Literacy

Literacy is a key focus across our site. We have established whole-school agreements for teaching and learning practices in English from Reception to Year 6. Research indicates that consistent approaches to teaching English enhance student learning.

Our junior primary students use the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Program, while Reception students are taught with Jolly Phonics, a systematic, synthetic phonics program. For students in Years 1 to 6, teachers follow the Department for Education’s Phonics Scope and Sequence for Reception to Year 2, and the Spelling and Morphology Scope and Sequence for Years 3 to 6.

Reading progress is regularly monitored using DiBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) assessments. Students who are unlikely to meet year-level reading benchmarks are identified for reading intervention.

In writing our junior primary classes implement a teaching framework called ‘Talk for Writing’, combining oral language, text imitation followed by independent innovation. Our middle and upper primary classes base their explicit teaching on the ‘Seven Steps’ writing program. All year levels access the Brightpath writing platform for goal setting, assessing and moderating narrative, persuasive and recount text types in addition to explicit teaching in functional grammar.