The Berry Street School operates to educate children with a history of adverse childhood experiences who are at risk of disengaging from their education. The School adopts a trauma-informed approach to teaching and learning and puts the needs of students at the centre of everything we do. Our School’s vision is to create and sustain a safe and inclusive learning community where our students have access to a high-quality education so they can thrive, achieve and belong.
The Berry Street School offers:
- Victorian Curriculum
- Victorian Certificate of Education - Vocational Major (VCE VM)
- Victorian Pathways Certificate (VPC)
Our teaching is flexible and personalised: every student has an Individual Education Plan (IEP) with clear learning goals and outcomes, as well as broader wellbeing and work habit goals. These plans help to ensure success for every student.
Applied learning
Our teaching and learning approaches are underpinned by applied learning principles. This means that students engage in authentic and motivating learning experiences. Our lessons are designed to bring theoretical information to life for students when in a real-world context that relates directly to their own future, is within their own control and is within an environment where they feel safe and respected.
Assessments
Our teachers use a range of assessments to make informed and consistent judgements that improve student learning, and support the development of IEPs and goal setting for each student. Students enrolled in the Victorian Curriculum complete regular pre- and post-testing on Essential Assessment, as well as being offered the opportunity to participate in NAPLAN (in year 7 and 9).
EMU
Extending Mathematical Understanding, better known as EMU, is a numeracy program that is designed to help improve knowledge and confidence in maths for students who require additional support building number sense. Students participate in the program for one to two terms. We use games, discussions and hands-on approaches to learning maths.
MacqLit
To support our students to master the foundations of reading, we have the MacqLit program. MacqLit helps students improve their reading skills by clearly teaching decoding, phonemic awareness and phonics (the individual sounds in words). The program is designed for older readers, with one-on-one or small group sessions created for students to practice their reading and other literacy skills.
Maths Mastery
The enable our students to access the Numeracy curriculum, the Berry Street School uses the Maths Mastery program. Maths Mastery focuses on building incremental mastery across a broad range of numeracy strands, using a scripted direct instruction model. This is the same pedagogy employed in MacqLit, which we have found to be an effective intervention program in our school environment.
I am so happy to see my daughter's personal and academic growth during the past two years.
