Welcome

This will be the central hub of information about our classes and the main link between the school and home. It will progressively change and we will endeavour to improve it regularly so that it best serves its purpose of sharing information, providing links and educational resources and giving assistance to parents so that we can work well together.

What We are Working Towards for Term 3

This is a new experience for all of us. With so many unknowns and different family scenarios planning and implementing home learning is proving to be a steep learning curve for all involved. We are working hard to provide the opportunity for all of our students to continue learning.

Below is the recommended outline of what the Department for Education has outlined for our school and our students, including minimum time allocations of learning areas and expectations. We are working towards this, also including our Specialist Lessons for those learning at home.

Structuring Learning at Home (as per the Ardtornish Website, directed from Mark Hansen, Deb Pryor and DfE)

In recognition of the need to support caregivers to manage their child/ren’s learning in the home environment our programs are designed to follow the Department’s implementation guidelines and provide activities matched to two major segments of schooling, years R-3 and years 4-7.

Years R-3

These younger students will in all likelihood require more caregiver support to successfully engage in learning activities.

Their daily program will be structured around four learning blocks.

1. Daily Literacy activities for 90 minutes per day, with a focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening. These may include:

• • phonological awareness,

  • phonemic awareness and other oral language activities

  • phonics practice and consolidation

  • vocabulary development, and

  • the reading of appropriate texts, including decodable texts and daily writing activities.

2. Daily Numeracy activities for 60 minutes per day, with a focus on number. These may include:

• • sorting, patterning, counting and measuring activities that can be conducted using everyday materials

  • identifying and describing shapes, and o the use of mathematical language.

3. Daily Physical Activity recommendations – These could be completed indoors and outdoors, for example, simple exercises and dance movements or outdoor games. (30 min)

4. Play-Based Learning Activities. These activities will require less caregiver supervision, in comparison to the literacy and numeracy components of the day, and may including free drawing, colouring and painting, collecting and grouping, creating and making, and listening to sounds, including music.

Additional Learning Activities: Class teachers and specialist teachers will also provide additional tasks for students to undertake, linked to other curriculum areas beyond English and Maths. However it will be left to the discretions of each parent to choose how many of these activities their children undertake. Parents may like their children to be involved in some or all of these in preference to less structured play based activities.

Minimum Formal Learning Time: 2 hrs 30 min plus lots of play!