Effective teaching and learning at Cloverdale Primary School ensures that all students access programs that are rich in curriculum content and cater for differing students' strengths and interests. Staff make deliberate decisions in the effective use of data to improve outcomes at all levels of the school and work collaboratively to ensure that no child is left behind.
At Cloverdale Primary School, we work collaboratively to plan, teach and assess using a deliberate focus on matching pedagogy to content. We use the following whole-school initiatives and programs:
Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)
Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) encompasses research-based instructional practices explored by cognitive and educational researchers. EDI is the delivery of strategically planned lessons that explicitly teach new concepts to mastery. Our teachers use EDI to teach new concepts in all learning areas and outlines the steps to success ensuring that all lessons outline a learning objective, activates prior knowledge, concept development, skill development, guided practice, relevance, closure and periodic reviews.
Letters and Sounds
Letters and Sounds is a synthetic phonics program that aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as we as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. Students in Kindergarten to Year 2 engage daily in Letters and Sounds instruction that explicitly delivers a detailed and systematic program for teaching phonic skills with the aim of them becoming fluent readers.
Smart Spelling
Smart Spelling is a synthetic phonics approach that follows the Letters and Sounds program and is from Year 3 to Year 6. It is an explicit and systematic program that focuses on pattern and regularity. the SMART acronym stands for Say Meaning Analyse Remember and Teach.
Talk 4 Writing
Talk 4 Writing, developed by Pie Corbett, enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. The Talk 4 Writing approach underpins students' English knowledge and skills by enabling them to imitate orally the language they need for a particular topic before reading and analysing it and then writing their own version.
Mind Up
MindUP™ was founded by the Goldie Hawn Foundation to help children develop the knowledge and tools they need to manage stress, regulate emotions and face the challenges of the 21st century with optimism, resilience and compassion. At Cloverdale Primary School, our students engage daily with lessons and mindfulness practices to strengthen their mental fitness.