St Augustine's school curriculum is based on the Victoria Curriculum and the Religious Education Curriculum Framework of the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
The Victorian Curriculum F–10 includes both knowledge and skills. These are defined by learning areas and capabilities. The skills and knowledge defined in the capabilities will be developed, practised, deployed and demonstrated by students in and through their learning across the curriculum.
At St Augustine’s we understand that high quality Literacy education is fundamental in setting our students up for success and developing essential communication skills. We provide a comprehensive and structured Literacy program from P-6, guided by the Victorian curriculum. Each school day begins with a 2 hour Literacy block where students participate in engaging activities across Reading and Viewing, Writing and Speaking and Listening.
At St. Augustine’s we follow current research based approaches to Literacy Learning, which has guided us to adopt The Science of Reading (SOR). Learning to read and write is not an innate skill like learning to talk, so our brains are not hard wired to do this. The theory behind The Science of Reading explains how our brains learn to read and provides instructional approaches that are most effective. It encourages the teaching of skills through systematic explicit instruction.
At St Augustine’s we use a Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach to teaching the 44 speech sounds of the English language, utilising programs such as Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL) and University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI). These programs, along with our SMART Spelling program, allow our students to learn the relationships between the sounds (phonemes) and the letter symbols or spelling choices (graphemes) in a structured manner. The ability to match the phoneme and grapheme enables students to read and spell words successfully. Students then progress into learning about understanding words through a structured approach to morphology. At St Augustine’s we foster a love of reading through the use of rich literature to develop comprehension skills. Students gain deeper understanding through questioning, exploring different perspectives and building vocabulary.
Through explicit writing sessions at St Augustine’s we explore a variety of genres with real-world connections. Students apply their phoneme to grapheme knowledge learning from the basic sentence structure to complex creative and factual texts writing pieces. We engage in cohort, whole school and external writing moderation practices, to ensure consistency in assessment and to identify points of need for further teaching.
At St. Augustine’s, we believe that developing students' mathematics skills is vital to their ability to engage with the numeracy needs for life beyond formal education. This is achieved by providing students with content at accessible and challenging levels, while linking concepts to the real world contexts that may fit the application.
In line with the new Victorian Curriculum 2.0 - launched in 2024 - our teachers at St Augustine’s will deliver content in 6 strands of Mathematics, looking for authentic and meaningful connections between strands. These strands are:
As a staff, we keep informed of current practices through the opportunity for staff to engage in professional development delivered by leading industry experts. We work as teams to analyse data, plan and reflect on classroom practice. We promote a collegial environment where ideas are exchanged and practices modelled as part of our professional learning community.
Student needs are measured and addressed through rigorous assessment before, during and after learning units to ensure our pedagogy is targeting the needs of individual learners. Differentiation for enabling and extension of students is factored into content design, while student agency in scaled difficulty allows learners the opportunity to find challenge at an appropriate standard.
At St. Augustine’s we pride ourselves on providing students with a range of learning experiences as they progress from concrete learning materials and representation before extending into more abstract concepts. In our middle years, students integrate technology into their mathematics learning as data collection, representation, computation, and analysis become of increasing importance.
The formal Religious Education program at St. Augustine’s is based on the ‘Pedagogy of Encounter’ and Framework documents, as directed by MACS.
At St Augustine’s we invite and support students to discover God’s presence in their daily lives. Within a gospel-centred environment, students are challenged and supported to understand themselves and the world in which they live through a worldview founded in Scripture and the traditions of the Catholic community − its stories, its worship, its experiences and its teachings.
Religious education is at the centre of the Catholic school curriculum and is reflected in a visible Catholic symbolic culture and active sacramental and liturgical practice. Religious education explores students’ life experiences in the context of Church teachings and tradition.
Our programs allow students to engage in:
All classroom teaching programs are created to cater for individual needs. Students’ individual abilities are measured by a comprehensive assessment schedule which is used to inform classroom-teaching practice. Students are grouped according to their ability and are supported and extended within the classroom.
There are a range of support programs to meet the needs of individual students at St Augustine's:
In the classroom - through whole/small group teaching & PLP's (Personalised Learning Plans)
LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention)
Learning Support Staff assistance
MaqLit
EAL Support Program
Additional assistance or extension is provided within the classroom to all students through focused teaching and open-ended tasks.
