At Boronia Heights Primary School, we have developed a Literacy Program that develops Reading, Writing and Speaking & Listening skills. Our English Scope and Sequence is based on the Victorian Curriculum 2.0, as well as innovative approaches to teaching literacy based on current research. We want our student to enjoy reading and feel a sense of wonder when they read a book. Our goal is to teaching the skills of reading to our students so that they can read anything of interest later in life – Learning to Read becomes Reading to Learn.
Reading
Reading is a foundational life skill and a source of pleasure and wonder. Unlike speaking, the ability to read is not an innate skill for humans – it must be explicitly taught and learned. Reading provides access to information, generates imagination, builds knowledge, enables creativity and shapes opinions.
At our school, we teach the elements of the “Big 6” reading skills which form an essential part of a structured literacy program. These are:
- Oral language – knowing and using spoken words to express knowledge, ideas and emotions
- Phonemic awareness –which is the knowledge of sounds (phonemes)
- Phonics – knowing the sound (phoneme) and letter (grapheme) relationships
- Fluency – reading accurately and at an appropriate rate with expression
- Vocabulary – understanding words in isolation and in context
- Comprehension – making meaning from text which includes developing knowledge of grammar.
Each of these elements are important skills to learn, with a greater emphasis on phonics, phonological awareness and oral language in Prep, followed by the development of fluency, vocabulary and comprehension as children increase their reading proficiency.
Our literacy program in Prep-Year 2 incorporates a minimum of 25 minutes of daily explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. Teachers make use of the Jolly Learning resources and Phonics Plus program to design reading lessons.
In Years 3-6, teachers design units of work that incorporate all elements of “The Big 6” reading skills. Students will study a “mentor text” in more detail, teasing out the vocabulary, spelling, grammar and sentence structures that authors use to convey meaning in books. They understand how prefixes (e.g. un-, pre- re-) and suffixes (e.g. -ly, -y, -es) can be added to words to change context and meaning. The students learn grammatical concepts such as punctuation, parts of speech (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives), and tense. They improve prosody (expression) and reading fluency. As fluency improves, so to does a child’s ability to comprehend what they’re reading. This all forms a holistic, high-quality and research-based literacy program.
Writing
Writing is very much embedded with the literacy program and is linked closely to reading, speaking and listening. Like reading, writing has to be explicitly taught to children, which is why it is taught every day in a structured way withing the Literacy block.
Our approach to teaching writing aligns with the educational resource titled “The Writing Revolution” by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. This is a very practical and structured approach to teaching writing. It’s not just about helping children become better writers—it’s also about helping them become better thinkers and communicators across all subjects, not just English.
The program begins with the foundational skills by building strong sentence-level writing first. It’s no good asking a child to write long stories or essays before they know how to construct a good sentence. Once they can express their ideas at the sentence level, they move on to paragraphs and longer pieces. Children are supported to use sentence starters, conjunctions (because, but, so), note taking and summarising, and planning their writing. While creativity is important, the focus here is on building clear, logical, well-structured writing. This helps all students—including those who struggle with writing—gain confidence and skills.
Along with developing a child’s ability to communicate with writing, we also develop their handwriting skills. From day one of school, children learn how to form letters, combine letters to make words, combine words to make sentences, and finally combine sentences into sustained handwritten pieces. Digital devices are later used in the writing program so that children can improve their typing skills.
Speaking and Listening
Oral language is a vital element in literacy development. Students regularly engage in activities that improve their ability to communicate through explicit instruction on what successful listening and speaking looks like. Fluent oral language allows students to think through their ideas, actions and reasoning, and therefore articulate effectively when reading and writing. We support students to develop comprehensive speaking and listening skills that foster the development of all forms of communication. We use a range of engaging visual prompts and explicit modelling to prompt students to listen to others and express their own understandings
The connection between School and Home
At home, you can have a huge impact on your child’s mindset toward Literacy, and the partnership and relationship between school and home is crucial.
You can support your child/ren’s learning at home by modelling Literacy skills in a positive way, and by making the experience fun and enjoyable for everyone. Students who enter the classroom with a positive outlook towards literacy skills allows for an open-minded mindset making a huge difference to their learning. Modelling a positive attitude to children from a young age and working with the school in supporting a love for learning is vital in building the foundations for students to become independent lifelong learners who can problem solve and think critically in literacy.
Ways to engage with your child in literacy at home:
- Reading stories together and asking questions
- Writing for purposes (letters to family/friends, shopping lists etc)
- Discussing age-appropriate current events
- Role playing games
- Playing board games that encourage social interactions
- Exposure to different types of texts – Fiction, Non fiction, newspaper articles, menus, shopping lists etc
- Watching documentaries to improve their general knowledge.
- Having a routine each day where you ask your child, “What was the best part of your day?”