At Knox Gardens Primary, the goal of our literacy program is to develop lifelong readers and writers. We aim to do this by developing students’ thinking, speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, as well as their knowledge and understandings of literacy.

Our English Scope and Sequence is based on the Victorian Curriculum as well as innovative approaches to teaching literacy being based on current research.

We use the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop approaches, encouraging students to have agency in their learning, as well as targeting their point of need in order to ensure growth for each student.

Within each workshop lesson, students will tune into the learning intentions and success criteria, have some time for independent work, and have focused clinics and/or conferences in small groups or individually to move their learning forward.

Reading

Students are encouraged to read a wide variety of texts, in different contexts, and for different purposes. They learn about the importance of comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanding vocabulary when they are reading.

Our daily reading sessions are taught using a workshop approach, whereby teachers explicitly teach a new skill or strategy, students practice this with others and finally they work on it independently.

Our approach to teaching Reading is evidence-based on research that tells us that students learn to read by reading.  A key element of a successful reading program is choice. Every student at Knox Gardens has their own tub of ‘just right’ books that they have chosen to read during Independent Reading. A significant part of the Reading Workshop is devoted to the students reading independently and practising reading strategies with their just right books. Students are encouraged to record their thinking in their Readers’ Notebook.

Spelling

In Foundation, the children are introduced to Jolly Phonics as part of their Reading program.

Jolly Phonics is a multi-sensory phonics program, which makes learning to read and write achievable for all children. Jolly Phonics incorporates actions, jingles and stories for each of the 42 sounds, which makes learning fun for both the child and teacher.

From Year 1, our students move onto the Jolly Grammar and Spelling Program.

In Foundation and Year 1, students take home Decodable readers to support the sounds that they are learning in the classroom.

As well as having Explicit Spelling and Grammar lessons from Foundation to Year 6, Spelling is intertwined throughout our Literacy programs so that direct links and connections can be made for the students. Our Spelling and Grammar programmes are differentiated to meet the needs of individual students across each year level.

Writing

We utilise the Writer’s Workshop model in partnership with VCOP and Seven Steps as a framework for curriculum planning in Writing. Students are taught to move through the stages in the writing process (idea development, drafting, revising, editing, publishing), whilst utilising rich mentor texts to support the development of their ideas, text organisation, author voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.

Children write best about the things that are important to them and what they are interested in. We draw on their interests to teach them different Genres of Writing. Every student has their own writers’ notebook where they can draw, write and collect ideas for writing. This encourages students to see the world through the eyes of a writer and be inspired by the world around them.

Speaking and Listening

Speaking and Listening is incorporated into our teaching and learning programs, to honour their authenticity. Students are provided with various opportunities to share and present their work from various key-learning areas and are expected to demonstrate active and respectful listening to their peers and teachers, alike.