Version 9 Curriculum News

Dear Parents,

VERSION 9.0 OF THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM IS COMING TO ST SAVIOUR’S!

This year staff have spent a considerable amount of time familiarising themselves with Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum and we are excited to implement Version 9.0 in Maths, English and HASS in 2024. Next year, in English, St Saviour’s will be taking on a synthetic approach to phonics, which will include lots of evidence based research on the Science of Learning and The Science of Reading.

The Science of Learning is evidence based research on how students learn.  Next year we will be building on our knowledge of how the brain learns best.  This will involve looking at how learning is a change in long term memory, how students process new information and how students develop and demonstrate mastery.  Further knowledge in this area will have a direct impact on our approach to teaching, especially in the area of reading, where we will be incorporating the Science of Reading approach in our classrooms.

The Science of Reading provides the strongest evidence about how young children learn to read.  Understanding the cognitive science behind how students learn to read and the research will make it easier for our school to align policy and classroom teaching with evidence. The science of reading has a strong focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary/oral language and of course comprehension.

Learning to read proficiently is critical to a student’s entire education and life beyond school.  Explicit teaching around the Science of Reading will be happening in all classrooms at St Saviour’s next year and a new approach to phonics will be researched and implemented.

Stay tuned as we navigate through our own learning and  demonstrate to students how we too are life long learners who continually learn new skills.

We are very excited by these changes in 2024 and look forward to seeing the positive impacts on our students,

Bec Thomas