We are committed to achieving the best possible outcomes for all students. Wickham Primary School has a whole school approach to the teaching of Literacy.
Early Years K to 2
Pre Lit Kindy
PreLit is a systematic, skills-based that lays a sound foundation that is implemented explicitly at Wickham Primary School to teach children how to read. It is a systematic program, skills-based and taught in a hierarchical sequence, and designed to complement a play-based learning environment that incorporate phonological awareness activities, oral blending and segmentation activities.
InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program providing all students at Wickham Primary School with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. At Wickham Primary School we have successfully implemented InitiaLit across our Early Childhood education from Foundation to Year 2.
InitiaLit is a systematic, skills-based program that lays a sound foundation for children to learn to read. Within Foundation it provides pre-literacy skills and concepts in a fun and engaging way, focusing on phonological awareness and oral language development through structured storybook reading. InitiaLit 1 and 2 continues on from InitiaLit Foundation in providing an explicit and effective model for teaching reading, spelling and related skills.
Implemented across four terms, InitiaLit–Foundation to Year 2 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.
It focuses on two components:
- 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.
- 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.
Middle to Upper years 3 to 6
Soundwaves
At Wickham Primary School we implement the explicit teaching of a highly effective approach for introducing phoneme-grapheme relationships, spelling strategies and language concepts. Soundwaves synthetic phonics approach focuses on the process of synthesising. Soundwaves is a sound to letter to strategy which acknowledge that sounds can be represented more than one way in written form, focusing fist on phonemes and exploring the letters that represent these sounds and how they can be put together to form written words.
Guided Reading
Across Wickham Primary School Guided Reading is an instructional practice implemented to support students to read texts independently.
Literacy Pro
Research shows that strong literacy skills are needed throughout a child’s education. For success, it is imperative to build the academic vocabulary and comprehension skills of every student. At Wickham Primary school we engage students in the Literacy Pro, individualised reading program that is designed to encourage students to read texts matched to their abilities, allowing them to gain valuable reading practice and build comprehension skills.
Literacy Across the School
Talk 4 Writing
At Wickham Primary School we implement the Talk 4 Writing approach to the explicit instruction of writing across the whole school from K to Year 6
Talk 4 Writing is an evidence and research based whole school approach to teaching written expression. It supports all learners and learning styles. It is complementary to the complete English curriculum and incorporates an explicit phonics program, handwriting program and focussed comprehension work. The underlying principles of Talk for Writing are:
- A systematic model of speaking, listening, vocabulary and sentence patterns the students need
- Oral rehearsal: students internalising patterns of language by talking the text before writing
- Making learning visible: the work created during the progress of a unit is clearly displayed
- Co-construct the learning: students are involved in activities that deepen their understanding, making them independent thinkers and writers.
Implementing a new program to any school, especially one of our size, will take time and require all staff to access a professional learning delivery model. The positive aspect of Talk for Writing is that it will not deviate our teaching staff from delivering the range of quality practices already existing in our classrooms, only enhance it. Using a ‘Gradual Release’ Model, our very professional staff are watching, learning and trialling a range of Talk for Writing strategies that they have learnt from each other and we will start to see it grow across our classes.
As we are on a Talk 4 Writing journey, we would like to regularly share writing samples from across the school that reflect the high quality writing that is occurring as a result of this program.