Curriculum

Digital Technologies

Educational technology, thoughtfully and appropriately applied, enhances the learning experiences of all students. Our teaching staff leverage technology to facilitate high quality teaching and learning, to fully engage students. Today’s digitally aware students are shaped by the learning conducted within both the real and digital realms. We allow our students to confidently develop their information and communication technology skills by supporting students to engage with digital learning tools throughout their primary education. 

Students at Mt Eliza Primary School have access to a variety of technologies and access to a number of coding programs and robotics hardware such as Scratch, Bee-Bots and LEGO Robotics. Classrooms are equipped with digital boards/screens and wireless network access. Students in Prep to Year 5 have access to class sets of iPads/tablets/laptops as part of their learning. A fully equipped computer lab is also available for student use as part of the Library Resource Centre.

In the global environment, now more than ever, technology is enabling significant changes in teaching and learning, and equipping students with new skills. Students need proficiency in digital, visual, informational, and textual literacy while critical thinking and creative problem solving remain essential in cooperative and collaborative learning environments.

Students have access to digital learning and assessment tools such as Mathseeds, Mathletics and Essential Assessment.

Through information literacy, Cyber Safety sessions and a focus on appropriate research skills, students are guided to develop a responsible digital footprint. They learn skills in how to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape in order to critically discern authentic details from the overwhelming amount of information available.

School Wide Digital Learning Policies

As a school, we have a Digital Learning Acceptable Usage policy which identifies the ways in which support our families. This policy provides clear guidelines on how students are supported to be responsible when using a range of devices at school. It also provides a clear set of consequences when these guidelines are not followed by students. Mt Eliza Primary School is an accredited eSmart school and has a partnership with the Inform & Empower.

Student Acceptable Usage Agreement MEPS

Compass Portal 

Languages Other Than English

In Prep to Year 4, students learn Indonesian through an engaging program that introduces language and culture in a fun and meaningful way. The program places a strong emphasis on speaking and listening, with students participating in interactive activities such as games, songs, role-play, puzzles and storytelling within a bright and welcoming classroom environment. Through learning Indonesian, students develop an appreciation of cultural diversity, build confidence in communicating in another language, and strengthen important thinking, problem-solving and literacy skills that support their overall learning and development.

Our Senior LOTE Program offers students a dynamic and flexible approach to language learning, combining online language lessons with interactive, in-person conversation skills sessions. Students are able to select their language of study—Italian, Spanish, French or Indonesian—allowing them to pursue personal interests while building strong communication skills. The program focuses on developing real-world speaking and listening confidence, cultural understanding, and a love of languages through engaging, authentic learning experiences.

Oz Harvest – FEAST Program

Our Years 3 and 4 students participate in the OzHarvest FEAST Program. What is FEAST? FEAST stands for Food Education and Sustainability Training (FEAST). It is a hands-on program designed to inspire students to become positive change-makers by helping them understand where food comes from and the impact food waste has on our environment. Through cooking, teamwork and problem-solving, students build confidence, creativity and independence while developing important life skills such as research, collaboration and community engagement. The program supports sustainability learning across the curriculum and helps strengthen connections between the school and our wider community in a meaningful and age-appropriate way. Through practical cooking experiences, Year 3 students focus on preparing cold recipes, while Year 4 students build their skills by cooking hot recipes, supported by our wonderful volunteers and staff.

 

Literacy

Your child’s exposure to language began in utero and all of the experiences in infancy – recognising sounds, talking together, reading books and singing – provided for them the framework on which to develop their own theories around how to communicate and how literacy works. Throughout their schooling, students share their theories and combine these with more formal concepts of literacy, particularly in reading, writing, speaking and listening.

At Mt Eliza Primary School, we use the Little Learners Love Literacy program in our Foundation to Year 2 literacy curriculum. This structured, phonics-based approach helps our students develop strong reading and writing skills through explicit, sequential and engaging instruction. By building confidence and a love for literacy from the early years, we support our students in becoming successful, lifelong readers and writers.

At Mt Eliza Primary School, English is taught both explicitly within literacy sessions as well as through authentic contexts integrated across all curriculum areas.  Our program acknowledges the language profile of individuals and builds on previous learning in ways that are positive and productive.  

Our English program follows the Victorian Curriculum, which is underpinned by the belief that language development helps create confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and ethical and informed citizens. It is organised around the three Language Modes: Reading and Viewing; Writing; and Speaking and Listening.

The English curriculum aims to ensure that students:

  • learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
  • appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
  • understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning; and
  • develop interest and skills in inquiring into the aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.

 

Learning Diversity

We ensure that students’ learning requirements are identified and catered for. Our expert teachers differentiate the curriculum to reflect the needs, strengths and interests of their cohorts. A differentiated classroom is a flexible and dynamic context for learning. The mode of teaching is varied to provide the most effective learning for students. Sometimes it will involve the whole class and sometimes small groups or individual students. Across the school, student grouping is flexible, depending on the goal for learning.

We acknowledge that some students will require adjustments that extend and enrich their learning. Some will require considerable support and others may require targeted support or systematic teaching to enable their engagement, learning and achievement.

Support

There may be times when a student requires additional support, beyond the scope of a differentiated classroom, to help them develop the skills and confidence required to tackle a broad range of tasks. Student support may be offered by either in-class assistance or through specific intervention delivered by expert teachers, tutors and/or learning assistants. Support ranges from personal organisation and behaviour management, to identified literacy, numeracy and language difficulties/disabilities, and/or additional aspects depending on developmental need.

Extension and Enrichment

Mt Eliza Primary School recognises that all students deserve to have their academic needs met. The school aims to provide quality whole school enrichment for students of all ability levels through varied and rigorous classroom and co-curricular experiences. Some experiences offered are:

  • Australasian Problem Solving Mathematical Olympiad
  • The Mathematical Association of Victoria, Maths Talent Quest
  • Science Victoria, Science Talent Search
  • Victorian High Abilities Program (VHAP)
  • Chess Club
  • High Ability Maths Tutoring Program
  • High Ability Literature Group
  • Writing Competitions

Performing Arts – Music, Dance & Drama

A specialist Performing Arts teacher facilitates weekly lessons for all classes, focussing on the significant knowledge, understanding and skills unique to each discipline. The lessons also support students to identify and appreciate the commonalities between the Arts.

The Performing Arts Program at Mt Eliza Primary School runs in semesterly blocks between Junior (P-2) and Senior (3-6) is designed to enhance student understanding and enjoyment of the three areas of the Performing Arts – Music, Dance and Drama. This is accomplished by building fundamental skills during The Early Years; including performance and audience skills, and by enhancing students’ awareness of the diversity of music, dance and drama available to them. 

Students at all levels experience Performing Arts through games, theory and practice. They sing, play instruments, listen and respond, move, create, perform and also learn about Performing Arts from other times and other cultures.

Mt Eliza Primary School stages a whole school concert, including a senior school production, every second year that involves every student in the school. These high quality productions are performed in front of an audience of over 1500 people over two nights at the Frankston Arts Centre. Most importantly, every student in our school gets the opportunity to put on full costume and make-up and be a part of this incredible event.

Numeracy

Mathematics is viewed as a global language through which we make sense of the world. The teaching of Mathematics reflects the stages a learner goes through when developing understanding; constructing meaning, transferring meaning into symbols and applying with understanding.

At Mt Eliza Primary School, Mathematics is taught using the Victorian Curriculum 2.0, which supports deep understanding, problem solving and the application of maths to real-life contexts. The curriculum is organised into six interconnected strands, each playing an important role in developing confident and capable mathematicians.

The six strands are:

  • Number – understanding numbers, place value, operations and how numbers work together

  • Algebra – recognising patterns, relationships and using mathematical rules

  • Measurement – measuring and comparing length, mass, capacity, time and money

  • Space – exploring shape, location, transformation and geometric reasoning

  • Statistics – collecting, representing and interpreting data

  • Probability – understanding chance and likelihood in everyday situations

Across all year levels, mathematics is taught through carefully planned mathematical units. Each unit is underpinned by the Big Ideas of Mathematics, which help students make connections between concepts, see patterns across learning and build knowledge that is transferable and long-lasting. This approach ensures learning is purposeful, cohesive and responsive, while supporting students to think deeply, reason mathematically and apply their understanding with confidence.

 
 
 

 

 

Physical Education

At Mt Eliza Primary School, every student is given the opportunity and encouragement to achieve their potential in a wide range of physical activities. The Physical Education program is designed to provide positive physical activity experiences that support the development of healthy, active children. All students from Prep to Year 6 take part in one session a week with a specialist physical education teacher. Prep to Year 2 students focus on developing a strong understanding of the core fundamental movement skills and applying these in structured activities and games. In Years 3 to 6, students begin to transfer these skills into more complex, sports-specific environments.

The Physical Education curriculum is informed by the Victorian Curriculum, and promotes the attributes required for students to become positive and inclusive members of sporting communities.

Social and Emotional Learning

Our Social and Emotional Learning program is thoughtfully underpinned by the Respectful Relationships and Rights curriculum, supporting students to develop empathy, resilience and positive relationships. This is complemented by the URSTRONG Friendology program, which explicitly teaches friendship skills, conflict resolution and a shared language for healthy relationships. To further support student wellbeing in a digital world, our school partners with Inform and Empower to strengthen digital learning and online safety practices. For our senior students, we also deliver the Butterfly Body Bright program, promoting positive body image, confidence and wellbeing during the important upper primary years.

STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics

Our STEM Specialist Program runs from Prep to Year 6 throughout the year and provides students with engaging, hands-on learning experiences that foster curiosity, creativity and problem solving. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and the program makes purposeful connections to the Victorian Curriculum 2.0, particularly within Science, Digital Technologies and Design and Technologies with strong links to mathematical thinking. Students learn in dedicated STEM spaces, with separate rooms designed for P–4 and Years 5–6, allowing learning experiences to be tailored to different developmental stages. Across the program, students have access to a wide range of resources including robotics such as LEGO, Bee-Bots and Edison robots, as well as a 3D printer, supporting innovation, collaboration and real-world application of learning.

Visual Art

Visual Arts classes facilitated by a specialist teacher run across a semester per school area (P-2) and then (3-6). The Visual Arts program follows the Victorian Curriculum guidelines and is grounded in the belief that the visual arts has the capacity to engage, inspire and enrich the lives of students, encouraging them to reach their creative and intellectual potential by igniting informed, imaginative and innovative thinking.

Within the program students are exposed to a broad range of experiences that illustrate the field of visual arts, including architecture, ceramics, collage, costume design, drawing, graphic design, film, illustration, industrial design, installation, jewellery, land art, mask making, metalwork, painting, papermaking, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, set design and textiles. 

Students begin to appreciate the depth and breadth of the field by experiencing visual arts created by diverse artists—locally and globally, now and in the past and by people of different backgrounds. Learning in the Visual Arts helps students to develop understanding of world culture and their responsibilities as global citizens.

The artworks produced by our talented students are celebrated and displayed around the school and in our classrooms.

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