Literacy

Literacy at Vermont Primary School

 

From Foundation through to Grade 6, Literacy Instruction at Vermont Primary School involves effective collaboration of teaching and learning to develop confident, creative, and passionate readers and writers. At Vermont Primary School we pride ourselves on having high parental involvement in supporting our Literacy sessions. We aim to foster the love of literacy, through annual Parents and Literacy nights, where we invite our community to participate in our learning space. We demonstrate Reading and Writing strategies and explain how and why we teach them.

 

Throughout the school, our Literacy practices are evidenced-based approaches. These include: Read Write Inc, which is a synthetic phonics programme. It is a method of learning that is centred around letter sounds and phonics. The children blend them together to read and write words.

 

Literacy sessions are time-tabled in the morning to ensure maximum participation from the Foundation to Year Two students, depending on student need.   From Year 3 to Year 6, we focus on the four components of successful reading: Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary.  Teachers and students work together to set goals and to build reading stamina, foster independence and develop a love of reading in students.

 

The Gradual Release of Responsibility model of teaching involves the teacher demonstrating the new strategies, then continuing to model, question and prompt the students, with the students moving toward putting their skills into practice and independently completing their tasks. They then reflect on their own learning and share their knowledge and understandings.

 

Developing and celebrating the ‘craft’ of writing for students from Foundation through to Grade 6 engages and supports our students to be confident and passionate writers. Writers Notebooks and Mentor Texts are used to engage and support students toward being confident writers.