Vision and Values
To provide the best educational opportunities for all students.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is to develop excellence within the whole child (knowledge, skills, mindset and self-worth) by providing a stimulating and relevant curriculum.
We inspire curiosity and creativity amongst our students by customising how and what we teach.
At Mossgiel Park Primary School, children of all ages learn skills that will benefit and prepare them for tomorrow’s challenges where they will “STRIVE TO SUCCEED”.
Our Beliefs and Values
At Mossgiel Park Primary School, we strongly believe in the following principles of learning:
Respect
At Mossgiel Park Primary School, we are understanding and considerate of individual and collective rights. We recognise and accept individual differences, celebrate multiculturalism and support the growth of all students. Our school community is reliable, honest and trustworthy in our interactions with each other and the wider community.
Responsibility
Students are central to the learning process. We recognise personal, civic and environmental responsibilities and take positive action to better the world around us. At Mossgiel Park Primary School, our students are central to the learning process and are encouraged to be active in goal setting. As a school, we set high expectations of ourselves, our students and others to achieve excellence in knowledge and skills.
Relationships
Positive relationships and social skills foster connectedness between students, staff and the wider community. We build and sustain relationships and cooperative behaviours within and beyond the school through social and emotional learning. We foster global citizenship through action, and through the development of ethical and intercultural capabilities. At Mossgiel Park Primary School, we are proud to be a supportive community that cares for others.
Curriculum
Our Focus
Our focus is to develop knowledge and skills in students through authentic and relevant experiences, where the learning areas and capabilities of the Victorian Curriculum are integrated.
These experiences include a focus on STEM education, plus a variety of specialised curriculum offerings such as Music, Visual Arts, Physical Education and Indonesian language skills.
We embrace a blend of explicit instruction and the 5E learning approach to provide exceptional education that supports the development of the WHOLE CHILD.
Our Programs
InitiaLit
What is InitiaLit?
InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole class literacy program which will provide all children with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. InitiaLit teaches children how to read and spell through daily lessons, using research-based teaching methods. It also uses a range of engaging storybooks to develop children’s vocabulary and oral language.
What does InitiaLit do?
InitiaLit teaches children that words are made up of sounds and that those sounds are represented by letters. Unlike learning to talk, which children do without formal instruction, children need to be directly taught the relationship between sounds and letters. In InitiaLit children will build upon the knowledge of the alphabetic code that they gained in their first year of schooling (Foundation). They will learn that a letter or letters can make different sounds, and that two or three letters together can make a sound. They will also learn key terminology such as ‘vowel’, ‘syllable’, ‘phoneme’, ‘grapheme’, and ‘digraph’.
The Sound Way
What is the Sound Way?
The Sound Way is a sequentially developed system for mastering the rules and skills of English. It is a step-by-step process that develops key phonetic knowledge for digraphs, trigraphs and diphthongs.
What does the Sound Way do?
The Sound Way teaches the 45 sounds (phonemes) that comprise English words and the 75 ways there are of representing these sounds on paper (phonograms).
Fountas and Pinnell
What is Fountas and Pinnell?
Fountas and Pinnell is a tool for assessment, planning and teaching. It describes a continuum for learning text characteristics and behavioural goals for thinking within the text, thinking beyond the text and thinking about the text.
What does Fountas and Pinnell do?
Fountas and Pinnell breaks reading skills into distinct interdependent skills to be taught. With this program students will learn:
- monitoring and self correction
- solving words
- maintaining fluency
- adjusting
- summarising
- predicting
- making connections
- synthesising
- inferring
- analysing
- and critiquing.
Talk for Writing
What is Talk for Writing?
We believe writing should be fun and approachable for all students. Talk for writing is an engaging program that teaches students to write in different genres independently. Children internalise the language structures for each writing genre through oral language and close reading. The approach moves from explicitly teaching a modelled text to independent writing. Through this program we enable our students to develop the skills and language to write creatively and powerfully.
Our learning cycle for teaching is:
- Conduct a baseline assessment for each student’s point of need.
- Imitate the text through oral language.
- Innovate upon the original text to show how students can improve their writing.
- Independently apply learning with guidance to show progress.
- Assess progress against baseline assessments.
Mathematics
What is our approach to mathematics?
Our teachers provide explicit instruction in numeracy with differentiated learning tasks to develop mathematical thinking in every child. In the classroom, our teachers make use of concrete materials, open ended learning tasks, real world problems and games to foster enthusiastic learners. We aim for every student to have the knowledge, understanding and skills to take advantage of every opportunity and meet new challenges confidently.
History
The school is built on land originally owned by a farmer from Scotland who named it after his birthplace, Mossgiel Farm. The school took its name from the housing estate, Mossgiel Park, when the land was subdivided.
The great poet Robert Burns also farmed land in Scotland while he was making his great contribution to English Literature, and Mossgiel Farm is mentioned in this poem by William Wordsworth:
“There!” said a stripling, pointing with moot pride
~William Wordsworth
Towards a low roof with green trees half concealed,
“Is Mossgiel farm, and that’s the very field
Where Burns plowed up the daisy”. Far and wide
A plain below stretched seaward, while, descried
Above sea-clouds, the peaks of Arran rose…
From The Principal
A warm welcome to our school community!
Learning we do and fun we have! Students, staff and families share a real sense of community and our motto ‘Strive to Succeed’ clearly defines our intentions in all we do!
It is a privilege to be part of such a wonderful team of enthusiastic staff who place such commitment to the development of positive relationships with every child, which provides the foundation for effective learning to occur. Every staff member knows every child and this is important in having a real connection to each other and to the school.
Our teaching and learning program is engaging and promotes a love of learning and a sense of curiosity, all within a caring and supportive environment. Technology is an integral component of every child’s development.
We pride ourselves in the development of an orderly environment based on strong and uniform principles of routine and rigour throughout the school.
Visitors to our school comment on the friendly environment and the wonderful grounds.
Families new to the area or to our school are welcome to book a tour of the school by calling or emailing the office. It would be my pleasure to show you around our stimulating learning environment.
Lynn Ordish,
Mossgiel Park Principal
