Literacy Curriculum

At Queenscliff Primary School, our Literacy program aligns seamlessly with the Victorian Curriculum F-10 and provides fundamental skills, strategies and attitudes towards learning. We aim to foster a lifelong love of reading in our students, as well as confidence in their writing and effective interpersonal and communication skills. We believe all students can achieve success in Literacy and transfer these skills into their daily life to be active and informed citizens in our community.

Spelling

In the early years, we teach our students to read, spell and write using fun, engaging and evidence-based practises. We teach with a structured, systematic and explicit literacy program with engaging multisensory activities to foster students’ understanding, skills and knowledge of literacy.

Our literacy programs are carefully sequenced in seven stages to teach children the 44 sounds of the English language and the principles of the alphabetic code (that each speech sound can be represented by different groups of letters, such as the sound /ī/ as in I, sky, pie, ice, cycle, and that a letter(or group of letters) can represent different sounds, such as the letter ‘y’ in yes, gym, funny, sky. We start with teaching the simple code in Stages 1–4. We focus on phonics and phonemic awareness to build the strongest foundations for reading and spelling success.

Across all year levels we follow a structured literacy approach. Children learn at a quicker rate if they are taught systematically and explicitly using synthetic phonics and a structured literacy approach. They know what they are learning and can verbalise it.

Our Literacy Instructional Model incorporates explicit teaching, shared construction and individual exploration, reflective of a gradual release framework. Our teachers follow an “I do, we do, you do” structure during Literacy instruction.

• I do - teacher instructs and provides a model for literacy instruction
• We do - guided practice supported by the teacher in understanding and mastering the literacy concept
• You do - the learner practises/applies new content independently – moving towards mastery.

We focus on building knowledge, speaking, and listening and vocabulary skills to develop equally strong foundations in literacy. Students will develop these skills by being exposed to language rich units, non-fiction texts and authentic texts.

Reading

At QPS, our teachers deliver high quality reading programs aimed at enhancing students’ vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and oral language. Throughout the week, students will engage in a diverse range of evidence-based pedagogical practices to foster literacy development, including:

• Modelled Reading - Explicit teaching of decoding, comprehension, fluency
• Guided Reading - Small groups with levelled instructional texts focused on reading strategies, comprehension, decoding, vocabulary and fluency
• Shared Reading / Cooperative Reading - Whole class or small group reading focused on strategies, comprehension, decoding and fluency
• Independent Reading - Student reads a text independently and is at a level suitable for the student to gain meaning and comprehension without support from the teacher
• Echo Reading – Whole class, small group or paired reading focused on fluency and expression
• Choral Reading – Whole class or small group reading focused on fluency and expression
• Paired & Partner Reading – Students are paired with a levelled text suited to their reading ability to focus on comprehension, fluency and development of oral language skills
• Readers’ Theatre – Small group reading through story-telling and roleplay focused on fluency, expression and comprehension.

Writing

Our students learn to write authentic, rich texts intended to be read by others, and are guided through the writing process through explicit teaching and worked examples. Students learn to identify and use the different features from various genres, such as narrative, informative and persuasive texts. Through our comprehensive writing programs, our students learn to understand the organisation and structure of texts, language features, the author’s purpose and voice, sentence structure and the conventions of writing, including grammar and punctuation. Our teachers apply our Literacy Instruction Model with the Writing Cycle, of Modelled Writing, Joint Construction, and Independent Writing, to deliver comprehensive and differentiated writing programs. Our students are nurtured to become confident and capable writers.

Writing programs are unit based and genre-focused relating to the Integrated Studies topic or relevant school-based experiences that follow the guidelines of the writing process of plan, draft, revise, edit and publish.