At Christ the Priest Primary, we believe in building the capacity of all children to be effective communicators, whereby strong English skills are the foundation for all learning and success in life. Our approach to teaching reading and viewing, writing, speaking and listening throughout our English program is designed to develop confident, creative, and critical communicators who are prepared for the world beyond the classroom.
Literacy skills are taught through daily review, explicit instruction, modelling, guided practice, independent practice, and review. This instructional model involves providing all students with multiple opportunities to learn to: read, view, speak, listen, write, plan, create and reflect on our spoken, written and multimodal texts.
At Christ the Priest, English is based on the Victorian Curriculum. We use many approaches to assist us in developing our learning, assessing and informing what the next steps will be in our teaching. In Literacy, assessment tools used are:
- PAT Reading, Spelling, Vocabulary, Punctuation and Grammar
- SEAPART: School Entry Alphabetic and Phonological Awareness Readiness Test
- Little Learners Assessment of Skills (LLARS and TOPALL)
- YARC Assessment
- Dibels Assessment
- Essential Assessment
- Elastik Writing Assessment
In Literacy, some teaching programs and resources used include:
- Little Learners Love Literacy (P-2)
- Ochre Novel Studies (Years 3-6)
- VCOP and The Big Write (P-6)
- Essential Assessment (Years 2-6)
The knowledge, understanding and skills developed in literacy lessons are also used and linked across other areas of the curriculum. Throughout our P-6 Literacy Program, we incorporate opportunities to specifically link the digital technology curriculum.
Students are provided ‘take home’ books to encourage the practice and sharing of the reading skills they are learning at school. They also personally select books from our Library to foster reading for interest and enjoyment.
We provide Classroom Helper training and welcome parents and grandparents to assist us, particularly during the Literacy block. Through this partnership, we are able to provide opportunities for parents to engage and assist students and teachers with daily lessons to practise their literacy skills.
