Literacy

Literacy

Strong literacy skills, knowledge and understanding are the building blocks for success. We understand how understand how important reading and writing is to support all learning and we use evidence-based practices to help our students to thrive in English.

​Our Instructional Playbook focuses on Daily Review, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Comprehension, Vocabulary and Morphology.

We regularly use strategies and techniques aligned to Doug Lemov’s ‘Teach like a Champion” – including ‘Work the Clock’, “Change the Pace’, ‘Exit Ticket’ and ‘Wait Time’.

We take into account the simple view of reading in that, learning to read requires two abilities – correctly identifying words (decoding) and understanding their meaning (comprehension). Acquiring these two broad abilities, requires the development of more specific skills. Effective reading instruction includes six essential skills for reading and a high quality literacy program should include all six components.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words

Phonics: The ability to decode words using knowledge of letter-sound relationships- decoding strategies include syllabification, segmenting and blending sounds together to read words.

Fluency: Reading with appropriate pace and accuracy ensures words/texts are understood, usually requiring words read in a minute. The better the fluency, the greater the comprehension.

Comprehension: Understanding the meaning and intent of the word/ text- With appropriate pace comes greater comprehension and understanding of information.

Vocabulary: Knowing the meaning of a wide variety of words and the structure of written language- word origins (etymology)

Morphology: The smallest unit or meaning of a word.-Prefixes, root/base words, suffixes and rules that govern them.

Our structured reading approach includes:

Daily review of previously taught content – Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Morphology
Explicitly taught phonics/spelling lessons
Guided practice to improve fluency
Teaching of comprehension strategies
Vocabulary development which includes grammar, and structured Morphology from Foundation through to Year 6