Literacy

At Montrose Primary School, students are immersed in reading and a love of reading is promoted from Foundation through to Year 6. Students are taught that understanding and thinking about what they read is important.

 

Prep-Grade 2 - InitiaLit

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 is a three-year program, covering the first three years of school. 

 

Prep

Implemented across four terms, InitiaLit–Foundation (InitiaLit–F) offers an explicit and effective model for teaching reading and related skills to children in their first year of school in a fun and engaging way.

InitiaLit–F focuses on two main components:

  1. Phonics, to systematically and explicitly teach the basic alphabetic code in a set sequence. In addition to learning letter-sound correspondences and how these are applied to reading and spelling, children will be introduced to common morphemes and simple grammatical concepts.
  2. Vocabulary, oral language and listening comprehension through quality children’s literature. Detailed lessons, including writing tasks, are provided for each of the storybook titles selected for use with the program.

Grade 1

InitiaLit–1 continues on from InitiaLit–Foundation in providing an explicit and effective model for teaching reading, spelling and related skills to children in their second year of school. As in InitiaLit–F, InitiaLit–1 focuses on the two main components of:

  1. Phonics, to systematically and explicitly teach the basic and advanced alphabetic code in a set sequence. In addition to learning letter-sound correspondences and how these are applied to reading and spelling, children will be introduced to common morphemes and simple grammatical concepts.
  2. Vocabulary, oral language and listening comprehension through quality children’s literature. Detailed lessons, including writing tasks, are provided for each of the storybook titles selected for use with the program.

Grade 2

By Grade 2, most children will be well on their way to reading independence. The program builds on the skills taught in InitiaLit–F and InitiaLit–1, with the focus shifting now to consolidating children’s reading and spelling skills, working specifically on reading comprehension, fluency, spelling and vocabulary.

InitiaLit–2 has four main components:

  1. Spelling. This component reviews phoneme-grapheme correspondences and spelling concepts taught in InitiaLit–1 and teaches the remainder of the advanced alphabetic code systematically and explicitly. Children will also learn new spelling rules and morphological concepts.
  2. Reading comprehension and fluency. In this component, children will be taught comprehension strategies explicitly and how to apply them to different types of text. They will also be given regular opportunities to work on reading fluency through echo, choral and paired reading.
  3. Grammar. Children will be explicitly taught key grammatical features and how to apply them to a writing task.
  4. Vocabulary, oral language and comprehension through children’s literature. Detailed lessons are provided for each of the 15 storybook titles selected for use with the program, including detailed writing tasks. Two novel studies are included for use towards the end of the year.

 

 

Grades 3-6 - Readers' Workshop

 

During the daily Readers’ Workshop lessons at Montrose Primary School students are explicitly taught reading strategies and then given the chance to practise them. Students are taught to read accurately and fluently. They are taught to think about what they read, to ask questions as they read, to make predictions and to evaluate their thinking.

 

Students are taught to think about their thinking while they read. Students know this as ‘metacognition’. They think about their schema, which is how the books they read relate to their own experiences, to other texts they have read, and to what they know of the wider world.

 

 

In order to immerse students in a wide range of texts, each grade has a classroom library which is well stocked with books which have been grouped and classified by the students. The classroom libraries have texts catering to all interests and abilities. There is a range of fiction and non-fiction titles.

 

Each student at Montrose Primary School has their own book box, which contains texts which are carefully selected by the student. They select books that are ‘Just Right’, which are based on their own interest and ability. Each day students independently read books from their book box. Displayed on the front of their book boxes are the individual reading goals for each student.

 

    

 

 

 

Grades 3-6 Writers' Workshop

At Montrose Primary School, our students are encouraged to view themselves as authors. We write to entertain, inform and persuade a particular audience. Writing is viewed as a key skill to engage in society and we encourage our students to recognise these opportunities and write for authentic purposes. 

 

Our Writer’s Workshop gives our students an opportunity to learn the writing process and develop their own unique adaptation of this. They are explicitly taught the traits of effective writing to help them understand their strengths and areas of improvement. 

 

We use the connection between reading and writing to support students in creating their own texts. Our students learn to view authors as mentors. They use the skills and craft noticed in a text to help develop their own skills as writers.

 

All students have their own Writer’s Notebook where they practise the craft of writing. These notebooks are used to develop ideas, extend and elaborate their thinking and experiment with the craft of writing.  

 

Our students have choice in the texts they create and engage in authentic student driven writing experiences. At Montrose we endeavour to create lifelong writers!


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