English
Our Learning
The study of English is central to the learning and development of all young Australians. It helps create confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens. The Australian Curriculum English aims to ensure that students learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose.
Phonological awareness – building awareness of the sounds of language, including rhythm, rhymes and syllables.
- Phonics – knowing the relationship between letters and sounds.
- Vocabulary – knowing and using an expanding range of words.
- Fluency – reading with accuracy, expression and appropriate pace.
- Comprehension – using specific strategies to understand a text.
- Oral Language – speaking and listening to build a foundation for reading.
InitiaLit is used in the early years to systematically and explicitly teach the basic alphabetic code. It incorporates the key components necessary for early reading instruction, and evolves through the years to provide an explicit and effective model for teaching reading, spelling and rich language instruction using children’s literature. InitiaLit is complimented by The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, which is also used in early years to teach daily, explicit and systematic phonological and phonemic awareness lessons.
Our Years 3 – 6 students are taught using Spelling Mastery. In just 15–20 minutes a day, Spelling Mastery can help teach our children the strategies they need to become successful, life-long spellers. Using a combined approach of phonemic, morphemic and whole-word strategies, Spelling Mastery helps students to understand the relationship between sounds, word parts and spelling patterns. Students are taught in small steps, using sufficient practice, so that they comprehend how spelling works and can become proficient writers.
Acadience reading assessments – helps our staff identify identify children at risk for reading difficulties and determine the skills to target for instructional support. It is standardised, reliable and valid, faster to administer and immediate feedback and results.
At Largs Bay School, writing is purposefully and explicitly taught with careful consideration to the teaching and learning cycle. Students learn specific writing skills and language features that allow them to effectively communicate, inform, persuade and entertain via written text. Brightpath is used as a formative assessment tool, allowing teachers to assess student writing progress and provide individual and specific feedback to students about what they need to learn next.
Our Literacy Co-ordinator is our Deputy Miss Georga Tyson. Georga provides creative leadership to support the development of literacy across Largs Bay School. Georga works with key staff to monitor and support the literacy development of students from Reception to Year 6.