LIFT Program

LIFT is a McClelland initiative supporting students who require additional time to focus on their literacy skills. A particular emphasis is placed on reading, comprehension, text response, spelling, phonics and oral language skills. The LIFT (Literacy Improvement Fast Tracked) program was introduced at McClelland at the beginning of 2019. To date over 60 Year 7s students have benefited from intensive, targeted literacy support and close teacher monitoring, increasing students’ skills and confidence that can be transferred to all their subject areas.

Recently, as part of NAIDOC and Book Week celebrations the students in LIFT enjoyed lessons that combined both events, studying work from Adam Briggs and his recent book “Our Home, Our Heartbeat” which was inspired by his song “The Children Came Back.” Adam Briggs’ song and book was created in response to Archie Roach’s “When They Stole the Children”, released 30 years ago and has this month been revamped with a new recording and video. Increasing knowledge of Australia’s history, including historic issues such as The Stolen Generation, was a key focus of the lesson. The positive contribution of the Aboriginal children that ‘came back’, such as Archie, was a highlight as students learnt more about Indigenous role models like Cathy Freeman, Adam Goodes, Lionel Rose and Jessica Mauboy. To connect to local community students also studied the traditional languages, experimenting with pronouncing key locally spoken words from the Kulin Nation and Bunurong area.