Our curriculum is high quality, broad and inclusive. An array of teaching strategies that support intellectual engagement, connectedness to the wider world, supportive classroom environments and the recognition and valuing of differences is embedded within our culture.

Explicit Direct Instruction

Brandon Park Primary School adopts EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) as its core pedagogical approach; its way to teach each lesson. EDI is a specific teaching approach that emphasises clarity, structure, and teacher-led guidance in the learning process. The primary goal of EDI is to make information explicit and directly instruct students on the essential skills and knowledge they need to acquire. The effective promotion of student understanding and mastery of concepts occurs when educators clearly and systematically present information.

At Brandon Park Primary School, lessons are structured following the EDI model:

Learning Objective - informs students of the concept or skill they will learn, e.g., Learning intention: Identifying place value using base-ten clocks.

Activating Prior Knowledge - initiates or reinforces prior knowledge related to the concept or skill.

Concept Development - employs written definitions to teach the concept, and examples and non-examples are used to clarify the concept.

Skill Development - involves explicit teaching and modelling of the skill or concept.

Guided Practice - engages students in guided practice of the skill or concept.

Relevance - emphasises the importance of learning the new content to the students and society.

Closure - requires students to work through problems or answer questions to demonstrate their understanding of the content taught.

During lessons, students are encouraged to participate many times each lesson to ensure that they are engaged with the learning and are understanding all new learning. Students are taught first and then asked questions to check for their understanding. They are given opportunities to respond and receive feedback from their teacher. Students respond to questions either verbally or in written form in books or mini-whiteboards.

In order to ensure students are engaged in learning throughout lessons, engagement norms like pronouncing words, reading, tracking and gesturing with the teacher are encouraged.