Learning and Teaching
Teaching and Learning at St Mary’s Primary School
We believe at St. Mary’s School that learning is a meaningful lifelong process and that children need to be active participants in their own learning. Learning and Teaching at St Mary’s centers on supporting each student to access knowledge, understanding and skills that provide a foundation for successful and lifelong learning.
Our English curriculum is taught in a differentiated and targeted manner. Literacy skills include the daily practice of reading (synthetic phonics), spelling (Spelling Master), grammar, speaking and listening. We explicitly teach strategies for these areas at a whole class, small group and at an individual student level.
In 2023, we began our work in the area of Science of Learning, in 2024 MACS (Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools) announced its ‘Vision for Instruction’ which outlines the system-wide approach to achieving teaching and learning excellence. It is firmly grounded in the evidence of how students learn most effectively and efficiently, offering explicit guidance for Catholic schools on instructional best practice.
St Mary’s Primary School is committed to evidence-based best practice. Our Literacy and Numeracy programs align with evidence-based teaching practices and strive to deliver excellent results for all students. The science of learning, cognitive load theory and explicit direct instruction inform our pedagogy, classroom practice and will continue to be our school focus in 2026 and future years.
In our P-2 classrooms we continue to put a spotlight on the science of reading as a research based approach to teaching phonics so that students understand the how’s and why’s behind reading. In recent years we moved away from a whole language approach to synthetic phonics. Currently in our P-2 years, the explicit teaching of synthetic phonics occurs on a daily basis. We use the Little Learners Love Literacy approach to teaching phonics. Students practice strategies through targeted teaching in whole class, mini lessons and in small group sessions. We also use the Heggerty program in our Prep and Year 1 rooms which are daily phonemic awareness lessons.
In 2025, we rolled out the implementation of Spelling Mastery which provides structured lessons to effectively and efficiently teach the spelling skills students need to become proficient readers and writers.
Across the school (P-6) we use the UFLI program as a Tier Two intervention for our struggling readers.
UFLI Foundations targets the following foundational reading skills:
- Phoneme blending and segmentation practice
- Accuracy and automaticity of grapheme-phoneme correspondences
- Decoding automaticity of words with previously learned concepts
- Explicit introduction of new concepts
- Decoding and encoding practice
- Reading and spelling irregular words
We are lucky to have a lovely school library with each class from P-6 attending for both a weekly lesson and to borrow new books.
At St Mary’s we follow the ‘Writing Revolution’ approach to teaching writing. Our sessions incorporate explicit teaching and modeling of:
- Speaking and listening - oral language skills
- Explicit teaching of vocabulary
- Grammar/Punctuation
- Spelling (Our school began using Spelling Mastery) program in 2025
- Handwriting/ Self-editing
As a school we have created a whole school writing moderation rubric, which our staff use to regularly meet and discuss student writing and track progress.
Mathematics instruction is explicit and responsive to the needs of our students. We use a gradual release model, explicitly teaching the concepts and skills students require to become proficient problem solvers. We use scaffolded and sequential learning units to deliver the Victorian Curriculum 2.0. Our students are engaged in a minimum of 5 hours per week. Our Prep – 2 students engage using a vast array of hands on materials and are explicitly taught a variety of strategies to build a strong foundation in Mathematics. We ensure learning is embedded into long term memory by utilising Daily Reviews for 10 minutes in each lesson. It provides spaced and prolonged exposure to taught skills and concepts.
In 2025, we are implementing a whole school fluency program to help children to become fluent and automatic in number facts and procedures. Mathematics lessons commence with 10 minutes of targeted fluency practice. By providing the students with regular opportunities to practise their number facts and procedures, we can free up student’s working memory to engage in deeper mathematical problem solving and reasoning.
Ongoing assessment at St. Mary’s drives classroom instruction. We assess students using a variety of tools and methods to personalize Maths instruction so that all our students are challenged and supported. Lessons include Check for Understanding questions to help teachers to respond and differentiate learning within the lesson. Students’ growth is also monitored through the use of Essential Assessment, PAT Maths, Acadience and NAPLAN testing conducted at various periods of the year.
We aspire to develop individuals who are numerate, creative, independent, inquisitive, enquiring, confident, risk takers in the area of mathematics.
In addition to our core learning area students at St Mary's participate in 4 hours a week of Specialist classes.
Our Specialists subjects include:
- Health and Physical Education
- Performing Arts (Dance and Drama)
- Languages- Italian
- ART
Written reports on student achievement are prepared and distributed to parents/carers twice each year, at the end of each semester. We value student voice in their learning. Students from Grade 3-6 write in their own school report with their marks and comments recorded next to the teachers. We want students to understand their role in their educational journey. We offer parent-teacher- meetings throughout the year, but formally at the beginning of the year (meet and greet session) and at the conclusion of semester one after reports are sent home.
At St Mary’s we run parent-teacher-student conferences (once a year) which provide valuable opportunities for the teacher, student, parents and/or carers to share and learn more about the student socially, emotionally and academically. They are a great way to establish and maintain collaborative relationships between parents/carers, teacher and student, regarding the student’s academic achievement, learning and wellbeing.
