Literacy
At Tatura Primary School, Literacy is taught through a workshop model. This allows each lesson to be targeted and differentiated to each child’s learning needs.
We promote the use of ‘strong’ language and focus on the importance of ‘talk’ as part of learning. Underpinning your child’s learning is a positive relationship between home and school, this allows the teachers and families to work closely together to achieve specific learning goals.
These literacy skills are integrated into all key learning areas across the school including Numeracy, Art, Humanities and History. The use of strong language is promoted throughout everything we do at Tatura Primary School.
Little Learners Love Literacy
At Tatura Primary School, we teach literacy using Little Learners Love Literacy®, a structured and explicit program with engaging multisensory activities.
It is carefully sequenced into seven stages to teach children the 44 sounds of the English language and the principles of the alphabetic code (that each speech sound can be represented by different groups of letters, such as the sound /Ä«/ as in
I, sky, pie, ice, cycle, and that a letter (or group of letters) can represent different sounds,
such as the letter ‘y’ in yes, gym, funny, sky.
Students are provided with opportunities for daily reading and writing practise to support the new content that has been taught.
Literacy in the Older Grades
Our Reading program provides students explicit teaching time to introduce or reinforce a reading strategy. A 30 minute sustained reading time is provided after to allow students time to independently practice these skills each day. Students have the opportunity to select their own ‘just right’ reading material from our school and class libraries. Research shows that with increased practice, reading becomes easier and is more enjoyable. Each student is included in a guided reading session once a week. These are completed in small, similar ability groups where students have time to listen to the teacher model how a good reader reads. They are also offered feedback on their reading and set goals to work on throughout the week.
Our school has adopted the Writer’s Notebook program. This is an engaging writing program that encourages each student to use their personal Writer’s Notebook to record the things they notice, observe and think about. Students find this engaging as it puts them back in control of what they want to write about. The most common things students write about are; memories, observations of things happening around them, descriptions of people and places, opinions, noticings and wonderings, wishes and family history. These ideas formulate what they want to write about. Another exciting aspect of the Writer’s Notebook is unpacking ‘seeds’. Students may bring in an artefact from what they did on the weekend or a trip that they have been on. They can then use several strategies to ‘unpack’ the seed and find a purpose for writing.
Students at Tatura PS develop Speaking and Listening skills through regular opportunities for formal and informal public speaking. This can range from participating in class discussions and share and learn/show and tell opportunities to formal class talks, debates or public speaking.
Instructional models
Our Tatura Primary School Instructional Models for Reading, Writing and Maths were developed to guide our teachers' instruction and to provide consistency across the school.
