Literacy
At Oscar Romero Primary School, our literacy program encompasses all elements of reading, writing, speaking, and listening as outlined in the Victorian Curriculum.
We employ a best practice, evidence-based teaching approach as outlined in MAC’s Vision for Learning, to maximize student outcomes in literacy. Our whole-school Reading and Writing instructional models utilize the gradual release of responsibility. This allows teachers to model skills and strategies, provide opportunities for discussion and collaboration, and give students time for independent practice to consolidate learning and extend their thinking. Teachers support student cognitive load by breaking learning down into small parts and ensuring they are fluent. The students are further supported through 1:1 conferences and targeted teaching groups to meet their individual needs.
Both reading and writing develop from the building of skills and knowledge in a range of areas, including oral language, a systematic synthetic phonics program, decoding, morphology, vocabulary, fluency, background knowledge, syntax, parts of speech, text structures, and orthographic conventions.
Students develop language comprehension through exposure to decodable texts, picture storybooks and non-fiction texts that have language-rich vocabulary. They are engaged in deep discussions about the text, the content, and the meaning and are encouraged to foster a love of reading for enjoyment.
Students from a language background other than English are supported in their acquisition of English literacy skills. Teachers follow the EAL ( English as an Additonal Langauge) Continuum to ascertain and target the exact language needs of each particular student
Teachers integrate reading and writing by delivering text based units. They use rich texts as the stimulus, both for comprehension and writing, where students are given opportunities to write for different purposes and audiences.
Mathematics
The Oscar Romero mathematics program fosters students having a positive view/disposition towards mathematics. Through explicit learning experiences students can learn, practice and explore concepts across the 6 strands of the curriculum, those being Number, Algebra, Measurement, Space, Statistics and Probability. Student learning also centres around the mathematical proficiencies of understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning to allow students the opportunity to apply concepts and processes to solve mathematical problems, within a variety of contexts.
In addition to daily mathematics lessons children work on developing fluency through the application of important number skills. Through Dr Angela Rogers Number Fluency Program, students practice a variety of skills to build automaticity with number skills. This structured retrieval practice aims to allow students to apply these across the curriculum and in more complex learning contexts, with ease.