Literacy

Our Aim

At Waikiki PS we aim to create an engaging classroom that promotes a love of learning and celebrates children’s success.  Through English, children will learn to become literate and develop the skills to communicate. We will support, instruct and inspire children to become confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens. Children will engage with purposeful listening, reading, viewing, speaking and writing activities for different purposes and contexts.

Our Plan

The English Plan outlines our approach to teaching and learning in English at Waikiki PS – The Waikiki Way.  The plan provides guidance to teachers to make professional judgments in creating a learning program that gives all students the opportunity to grow through individual, small group (Intervention/Enrichment) and whole class instruction.

Our Beliefs

At Waikiki PS we believe:

  • Children bring with them to school a wide range of experiences with language.
  • Children will practise, consolidate and extend what they have learned.
  • Children are ‘learning to read and write’ and ‘reading and writing to learn’.
  • Learning English is enjoyable and varied.
  • The three strands of Language, Literature and Literacy are interrelated and inform and support each other.
  • Teachers understand how children learn and support this throughout the English programs.
  • Teachers and students use Standard Australian English.

Reading

An extensive body of research on reading instruction shows that there are five essential skills for reading and that a high-quality literacy program should include all five components. These five components need to be explicitly taught, in addition to providing a strong foundation in oral language and a knowledge– rich curriculum.

At Waikiki Primary School, we teach the five essential skills for reading:

  1. Phonemic Awareness: The ability to identify and manipulate the distinct individual sounds in spoken words.
  2. Phonics: The ability to decode words using knowledge of letter-sound relationships.
  3. Fluency: Reading with accuracy, speed and expression.
  4. Vocabulary: Knowing the meaning of a wide variety of words.
  5. Comprehension: Understanding the meaning and intent of the text.

Core Knowledge

Core Knowledge is a research-based, teacher-tested curriculum that engages students in diverse historical, scientific, and cultural content.  The idea behind Core Knowledge is simple: knowledge builds on knowledge. The more you know, the more you are able to learn. This idea, grounded in cognitive science, sounds simple and obvious.  But it has profound implications for reading achievement, standardised testing, critical thinking, problem solving, and a host of other educational issues.

At Waikiki Primary School, one to two Core Knowledge units are taught each term for students in Kindergarten to Year 6.

The Writing Revolution

The Writing Revolution (TWR) is an educational approach that aims to improve students’ writing skills by focusing on the fundamentals of writing – working from sentence level composition to paragraph level. Developed by Judith C. Hochman, this approach is based on the belief that writing is a skill that can be taught and mastered by all students, regardless of their backgrounds or abilities.

TWR sentence-level strategies are embedded in the knowledge-based comprehension model. Once these strategies are explicitly taught students can apply them within comprehension lessons.

By learning and practicing TWR strategies through scaffolded activities, students improve their reading comprehension, oral expression, and critical thinking. Recognising that writing is challenging for both students and teachers, the method emphasises the need for explicit instruction and deliberate practice.

Paired/Partner Fluency

Paired (or partner) reading is a research-based strategy used with readers who lack fluency as it provides a model of fluent reading.

In the paired/partner reading strategy, two students read the same passage aloud to each other. When partnering students, more fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers, or students who read at the same level can be paired to reread a story they have already had modelled for them.

This strategy can also be used by teachers or instructors working with small groups or one-on-one with a student.

Partner reading improves fluency, reading rate, and word attack skills, and helps students monitor their own comprehension.

Decodable Readers

At Waikiki Primary School, we use decodable readers. Decodable readers are a series of learn to read books, designed to match a child’s developing knowledge of phonics. Students can read decodable books on their own to practise a specific phonics pattern or word family they have previously been taught through direct instruction. When students are able to apply their decoding skills with fluency, they are able to transition away from decodable books to less phonetically controlled, authentic texts.

Spelling Mastery – Year 4-6

Spelling Mastery builds dependable spelling skills for students in grades 1-6 through a highly structured method that blends the following approaches:

  • Phonemic approach – helps beginning spellers learn the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters and then apply them to spelling
  • Morphemic approach – exposes advanced spellers to prefixes, bases, and suffixes
  • Whole-word approach – gives spellers at all levels the meaning and root of a word and shows how the word’s spelling is influenced

Spelling Mastery interweaves these three approaches according to students’ skill development and provides straightforward lessons to help efficiently and effectively teach the spelling skills students need to become proficient readers and writers. Explicit instruction, careful selection of spelling words, and repeated and cumulative practice help students master each concept and reinforce and retain key information.

Promoting Literacy Development: Diana Rigg (PLD) – K-Yr 3

PLD provides an Australian, evidence-based approach to Structured Synthetic Phonics (SSP) for primary school educators. Aligned with the Science of Reading, PLD’s SSP approach extends from the junior primary years through to upper primary years and thereby facilitating a whole school approach.

PLD’s method is derived from the disciplines of speech pathology, occupational therapy and education. As an Australian publisher and professional development provider, PLD advocates that literacy and learning outcomes are maximised for children when their Literacy, Oral Language and Movement & Motor skills are targeted.