Warrandyte Primary School students learning

Our Learning

Every child known. Every child challenged. Every child supported.

A clear, evidence-informed approach to teaching, assessment and student growth across Warrandyte Primary School.

Rick Griffiths

Learning Specialist · Teaching & Learning

Finalist — Victorian Excellence in Teaching Awards 2022

Meet our Learning Specialist

Leading teaching and learning across Warrandyte Primary School.

As Learning Specialist, Rick Griffiths plays a key role in shaping the quality of teaching at WPS. His work focuses on building the capacity of colleagues and ensuring a coherent, evidence-informed approach to learning from Foundation to Year 6.

Recognised as a finalist in the 2022 Victorian Excellence in Teaching Awards, Rick brings deep expertise and a strong commitment to continuous improvement — supporting teachers to plan, teach and assess in ways that make a measurable difference for every student.

Coaching staff to strengthen classroom practice

Driving the school improvement agenda

Influencing planning, teaching and assessment across the school

How learning works at WPS

A consistent whole-school instructional approach.

Our instructional model aligns with the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0: planning, enabling learning, explicit teaching and supported application. This gives students consistent routines and gives teachers a shared language for improving practice.

Explicit teaching

Teachers clearly explain and model new knowledge and skills, check for understanding, provide guided practice and gradually release responsibility to students.

Professional Learning Communities

Teachers work collaboratively with real student data to identify learning needs, set goals, select high-impact strategies and evaluate their effect.

Assessment that informs teaching

Assessment is used to decide what happens next. Universal screening, diagnostics and progress monitoring help teachers respond early and accurately.

Supported application

Students practise new learning with purposeful scaffolds, feedback and opportunities to apply skills independently and in authentic contexts.

Explicit teaching

Clear explanations. Guided practice. Strong feedback.

Students learn best when new content is carefully sequenced and teachers make the learning visible. Lessons include clear learning intentions, modelling, worked examples, checks for understanding and supported practice before students work independently.

I do — teacher models

We do — guided practice

You do — independent application

Explore our instructional model

Professional Learning Communities

Great teachers. Powerful collaboration. Better outcomes for every student.

At Warrandyte Primary School, our teachers are always working to improve their own knowledge and understanding of best-practice teaching. We do this through Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) — the heart of how we continually improve teaching and learning.

Our teachers work collaboratively to use real student data, evidence and professional expertise to identify learning needs, set meaningful goals and determine the teaching strategies that will have the greatest impact.

Our PLC approach

01Identify

02Target

03Teach

04Monitor

05Adjust

06Measure

Teachers work together to

Identify what students know and where they need to grow.
Set challenging, achievable targets based on real student data.
Use Explicit Teaching and other High Impact Teaching Strategies to respond to identified needs.
Monitor student growth throughout the teaching cycle and adjust practice when required.
Measure impact and celebrate student progress.

This ensures assessment is not simply about recording achievement — it directly informs what teachers do next.

Learning that is visible

Our students are supported to understand their own learning. Through clear learning intentions, success criteria, explicit modelling, feedback and purposeful reflection, students become increasingly active and independent participants in their learning.

Students can answer:

What am I learning?

What does success look like?

How am I progressing?

What do I need to do next?

Teachers who continually learn

Our PLC culture creates a professional environment where teachers openly share practice, examine evidence and learn from one another.

We don't simply ask "What are we teaching?" We ask:

"Is what we are doing making a measurable difference for our students?"

This commitment to continual improvement means our teaching practices evolve in response to the needs of our learners.

PLC Leader

Our PLC Lead

Dave Pelosi

Dave brings extensive educational leadership experience to Warrandyte Primary School, including 15 years of principal-class leadership across three schools.

He has led Professional Learning Community initiatives within the Victorian Department of Education and across Victorian schools, including his work as a Professional Learning Community Manager within the North East Victoria Regional team.

Dave's PLC leadership is focused on building teacher capacity through collaboration, evidence-informed practice and a relentless focus on student growth.

Our belief is simple:

When teachers learn together, students achieve together.

Warrandyte Primary School — where great teaching is continually getting better.

Literacy

In the early years, structured literacy builds strong foundations in phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As students progress, they increasingly apply these skills to rich texts, writing and knowledge-building across the curriculum.

Read about our literacy approach

Literacy Leaders

Two teachers guiding literacy across WPS.

Nerole Blair and Sam Crigan work together to lead literacy at Warrandyte Primary School. Both are experienced classroom teachers who support their colleagues to deliver a strong, evidence-informed literacy program from Foundation to Year 6.

Literacy Leader

Nerole Blair

Literacy Leader · Classroom Teacher

Nerole brings 35 years of experience in early years education to her role as Literacy Leader. She has a deep understanding of how young children learn to read and write, and uses this knowledge to guide teachers in building strong foundational literacy across the junior school.

35 years teaching in early years education
Supports Foundation–Year 2 literacy practice

Literacy Leader

Sam Crigan

Literacy Leader · Classroom Teacher

Sam comes to WPS from a Language School background, giving him strong, specialised knowledge in phonics and spelling. He works alongside teachers to strengthen systematic, explicit literacy instruction and to support students developing decoding and encoding skills.

Language School background
Specialist knowledge in phonics & spelling

Numeracy

Confident, curious mathematicians.

Numeracy at Warrandyte Primary School combines explicit instruction, worked examples, mathematical discussion and purposeful problem solving. Aligned to Victorian Curriculum 2.0 and informed by assessment evidence, our program builds conceptual understanding, fluency and confidence from Foundation to Year 6.

Explicit instruction & worked examples

Teachers model strategies step-by-step, using worked examples and clear explanations so students understand the why behind each mathematical idea.

Number sense & fluency

Students build strong number sense and automatic recall of key facts, freeing up working memory for reasoning and more complex problem solving.

Problem solving & reasoning

Rich, open-ended tasks encourage students to reason, justify their thinking and apply a range of strategies to authentic, meaningful problems.

Real-world application

Mathematics is connected to everyday contexts — measurement, data, money and patterns — so students see its purpose and use it confidently.

Numeracy Leader

Chris Cavill

Numeracy Leader

Chris leads numeracy across Warrandyte Primary School, providing the framework, coaching and professional learning that builds high-quality mathematics teaching at every year level. He works alongside classroom teachers and within Professional Learning Communities to analyse data, plan high-impact lessons, and develop a shared, evidence-informed approach to teaching mathematics from Foundation to Year 6.

Through modelling, coaching and targeted professional learning, Chris builds teacher capacity in explicit instruction, mathematical reasoning and the effective use of assessment — ensuring every student develops the confidence, fluency and deep conceptual understanding they need to succeed as mathematicians.

Coaches teachers in high-impact numeracy practice across all levels
Provides the whole-school framework aligned to Victorian Curriculum 2.0
Leads professional learning and PLCs focused on mathematics
Supports assessment and data-informed planning for every learner

Read about our numeracy approach

Assessment

Know where students are. Decide what comes next.

Universal screening

Regular whole-cohort checks help identify students who may need extension or additional support.

Diagnostic assessment

When a need is identified, teachers use targeted assessment to understand the specific knowledge or skill gap.

Progress monitoring

Short-cycle checks show whether teaching is working and whether the response needs to change.

Moderation

Teachers compare evidence and expectations together to strengthen consistency and professional judgement.

Koorie Education & Reconciliation

Respecting Country, culture and community.

Warrandyte Primary School sits on the Country of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We are committed to embedding respectful, authentic and ongoing learning about First Nations history, cultures and perspectives across our curriculum.

Through our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), developed in collaboration with students, families and community members, WPS is working to build genuine relationships with our local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community — moving from awareness to meaningful action.

Indigenous mural at Warrandyte Primary School featuring a wedge-tailed eagle and native flora in dot-painting style

School mural — wedge-tailed eagle with native flora, created in the style of Aboriginal art

Relationships

Building respectful, meaningful and lasting connections between WPS students, staff and our local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community through shared learning and engagement.

Respect

Embedding authentic First Nations perspectives, histories and cultures across our curriculum, grounded in the Victorian Department of Education's commitment to Koorie education and Respectful Relationships.

Opportunities

Providing all students with rich learning opportunities that reflect the living cultures and ongoing contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples — through stories, language, art, and Country.

Respectful Relationships

The Victorian Department of Education's Respectful Relationships program is embedded across our school. It teaches students to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence, and to understand gender equality and respectful behaviour in their lives and learning. For Koorie students and families, this commitment extends to ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, perspectives and ways of knowing are reflected and respected throughout our school community.

Our Reconciliation Action Plan

WPS's RAP was developed through the Narragunnawali platform, promoted by Reconciliation Australia and Reconciliation Victoria. Our RAP working group includes students, parents, teachers and community members, reflecting our aspiration for genuine, whole-community reconciliation.

Acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung as Traditional Custodians

Embed First Nations perspectives across all year levels

Build community partnerships with local Aboriginal organisations

Mark Reconciliation Week, NAIDOC Week and significant cultural events

Engage the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group and Aboriginal Liaison Officers

Why Warrandyte?

Warrandyte is a uniquely meaningful place to teach about the Indigenous relationship with Country. Its proximity to the Yarra River, the surrounding bush landscape and its deep historical connection to the Wurundjeri people make it the ideal setting for students to reflect on and learn from those who have lived here before us.

WPS is one of the original twelve schools in Victoria and carries a responsibility to lead reconciliation with authenticity and purpose.

Read our Reconciliation Action Plan