Through the integration of the three strands: Reading & Viewing, Writing & Spelling and Speaking & Listening, the students are provided with learning experiences that enable them to develop skills and strategies to be competent and confident users of the English language. Literacy skills are best taught through modelled, guided and independent learning experiences, based on explicit teaching. Therefore we provide a differentiated curriculum that caters for the diverse needs of the learner through effective, relevant and challenging learning and teaching opportunities.

 

The English curriculum 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

• appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue

• understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning

• develop interest and skills in inquiring into the aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.

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Reading and Viewing

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At St Patrick’s, we aim to provide an evidence space based approach focusing on the ‘Science of Reading.’ We aim to encourage classroom environments which promote a love of books and reading where students feel inspired to read.  Each classroom and digital platform is a language rich environment.  

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Books are given their rightful place throughout the school.  Library borrowing is scheduled once per week for every class from Prep to Year Six. Students are explicitly taught how to select ‘Good Fit Texts’ from the Library. Teachers ensure students are exposed to a wide range of reading material across genres including print and multimedia.

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St Patrick’s has implemented the program in the context of a Response to Intervention Framework.    InitiaLit is a Tier 1 program and is designed to be delivered to whole classes by classroom teachers.

• Prep to Year Two use the InitiaLit Literacy Program. InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program which provides all students (Prep - Year Two) with essential core knowledge to become successful readers.

• Year Three - Six use an evidence-based instructional reading model based on the Science of Reading. Explicit teaching of reading strategies, vocabulary, grammar and spelling. 

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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 to Year 2).  

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InitiaLit–Prep incorporates the key components necessary for early reading instruction – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

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InitiaLit–1 continues on from InitiaLit–Prep in providing an explicit and effective model for teaching reading, spelling and related skills to children in their second year of schooling. The program incorporates daily lessons in reading and spelling, as well as rich language instruction using children’s literature. As with InitiaLit–Prep, a set of decodable InitiaLit Readers (Levels 10-16), have been developed to align with the InitiaLit–1 instructional sequence. These readers, used alongside the program, will help students generalise and consolidate their skills.

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By Year 2, most children will be well on their way to reading independence. The program builds on the skills taught in InitiaLit–Prep 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.

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MiniLit and MacqLit

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The MiniLit and MacqLit programs are literacy intervention programs.  MiniLit is aimed at Prep to Year 2 and comprises 80 lessons, delivered 4 times per week, for one hour per lesson. A placement test will indicate the ideal starting point on the program for each student, with criteria provided for grouping students according to instructional level. Regular assessments administered throughout the program will monitor progress. Each lesson comprises three main components:

• Sounds and Words Activities

• Text Reading

• Story Book Reading

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MacqLit is aimed at Years 3-6 and is an explicit and systematic reading intervention program for small groups of older low-progress readers. It is a comprehensive sequence of lessons that includes all the key components necessary for effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

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Writing and Spelling

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At St Patrick’s, we aim to provide a classroom environment which promotes opportunities to support the whole of the writing process from the planning stage through to publishing.  The explicit teaching of the thinking processes involved through Modelled, Shared, Guided and Interactive Writing are clearly demonstrated so that students can apply them in their own independent writing and take place across the school from Prep to Year Six.

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Prep to Year Two use the InitaLit Literacy Program. InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program which provides all students with essential core knowledge to become successful writers. Prep to Year Two spelling is incorporated through the InitiaLit Literacy Program.

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The Seven Steps are the building blocks to great writing and they break down writing into simple chunks so students aren’t overwhelmed by writing a whole piece straight away. Instead, they gain confidence with each Step they learn, to become creative and engaging writers. Eventually they will learn how to put it all together and write complete texts independently. Year Three - Year Six  are explicitly taught the Steps to Writing Success strategies to improve writing skills and student engagement. Students are provided with opportunities to write both purposeful and authentic pieces. Teachers plan activities that provide opportunities for students to explore current digital technologies within the writing program.

 

Seven Steps

Step 1: Plan for Success

Step 2: Sizzling Starts

Step 3: Tightening Tension

Step 4: Dynamic Dialogue

Step 5: Show, Don’t Tell

Step 6: Ban the Boring

Step 7: Exciting Endings/Ending with Impact

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Speaking and Listening

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At St. Patrick’s we seek to develop the oral language competence of students across the school. Teachers plan and implement strategies which specifically target the development of oral language skills.

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Language and the ability to communicate effectively is a key foundation to students’ capacity to learn in most general ways. A better developed knowledge of language and how it is used means a greater capacity to learn and to manage and to direct one’s activity as a learner (Munro, 2005)

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Students participate in Show and Tell, 1 minute talks, debates and oral presentations of their work. Oral language permeates throughout