that they are reading books in full to develop their lifelong reading habits. Additionally, students practise their fluency each week with their buddies. This is a special session that the students have to further connect with their buddies whilst modelling and practising their amazing reading skills.
During writing lessons, the senior school students will be pushed to think about senses, emotions and personality traits to provide layers to their characters. We help our students practice the core skills of writing, with a large focus on ideas and word choice when exploring narratives. Students will be developing convincing, evidenced based persuasive pieces. The inclusion of persuasive devices will provide engaging arguments that make our audience stop, think and question.Along with Narrative and Persuasive writing, students also explore other text genres including information reports, procedural texts, speeches and letter writing.
Mathematics lessons for senior students hone in on fundamental skills and concepts of number and algebra, whilst also delving into topics of measurement and geometry, statistics and probability. We begin the year by focusing on core number and place value skills so that the students can be equipped with the solid foundations of number fluency. We teach problem solving skills and strategies throughout the year. Multi-step worded problems are covered extensively and students learn the best ways to approach these. Unpacking the mathematics vocabulary required to comprehend worded problems will be a focus along with the problems relating to the real world and other mathematics concepts. This is important for students to grasp a deeper understanding and to additionally help them retain the new learned skills by understanding all aspects of the topic.
Students particularly enjoy their learner agency time, where they are given opportunity to explore concepts and topics of interest to them and are provided with choice as to the work they undertake.
Students are immersed in inquiry based units of learning each term covering Science, History, Geography and Economics.