Literacy Curriculum atHuntingdale Primary School
By Eiji Nishikubo, Bilingual Co-ordinator
In defining our vision and values for our school community it is essential we look to the future and the world and workplace our students will be entering as adults. Huntingdale’s vision is future oriented providing:
Authentic language competency in a second language (Japanese) and deep intercultural understandings
Vision & Values
Thinking skills to access, synthesise and transfer information in a 21st Century Knowledge Economy
High level personal and interpersonal skills to facilitate strong High level social connectedness and personal wellbeing
Excellent literacy and numeracy skills
Monica ScullyPrincipal
Our School Motto Aim High underpins the quality of our teaching and learning reflecting
High Expectations High Achievement High Engagement
School Motto
Our school is situated in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne within close proximity to public transport networks and Monash University.
We currently have 240 students enrolled at the school grouped in ten classes. We have experienced significant growth in the Junior School over the past two years.
As well as serving our local community, a number of families travel from a range of suburbs across Melbourne to provide their children with the opportunity to experience authentic bilingual education.
Families with a Japanese heritage background have been steadily increasing.
Demographic
All students are taught for 7.5 hours a week in and through the Japanese language.
A daily two hour English literacy block and a daily one hour numeracy block
A weekly two and a half hour Japanese literacy block
A weekly two hours integrated studies, one hour PE, ICT(senior grades only) Music and Art program taught in Japanese.
Highly effective school wide assessment processes to identify and monitor the progress of every student
Curriculum ApproachA Comprehensive Whole School Approach
Highly differentiated English and Japanese Literacy programs
Same goals, but a different approach in the Japanese and English programs in order to avoid repetition of the curriculum
Infusion of thinking skills and technology tools to provide further challenge and stimulate learning
Provision of individual literacy intervention support through our Bridges program and targeted Year One Reading Recovery Program.
A weekly Japanese Reading Program.
Curriculum Approach
Same goals, different approach in Japanese and English program
Weekly team meetings to plan strategies to continually challenge and support each and every student
Fortnightly Bilingual meetings to share the progress of both the English and Japanese Literacy programs in order to effectively achieve goals.
Meetings
Time Table Meeting Times
School Calender Meeting Times
A daily two hour English literacy block and a daily one hour numeracy block A weekly two and a half hour Japanese literacy block
Literacy Block
English Literacy BlockReading / Writing
JP Literacy BlockReading / Writing / Speaking /
Listenig
Early years literacy and numeracy is a whole school priority
Meet the needs of individual learners Encourage students to be independent
leaners Teaching aides will be provided to all JP
classes in the literacy block All students have a weekly one on one
reading time with parent helpers as part of the Reading Program.
Apply Early Years Model to all JP classes
Early Years Model
http://hps-jp-reading-program.wikispaces.com/ All students from Prep to Grade 4s participate weekly based
program.
JP Reading Program
Sample Assessments Linked to the Progression Measures Unpacked
..\..\..\..\..\Assessment\Assessment tools\Benchmarking\Sample Assessment Tools\Sample Assessemnt Tools main\Japanese_progression_measures_unpacked_Bilingual 3 Sep 2010.doc
Assessments
HPS Journey 1997
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2010
2011
Reading Program
Workshop with Caulfield & Gruyere PS
MLTAV Action Research Projects
TAIKO
Math
EMR LOTE Meeting
MLTAV Assessment & Reporting Project
LOTE CSF
Early Literacy Model
Literacy Coaching
Whole School Curriculum
LOTE CSF II
VELS
TPL Scope & Sequences
TPL Curriculum
Development
JILLC
SOSE
Science
Integrated Studies
Students’ levels of ability have become much wider compared to 10 years ago. How do we cater our curriculum to meet all the differing levels?
Creating our own resources & updating existing resources. Synchronising the JP curriculum with the English Curriculum – The
English literacy curriculum focus on mainly Reading and Writing. The JP curriculum focuses on these two areas, in addition to the speaking and listening skills.
Teaching in the TL is more time consuming then teaching in English More difficult to engage students in JP lessons, as their comprehension
of the language is limited. Time table –a 2 hour literacy block once a week is not sufficient for
students to achieve fluency in the target language NAPLAN creates high competition amongst schools in the areas of
English literacy and numeracy. How can we justify our program in this environment?
The Heritage Japanese Course will be introduced under the National Curriculum by 2015. One third of our students may be classified as Heritage, two thirds may be classified as LOTE and a small percentage may be classified as First Language Background Speakers.
Challenges
THE END
We won the State Curriculum Innovation Award in 2011.