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