Teaching and Learning

At Doveton College, the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM) 2.0 is enacted via the Doveton College Teaching & Learning Framework (below.) There is a strong emphasis on explicit teaching, which has been shown to be the most effective approach for teaching new concepts to mastery. Explicit teaching involves a dynamic interaction between teacher and students, providing clarity, frequent opportunities to respond, progressive checks for understanding and spaced retrieval to support recall and application of key ideas.

Doveton College utilises an evidence-based, structured literacy approach. Systematic, synthetic phonics (via Phonics Plus) is in place at Foundation to Year 2. In Years 3-6, once students have acquired the alphabetic code, they are able to progress from learning to read to reading to learn. Students begin to deepen their literacy skills through sequenced morphology, exploring how words are formed and how they relate to one another. Vocabulary is explicitly taught in all classrooms, across the curriculum, supporting students with the language needed to access content, deepen comprehension and confidently express their thinking in all curriculum areas.

The Curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure that knowledge and skills are developed, practiced and built upon across the years of schooling, giving students a strong foundation for senior secondary education. In Mathematics, explicit teaching builds fluency and automaticity in the early years, creating a solid foundation for problem solving, reasoning and conceptual understanding in the middle school. The College utilises the Victorian Lesson Plans and Impact Curriculum (formerly Ochre) to ensure that teachers have quality assured, adaptable lesson plans as a foundation from which to plan and prepare to teach and assess students as they progress through the years.

At Doveton College we acknowledge that  some students will require extra support.  We are proud to have an enhancement team that meets the needs of these students. We offer this support in the areas : EAL (English as an Additional Language), Literacy and Numeracy. Our enhancement teachers work closely with the classroom teachers to ensure that every student has the support they need.