Literacy/Numeracy Plan
Mountain View Adventist College
2011 National Partnership School Plan (Updated November 9, 2011)
School Context:
Mountain View Adventist College is a comprehensive p‐12 college in the Western suburbs of Sydney. The catchment area covers a very large part of Sydney ‐ from the Blue Mountains, to Seven Hills and across to Liverpool in the South. Students travel to school by private school bus, car and public Transport. We have 500 students within 3 schools ‐ Junior, Middle and Senior, and each school has a Head of their school that manages the daily structure of the classes. We have influxes of students in every year level, at the beginning of the school year, and this brings with it the issue of students doing poorly at other schools, being brought here as we are seen to be able to support them both academically, emotionally and socially. This means though, that we don’t always have the children coming to us in Kindergarten to give them the proper foundations to begin with.
A large proportion of our students are from Polynesian islands, where there is not the same value placed on education. Parents themselves struggle with giving academic guidance to their children, and cannot back teachers in their efforts to get the students to do homework or assessments on time. They leave the whole academic guidance to the school and look on us to be the ones to manage their child’s education. We also have at least 70% of our clientele that have parents born overseas, therefore English is not their first language. This makes the teaching of literacy skills even more important in our college.
The staff are committed to increasing the literacy skills of all students, especially those students that do not reach the National Minimum Standards (NMS). They work collaboratively with the Literacy support person so that all students can reach their potential.
We have now completed one year of Accelerated Literacy with many celebrations of successes with students growth in their learning. We have completed a self evaluation of where we have come from, which is now guiding us as to where we want to continue: continuing to build our staff team into a strong body that will allow AL to be sustained beyond 2011. We have been able to purchase IWB to support teachers in their classrooms in the teaching of AL and have budgeted for more to be purchased during 2011 to continue to increase current reading resources in Stages 2 & 3.
Key Outcome: to enhance the enjoyment of reading in Years 1‐6 through their interaction with books and their renewed interest in learning.
Targets:
To reduce the % of students in Year 3 reaching the NMS from 15% (2010) to 12% in reading
To reduce the % of students in Year 5 reaching the NMS from 20% (2010) to 16% (2011) in reading
To increase the % of students in the proficient bands in Year 3 from 30% (2009) to 34% (2011) in reading
To increase the % of students in the proficient bands in Year 5 from 20% (2009) to 24% (2011) in reading
