Stella Maris Shellharbour
A Catholic Parish Primary School
At Stella Maris, we are dedicated to nurturing each student's unique strengths, interests, and potential. By providing a rich variety of learning experiences across all areas of school life, we ensure that every individual has the opportunity to thrive and achieve their personal best.
Our teaching staff is deeply committed to delivering a differentiated curriculum across all Key Learning Areas. Differentiation ensures that while an entire class explores the same core topic, instruction is tailored to meet the varying readiness levels, learning ability, and interests of individual students.
In practice, classroom differentiation includes:
Flexible Grouping: Arranging students dynamically based on target skills, readiness, or learning styles.
Tiered Lessons: Designing tasks at varied levels of complexity so every student is appropriately challenged.
Curriculum Adjustments: Modifying teaching strategies, pacing, or resources to optimise individual learning outcomes.
To support students who require focused assistance with foundational skills, Stella Maris implements evidence-based, targeted intervention programs including but not limited to; MiniLit and MacqLit. Delivered through small-group instruction, these programs are explicitly designed to accelerate learning progress.
We are dedicated to understanding each child's unique profile, ensuring that no student takes their educational journey alone. Our holistic approach focuses on early identification and collaborative support.
Through continuous classroom observation, internal assessments, and collaborative reviews, we actively identify where a student may require adjustments to support their learning and wellbeing.
When a specific need is identified, we design a comprehensive plan tailored to the individual child. Because a student’s success relies on supporting the whole person, these plans account for:
Learning Needs: Academic adjustments with modified assessment tasks and individual learning plans.
Wellbeing Needs: Social-emotional support, resilience-building strategies, and mental health care.
Behavioral Needs: Positive behavior guidance, self-regulation tools, and structured classroom routine support.
We surround students on a Personalised Learning Plan with a collaborative support team to help them reach their individual goals. Led by classroom teachers and the school's Diverse Learning Needs Support Team, this team works hand-in-hand with parents and, when helpful, external allied health professionals.
At Stella Maris, we actively identify high-potential learners through targeted enrichment assessment opportunities. We recognise that gifted and talented students possess the innate ability and potential to operate at levels beyond their age peers.
To nurture this outstanding potential, we provide a dual approach to extension learning:
Integrated Curriculum Extension: Advanced learning and deepening opportunities are woven throughout the everyday curriculum to ensure students are consistently challenged.
Specialised Extension Opportunities: Students have access to extension targeted groupings designed to stretch their capabilities and maximise their academic growth.
Reading Recovery is an early intervention reading and writing program for Year 1 children and is designed to supplement quality classroom literacy instruction.
The program provides a daily thirty-minute lesson by a specially trained teacher, which addresses student competencies and learning needs, so that children can achieve and maintain normal levels of progress. The length of time a child is on the program can vary. The program may also identify children who require long-term specialist assistance.
For more information, view our CEDoW Diverse Learning Needs Policy