Curriculum Overview


Students and staff at SHPS are actively encouraged to pursue personal excellence in learning academic and practical life skills through our school values; Respect, Responsibility and Learning:  Staff members are also actively encouraged to continually extend their skills in teaching through professional learning in their pursuit of best practice.

EAL Focus: Our student population is diverse with many of our students being new to Australia. Our curriculum recognises this need and our teachers are well trained to develop programs that support our English language learners. The EAL literacy curriculum is delivered by the teaching staff and on-going professional development occurs in this area. The recent 2014 SHPS staff conference held in Melbourne included presentations from two external literacy consultants, Margery Hertzberg and David Hornsby. SHPS staff also led sessions on functional grammar and an overview of the ‘Primary Connections’ science curriculum.

At SHPS we provide a comprehensive range of language, literacy and numeracy support including Vietnamese and Chin Burmese educational support staff.

ICT: Teaching staff and students also access technology through laptops, iPads and Windows tablets, networked ICT devices and applications. Interactive white boards or flat screen TVs feature in all learning areas across the school.

Integrated learning: The integrated topics that the students investigate throughout each term have been carefully selected to reflect the AusVELS subjects, are linked to different writing genres and the EAL developmental continuum. Teachers refer to a number of SHPS documents to generate term planners, then weekly and daily planning is developed that support the points of learning for each individual child. As students advance into the upper primary levels they are able to make more choices and direct the learning for themselves. This is reflected in their individual learning plans and portfolios.

Individual Learning Plans: These documents are completed for students who are identified with specific learning goals, for example students who will benefit from extended learning or with more support. The ILPs are updated and evaluated each term and include 3 - 4 simple measurable goals; e.g. one for maths, one for literacy, etc. Copies of the ILPs are provided to parents in term one and three in conjunction with, or in place of academic reports.

Student Portfolios: In 2014 SHPS introduced student portfolios. Over the year, each student contibutes work samples to his/her portfolio that shows progress in literacy, numeracy and specialist areas, as well as any ILPs and testing results. These portfolios help inform students’ progress and are also used by the senior students to present their learning to parents at the end of term 2.

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