Stage 2 is our accelerated foundation course for Years 3 and 4, building towards the Opportunity Class placement test. The large majority of lesson time is English, with Maths offered from Term 4. Here is an overview of what the year covers.
The program runs across four ten-week terms, in step with the NSW school calendar. Every week combines a vocabulary and spelling cycle (with weekly timed tests), a writing focus, comprehension strategy work and Thinking Skills — so skills build in parallel rather than in isolated blocks. Work set above school level and end-of-term exams under exam conditions anchor each term; the full detail is on the assessment system page.
Students are taught to write across the major text types — narrative, persuasive, descriptive and informative — each taught explicitly against its own criteria, modelled in class and then practised independently. Alongside the genres sit the craft skills: figurative language, sentence variety, dialogue, precise vocabulary and control of tone. Every term closes with a timed writing assessment under real exam conditions.
Comprehension is taught as a set of deliberate approaches rather than general practice: main idea, inference, cause and effect, sequencing, comparison, word meaning in context, fact versus opinion and author's purpose — extending to the harder formats, including cloze (gap) passages and extract analysis. Reading work is set above school level.
Thinking Skills is taught as a subject in its own right from Year 3, covering the full range of question types in the OC paper — argument, assumption, logic, ordering, spatial and visual reasoning — with a specific taught method for each. See our Thinking Skills guide.
A new vocabulary list every week, studied, applied in students' own writing, and tested in the weekly timed tests — then consolidated in cumulative end-of-term exams.
Maths is offered from Term 4, covering mathematical reasoning and multi-step word problems with full written working, alongside topic-by-topic practice graded by difficulty.
A note on depth: the outline above is a summary, not the full detail — a single Stage 2 week typically covers five or six distinct teaching points across writing, reading, vocabulary and reasoning. Enrolled families receive a detailed "what we covered this week" summary throughout the term.
Every enquiry is read personally by Stephanie. Tell us a little about your child and we'll be in touch within 1–2 business days.
Enquire about enrolment