Curriculum

At POPS, we foster a lifelong love of learning through a maths curriculum that is engaging, challenging, and fun, built on confidence, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Our goal is for every student to deeply understand key concepts, build fluency, and become confident problem solvers who can apply maths in real, meaningful ways.

Our Approach to Mathematics

We focus on four core concepts, our “big ideas” in maths learning, that help students build a strong foundation:

• Number Sense – Developing an intuitive feel for numbers and their relationships.

• Place Value – Understanding how digit position determines value.

• Multiplicative Thinking – Exploring multiplication and division as tools for deeper understanding.

• Fractional Thinking – Building a strong grasp of fractions and their everyday applications.

By connecting these concepts, we create a clear, structured learning journey where students grow in confidence and capability.

Building Mathematical Proficiency

The updated Victorian Curriculum 2.0 highlights four key proficiencies essential to maths success:

• Fluency – Accuracy, speed, and confidence in calculations.

• Understanding – Grasping concepts and applying them flexibly.

• Problem-Solving – Tackling real-world challenges using maths.

At POPS, we use the PrimaryConnections 5Es teaching and learning approach is based on leading education research and encompasses:

• a 5Es teaching and learning model with distinct phases that structure the learning journey
• an inquiry and investigative approach that allows students’ questions to become the focus for student-planned investigations and the basis for developing scientific explanations
• students representing and re-representing their understanding using a variety of different literacies
• embedded, authentic assessment, including lots of formative assessment for learning
• collaborative learning opportunities, promoting more effective learning but also interpersonal skills such as engaging respectfully with other people’s ideas
• identifying linkages within the curriculum and outside of the classroom, to drive authentic and purposeful learning
• a focus on developing evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking skills
• Incorporating Indigenous perspectives

Students whose teachers use our teaching and learning approach have been shown to have higher achievement in science, the literacies of science, and literacy more generally.

For more details visit Primary Connections

Our Geography program helps students build an understanding of places, environments, and the connections between people and their world.

• In the early years, students explore their local environment, weather, seasons, and how places are cared for.

• By the middle years, they learn about diverse environments, world climates, and Australia’s links with other countries.

• In the senior years, students focus on sustainability, natural hazards like bushfires, and the social and economic differences between countries.

Through each stage, students develop skills in inquiry, decision making, and communication while deepening their knowledge of the world around them.

The History curriculum aims to ensure that students develop:

• interest in, and enjoyment of, historical study for lifelong learning and work, including their capacity and willingness to be informed and active citizens
• knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the past and the forces that shape societies, including Australian society
• understanding and use of historical concepts and skills, including sequencing chronology, using historical sources as evidence, identifying continuity and change,  analysing cause and effect and determining the historical significance
• capacity to undertake the historical inquiry, including skills in the analysis and use of sources, and an explanation and communication of arguments.

Students at P.O.P.S. focus on: