Teaching and Learning
Chiltern Primary School’s vision is to provide an encouraging, stimulating, supportive and engaging environment that fosters learning and enables students to develop the emotional, social, physical and academic skills required to adapt to and contribute to an ever-changing world.
We provide inclusive and comprehensive education for all students aiming to develop their talents and capacities to their full potential. We believe that education involves the development of the whole child; social, emotional, intellectual, physical and creative. A child’s ability to develop towards his or her true potential is greatly assisted when there is a close relationship, communication and understanding between home and school. We provide an academic program that supports all learners, extending their strengths and helping to address any areas of concern. At the same time, we know the importance of Social and Emotional learning to every individual’s success in life.
To provide a happy, healthy, secure and stimulating environment for all members of the school community.
To assist each child in achieving a positive and respectful attitude to learning, to other members of the school, to other members of the community and to themselves.
To provide for each child’s development through all areas of the curriculum.
To encourage intellectual curiosity and arouse interest in activities that may be pursued in leisure time.
To develop confidence in a child by arranging for him or her to earn and experience a measure of success.
To stimulate interest and involvement of parents and the community in the education of children at Chiltern Primary School.
Our teachers are focused on providing the best possible outcomes for all children and strive to provide exceptional and exemplary programs to develop student skills. The school curriculum is based on the Victorian F-10 curriculum endorsed and supported by the Department of Education and Training. Chiltern Primary School utilises the Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO 2.0) continuum, to ensure we are providing for our students and being accountable, responsible and reflective of our learning program and pedagogical practice.
Student learning at Chiltern Primary School adopts a personalised approach about identifying a student’s point of entry into the curriculum. It engages learners so that they are informed and empowered through student voice and agency.
Our teaching and learning program is a highly structured approach that places the needs, interests and learning styles of the students at the centre. It is about engaging the student in their own learning, about taking responsibility both as a student and a teacher. It is about accountability.
The curriculum centres around Learning Areas of The Arts, English, Health & PE, The Humanities, Languages, Mathematics, Science, Technologies STEAM and Capabilities of Critical and Creative thinking and Personal and Social Capability.
The curriculum is implemented through an integrated approach with a theme developing the main focus for each term. A curriculum plan sets the scene for programs across the school. Individualised programs for students with special needs are provided within the classroom setting and supported where needed with extra programming outside of the classroom.
Chiltern Primary School recognises that strong Literacy skills are essential to student learning. All teachers encourage a sense of students being lifelong learners and lovers of literacy. The school aims to produce students who are confident and articulate speakers, attentive and active listeners, accomplished and critical readers and confident writers.
The school has implemented Guided Reading across all year levels, allowing all students to benefit from small-group instruction tailored to meet their stage of development.
Writing
To improve our student’s writing and literacy skills we use the 6+1 Writing Traits across our school. The program is designed to bring the fun back into writing, to make the children want to write and to be continuously challenged throughout the writing journey. Through games, activities, writing tasks, cover stations and discussions, students will learn not only where their abilities lie in a fun and engaging way, but also the steps they need to make to continue to improve.
Spelling
At Chiltern Primary School, we utilise a whole-school approach to spelling. The Sound Waves phonemic approach uses a sound-to-letter strategy that acknowledges that sounds can be represented in more than one way in written form. This synthetic phonics approach focuses first on the basic units of sound in our language – phonemes. It then explores the letters that represent these sounds and how they can be put together to form written words.
The Sound Waves program is designed for all grades, from Foundation to Grade 6, providing a key strategy to ensuring consistency of approach and results across the entire school.
At Chiltern Primary School we encourage our students to believe that we are all capable of being mathematicians.
As mathematicians we:
Value engaging and challenging mathematics with an emphasis on embracing mistakes and solving problems together.
Provide experiences before explanation to explore our learning.
Consolidate our understanding by making connections to the real world through relevant, open-ended and rich tasks.
The school-wide development and implementation of an F-6 Mathematics program allows all students to be taught at their point of need. Our school uses the Number Fluency strategy to analyse every individual student’s achievement point. Focussed activities are then planned for each student based on the information obtained from the Number Fluency Assessment.
Visual Art
Our students all attend a 90-minute Art session each fortnight, via the specialist MACC teacher. Our Visual Arts program provides developmentally sequenced activities incorporating skills in seven areas of art including painting, printing, collage, drawing, construction, modelling, threads and textiles.
Performing Art
Our students all attend a 60-minute Music session each week. Lessons develop children’s singing, playing, listening, moving and creating skills. The lessons take place in our purpose-built Music Room. We also have a school choir, which participates in; school concerts, assemblies, community functions and the District Arts Festival and Eisteffod enable students to present their creative abilities to the outside community.
Other Areas
Dance
Drama
Media Arts
Music
Visual Arts
Visual Communication Design
Our library is a friendly and busy place that exists to encourage children to read, reflect, wonder, question and learn. The library supports the teaching and learning of classroom programs and aims to foster students reading skills and their love of books. Our students all attend a 90-minute Library session each fortnight, via the specialist MARC teacher. Classroom teachers also make use of our magnificent Library, with scheduled Library lessons weekly.
The program focuses on health and fitness, Fundamental Motor and Sport Specific Skills and supports students to build independent and team skills. Fostering students’ enjoyment and love of movement and activity are at the forefront of every lesson.
Students receive a 60-minute lesson each week which provides opportunities for students to be introduced to several sports which can then be taken to inter-school competitions, and possibly state-level. We also engage with the Sporting Schools program, where we have sport-specific coaches who come to our school to give detailed instruction.
We hold an annual Athletics and Swimming carnival.
Students are given the opportunity to participate in many special programs such as; swimming, cross-country, inter-school sports, camps and division and regional participation, as part of this curriculum area.
Science is taught as a part of our Inquiry Units of learning. Children learn about Science through an integrated and inquiry approach. Our Inquiry units cover all Science learning from the Victorian Curriculum Standards.
STEM is taught as a stand alone and integrated approach in all areas of the curriculum.
Our school offers a 60-minute LOTE program weekly, in Chinese for all students. A specialist teacher is employed by the school to deliver Chinese/Mandarin lessons.
At Chiltern Primary School, we are committed to providing our students with a learning environment that helps them to be their best. An important aspect of school life at CPS is developing student voice and agency, enabling our students to be active contributors in their learning and decision-making in our school community.
A student's voice is not simply about giving students the opportunity to communicate ideas and opinions; it is about students having the power to influence change. Authentic student voice provides opportunities for students to collaborate and make decisions with adults around what and how they learn and how their learning is assessed. This is known to lead to improved educational outcomes.
Student agency refers to the level of autonomy and power that a student experiences in the learning environment. Student voice and agency are intrinsically linked. Agency gives students the power to direct and take responsibility for their learning, creating independent and self-regulating learners.
To support the ongoing development of Student Voice and Agency at Chiltern PS, we have a Junior School Council. JSC is led by our Wellbeing Coordinator and two student representatives from each class from Foundation to Year 6. The JSC meets regularly to organise fundraising events throughout the year that support local and children-focused groups such as the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday, Anti Bullying Day and National Day of Kindness just to name a few. The JSC also plays an important role in decision-making processes that impact all students. This includes having student voice and input into aspects such as improvements to be made to play spaces.
We strive to embed eLearning within every aspect of our teaching and learning. We wish to create an eLearning environment that will empower students to become responsible, critical, intuitive, skilful, and sophisticated lifelong learners. This will prepare them for a technology-rich future.
We are very mindful of cyber safety at CPS. We are an eSmart accredited school and are constantly in the process of teaching our students about cyber safety and responsible, informed use of technology.
All students have access to computers with each classroom having a number of computers available for daily use. The STEM hub also has a large bank of iPads that can be used during class time.
Interactive Whiteboards are installed in all classrooms. We promote a variety of software that continually challenges our students and relates either specifically to curriculum-based outcomes or open-ended software. Essential Assessment & Reading Eggs software programs support student e-Learning at school and home. Students can access the programs at home via a unique student ID.
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