Specialists

We believe in educating the whole child. With this belief, we provide a range of specialist programs to allow our students to experience a breadth of specialised areas. This offering of specialist areas is based on the needs and growth areas of all our students. Having a strong belief in healthy, creative and active children, we offer the following specialist areas for our students at Heathmont East Primary School:

  • Physical Education
  • Visual Art
  • Language and culture (Japanese)
  • Performing Arts
  • STEAM
  • Sustainability

Physical Education

In Physical Education we develop, practise skills and focus on the development of Fundamental Movement Skills and how these are applied to different sports.

House Sports At Heathmont East Primary School, students participate in a House Cross Country event where 3-6 students prepare for the District Cross Country competition, whilst F-2 earn points for their house. Heathmont East Primary school holds House Athletics Sports annually, where all students in years 3 to 6 participate in these sports for House points and the winning House is then presented with a trophy. All students are given the opportunity to have a go at as many track events as they wish and some students are selected to represent the school at District competition later in the year. The Junior House Sports complete different physical activities in rotational sessions. These consist of throwing, catching, athletics, and other fun games such as the three legged race, gumboot toss, etc.

Interschool Sport

Most students in Year 5 & 6 have the opportunity to participate in a Summer and Winter Sports team. For the duration of Term 1, they play a Summer sport consisting of Cricket, Basketball, Sofcross, Teeball, Volleybounce or Hot Shots Tennis. In Winter, they have the choice of Football, Soccer, Netball, Softball, Volleybounce or Hot Shots Tennis. Students are also given the opportunity to trial for Swimming, Athletics and Cross Country.

Hoop time

Each year many teams from 3-6 represent HEPS, taking part in the Hooptime Basketball Competition run by Basketball Victoria. Students have the opportunity to be selected for the All Stars (experienced team) Future Stars (some experience and learners) and Rookies (have no prior experience) teams. The program concludes at the end of each year with Regional Finals and a State Grand Final.

Team Vic Trials

During the first semester, students are given the opportunity to try out for Team Vic trials in Football, Soccer, Cricket, Netball and Basketball. If successful and they progress through the different stages, the ultimate is being selected to represent Victoria in a National Championships.

Visual Art

The Art program provides an opportunity for students to engage in activities that develop both practical skills and encourage creativity. Throughout the journey at HEPS a broad depth of experiences are provided including; Drawing, Painting, Construction, Printmaking, Modelling, Textiles, Collage, and Principles of Arts Appreciation and Discussion.

Wherever possible, the Art program is linked with the classroom Inquiry units.

Language and Culture (Japanese)

The Japanese program at Heathmont East Primary School incorporates the standards and priorities of the Languages curriculum in the current F-10 Victorian curriculum. During Japanese lessons, students are immersed in a variety of cultural and language activities. Culture focuses include festivals, celebrations, places and traditions such as origami. Language focuses on vocabulary such as numbers, colours, animals and family members as well as self-introductions and hiragana and kanji.

Performing Arts

Students at Heathmont East Primary School enjoy a holistic performing arts program encompassing Music, Drama and Dance. Performing Arts education develops a student’s self-esteem, self-expression, confidence, discipline, creativity, resilience as well as their team-working, motor and executive functioning skills.

Students take part in multiple performances throughout the year both in class as well as at whole school events. We have an auditioned Choir (open to students from Grades 3-6), as well as a lunchtime Singing Club for all students.  

At HEPS every child has the opportunity to perform in our annual whole school production.  Students have various onstage and backstage roles and responsibilities, allowing them to grow and develop unique skills whilst performing in front of a live audience.

Our instrumental program is run by a group of dedicated teachers who come into our school to work with interested students each week. We have amazing instrumental staff teaching a wide range of instruments including Violin, Piano, Voice, Ukulele, Guitar, Bass Guitar, and Drums.

STEAM

STEAM is an integrated subject area that brings together many streams of cognitive human endeavour. It is an acronym pulled from Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. While many of these elements have been taught individually in the past, it is now clear that our contemporary society compels students to be linking these areas cohesively together to cope in a future requiring them to be immersed in a highly technological environment in order to effectively communicate, create and be productive.

The HEPS STEAM program endeavours to stimulate students from 4 main perspectives:

  1. Enable students to create, plan, construct and test models and inventions using conventional materials to solve physical scientific and engineering problems posed to them (expressly non-digital)
  2. Enable students to create, plan, construct and test mechanical and robotic models and inventions using explicitly formatted building materials such as LEGO, LEGO WeDo, LEGO EV3 to solve problems given to them (predominantly digital from Level 1)
  3. Enable students to create, plan construct and test purely digital models and inventions (games) using coding programs such as SCRATCH Junior and SCRATCH to build/author interactive digital platforms (holistically digital on screens from Level 2 and unplugged Levels F to 1)
  4. Enable students to create, plan, construct and experiment substance reactions and scientific phenomena using chemical and conventional materials to understand scientific and technical concepts. We incorporate a strong STEAM focus (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) throughout our inquiry sessions. This area is strongly supported by our teachers, allowing students to explore and immerse themselves in this critical area.

Sustainability

As a cross-curriculum priority, Sustainability addresses the environmental, social, and economic considerations of maintaining life on earth. Education for sustainability develops the knowledge, skills, values and world views necessary for people to act in ways that contribute to more sustainable patterns of living.

Students are encouraged to be curious, collaborative, empathetic and critical thinkers while engaging in practical and theoretical sustainability learning. Drawing on global goals for sustainability, students explore biological and earth sciences, field work, real world projects and make use of our amazing kitchen garden.