Curriculum

‘Developing healthy and active bodies and brains’

Physical Education is an essential aspect of a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle and helps to build self esteem, confidence, cooperation and fitness. Regular, enjoyable physical activities are provided which allow children to acquire the skills necessary for participation in sport and leisure pursuits. Our experienced PE teachers seize every opportunity for our students to be involved in a huge variety of sporting activities. The major facets are body control and spatial awareness, athletics, ball skills, gymnastics, major and minor games and swimming/water safety.

Students in our Senior School participate in friendly competition with district schools. Children with advanced skills have the opportunity to compete at higher levels.

‘Fostering creativity and artistic expression’

Visual Arts is highly valued at Springvale Rise Primary School. We believe learning about Visual Arts is fundamental to the development of the whole child, promoting creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and social interactions. The Arts are a powerful mode of communication through which students explore and construct a sense of self and develop an understanding of the world around them. Visual Arts provide students with a wide range of opportunities and means to respond to their experiences and engage with historical, social and cultural perspectives. Students are stimulated to think and to articulate their thoughts in new ways, and through a variety of media and technologies.

The impact of our amazing Visual Arts program is clearly evident upon entering our grounds and permeates throughout the school. Students are involved in creative processes that encourage the development and expression of ideas using the arts. Drawing on imagination and innovation, students resolve problems which are inherent in art projects. Students develop an appreciation of artworks and discuss reflections about works of art, including their own to develop understandings of the principles of design and creativity.

‘Broadening understandings through experiences with other cultures’

At our school, all students have the opportunity to learn more than one language. As a result, our students gain an appreciation and understanding of another language and culture. This enriches personal development and helps facilitate international mindedness.

In consultation with the Springvale Rise community, Vietnamese was introduced as the preferred language, other than English.
The students at Springvale Rise are encouraged to increase their understandings of the Vietnamese language through speaking, listening, singing, writing, reading and using audio-visual resources. All students from Foundation – Year 2 are involved in weekly Vietnamese lessons.

At Springvale Rise, we teach English every day in an authentic and purposeful way, focusing on the three core strands of the English Curriculum; Reading and Viewing, Writing and Speaking and Listening. Teachers provide differentiated instruction with varying levels of support, scaffolding students to acquire the knowledge, skills and strategies needed to comprehend and create texts. Students are provided with rich, authentic experiences and texts, to promote oral language development. Phonological awareness and phonics are explicitly taught, preparing students to engage confidently with reading and writing a variety of texts.

The teachers at Springvale Rise take pride in nurturing a love of reading in all students, providing opportunities to maximise engaged reading and deep thinking about texts. They use language rich mentor texts and explicit instruction (think aloud strategy) to support students with developing their awareness of and ability to use a variety of appropriate strategies when comprehending texts. Students are taught how to select just right books and books of interest, supporting them to develop independent reading skills.

Students write for authentic audiences and purpose, using a variety of genres and text types. Opportunities to develop vocabulary and intentional word choice are provided during lessons, supporting students to convey meaning and engage their audience. Speaking and Listening skills are explicitly taught and integrated into all learning areas.

At Springvale Rise, we provide hands on, engaging Mathematics lessons, focused on the three core strands of the curriculum; Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability. We have a whole school approach to teaching Mathematics from Foundation through to Grade 6, our lessons are sequenced and intentionally planned for, meeting the individual learning needs of all students. Our Mathematics lessons are fun, providing opportunities for learners to develop and practise problem solving, understanding, fluency and mathematical reasoning skills.

Students engage in a variety of games to support their fluency and recall of number facts. They use hands on materials daily, to support the development of their conceptual understanding, and gradually transition to using the written algorithm when solving the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Teacher’s provide differentiated, explicit instruction at a whole class, small group and individual student level, to support student’s skill acquisition and mathematical confidence.

Success Criteria and Worked Examples are provided for every lesson, they are visible and co-constructed in classrooms to support students with knowing what success looks like and the next steps in their learning. Once students have learnt mathematical concepts and are able to engage in independent practice, a variety of real life problem solving opportunities are provided for students to apply skills in a variety of contexts.