Balanced Literacy:
Current research
recognises consistent exposure to speaking, writing, reading and listening
tasks will support students to develop their oral and written language skills.
Further to this we believe that all students are able to be supported in
differentiated programs to access literacy learning at an appropriate level of
the literacy continua.
At Mount Ommaney
Special School we utilise a balanced literacy approach to our practice which involves
reading to and with students, providing
opportunities for them to read by themselves, writing for
and with students and ensuring they have opportunities to write by
themselves. For some of our emergent literacy learnersit also
requires explicit teaching about the alphabet and sounds, with
conventional learners working on their word knowledge.
Communication is seen
as an integral component of all facets of a student’s learning and is central
to the literacy continua within the Australian Curriculum. The school is committed to identifying
appropriate support systems for students to reach their potential in
communicative competence as this will impact on their lives within and beyond their
schooling life. We are very lucky at our
school to have a committed support team with the Speech Language Pathologists
and Occupational Therapists working closely with all of our teachers to ensure
the students can access literacy learning with appropriate resources.
Numeracy:
Students at Mount
Ommaney Special School are all accessing numeracy programs which draw on the
Australian Curriculum. Students who are
operating in the early stages of the literacy continua will still be assessed
on their literacy goals though a numeracy context, with students being exposed
to the different strands of mathematics (Number and Algebra, Measurement
and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability).
We acknowledge the important role language plays for students to access
their numeracy lessons and as such is a focal point for our teachers when they
carry out their planning. The school
supports teachers in this area with curriculum support materials being
available for teachers which specifically address the needs for students with
disabilities to access numeracy lessons.
Classes are also provided with wonderful numeracy kits which contain
tremendous concreate materials for engaging learning activities.
Students access numeracy learning from P – 12 in varied approaches
dependent entirely upon he individual learning needs of each student. Our goal is to support students to be as
numerate as possible so they can apply this knowledge contextually to their
lives beyond school.
Health and Physical Education:
All students
at Mount Ommaney Special School participate in The Australian Curriculum
subject Health and Physical Education (HPE).
Health and
Physical Education is split into two strands
1. Personal, social and community health
2. Movement and physical activity.
All activities
are modified to suit the physical needs of the individual student so all
students can participate. When participating in the ‘movement and
physical activity’ strand, students ‘practise
fundamental movement skills and movement sequences using different body parts’.
Students demonstrate these skills by participating in bike riding (including
adapted bikes), ball skills, swimming, hydrotherapy, team games and sports day.
Students at
Mount Ommaney Special School have the opportunity to participate in various
inter school sporting activities with local special schools. These include such
activities as soccer, tennis gala, lawn bowls, cricket, fun run and more.
Explicit Teaching:
Explicit Teaching has
been described as a “structured, systematic, and effective methodology for
teaching academic skills” (Archer & Hughes, 2011). It has been widely used across the world
since the 1960s with multiple studies reflecting the powerful effect it has on
student outcomes. The model requires
teachers to consider all aspects of the teaching and assessment cycle and chunk
curriculum content into manageable amounts of learning, and then deliver this
in a systematic and sequential manner to the students.
Explicit Teaching supports the highly
differentiated instruction which is required for students with a disability. Teachers carefully and consistently assess,
reflect and adjust their lessons, how they teach the individual students as
well as how they assess their knowledge. The model strongly supports the Individual
Curriculum Plans which we create for students and places a great focus on the
individual learning goals each student requires in the core curriculum areas of
literacy, numeracy, science and health and physical education.
When utilising explicit teaching the teacher
always models what the student is to learn before carrying out
learning activities with the learners. When
a student is ready they are requested to carry out the learnt tasks independently
and provided explicit feedback on their learning. At times you may hear people refer to this
model of teaching as “I do”, “We do”, “You do”.