Literacy

Literacy

When teaching English in the junior school, St Paul’s School applies explicit instruction in phonics. This involves systematic and sequential teaching of the letter-sound relationships in written text, and teaches readers to decode words. This begins in our Prep classes. In English lessons, students are monitored and worked with according to their point of need, including small group work and literacy intervention where necessary.
We know that phonics instruction is most effective when integrated into a comprehensive literacy program, which includes practice with decodable text as well as exposure to literature with a rich vocabulary. In recent years, the St Paul’s Staff have been engaged in a collaborative inquiry on evidence based literacy approaches in order to find the best way forward for addressing our English curriculum.
After exploring a range of options, InitiaLit meets our agreed requirements for a strong literacy program. InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program providing all children with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. InitiaLit addresses the key components of high quality, evidence based practice.
InitiaLit is split across a three-year program. Typically Prep (Foundation) to Year 2. In InitiaLit–F and InitiaLit–1, children are provided with all the foundational skills and understanding to get them started on their reading and writing journey. InitiaLit–2 will focus on comprehension, fluency and spelling. Children will be given a number of excellent strategies to help them understand text and consolidate their understanding of the alphabetic code.
When teaching English in the middle and senior school we apply a range of strategies and approaches: the phonemic approach, the whole word approach and the morphemic approach. We explicitly use Spelling Mastery which is designed to maximise the advantages of each approach. We also relate our English programs to our Integrated Inquiry Topics and Religious Education topics to embed the learning within an authentic purpose.