Literacy

St Paul’s Primary School, Mildura and St Joseph’s Primary School, Red Cliffs, are partners in providing evidence-based, best-first literacy instruction. Both schools subscribe to the Sciences of Reading and Learning, and apply a Structured Literacy approach, recognising that literacy acquisition is too important to the life outcomes of our students to leave to chance. 

Daily, explicit literacy instruction occurs in the areas of phonology, sound-symbol (phonics), syllables, morphology, syntax and semantics from Foundation to Grade Six.

The award-winning partnership between our schools, known as The SunLit Project, ensures that our teachers are highly skilled in the teaching of reading, writing and speaking & listening, and kept up to date with current research and best-practice. 

Our literacy curriculum is enriched by a focus on building background and general world knowledge. We ensure that literacy is always tightly connected to the whole curriculum and inclusive of Religious Education, Science, Geography, History and the Humanities.

Below is an outline of what our literacy block looks like. This is consistent across all grade levels.

 

Daily Review 15 mins	No new learning. Review of previously taught content.
Building Blocks 45 mins	·     Phonology and Phonics  ·     Handwriting ·     Paired Fluency ·     Spelling (encoding) ·     Word or Sentence Instruction (syllables, morphology, etymology, etc)
Movement Break	Brainfood and break
Pulling It All Together 40 mins	·     Text Study - linked to curriculum content (as per The Writing Revolution) ·     Vocabulary and Idioms ·     Comprehension ·     Note Taking and Summarising ·     Recording Ideas (generally applying TWR strategies)
Read-To	Reading extended texts to the class for enjoyment (class novel or picture book)