Director of Literacy Improvement Update

Literacy 2019

As we move towards the end of 2019 and start thinking about 2020, it is a good opportunity to think about how Mordialloc College is investing in the literacy of our students and driving forward some great academic results and experiences. 

To begin with, it is worth congratulating all students for their strong performance in NAPLAN 2019, with all our Literacy outcomes exceeding like schools (and state averages). Three years ago when we began our drive to improve student writing outcomes, like all schools across the state we knew that we were facing particular challenges in terms of the increased time students were spending with online media and the decreased time many were spending reading and writing with a pen. However, we were pleased to see this year, after a sustained effort by all learning areas across the school, our students almost doubling the percentage writing in the top two bands across the state, and showing strong signs of growth across their three years of schooling. We also scored significantly above like school averages in terms of Grammar and Punctuation and the number of students in the top two bands for Reading. Congratulations to all our students who have made this growth and well done to all our families and carers for encouraging such engagement with literacy development. NAPLAN is not always the best measure of literacy, but it does give us a quick health check on the literacy development of our students, indicating some great work by all subject areas across the school on key literacy skills. 

Lexia Learning

This year we have also been trailing several new initiatives in literacy learning. Mr Vicary has been leading a trial of Lexia, an online Literacy learning platform, where students sit a test and have a personalised programme developed for them to build grammar, reading and word knowledge skills. Our independent PAT test of his Year 7 classes progress using the software has revealed some fantastic progress and promising results, resulting in our adoption of the software for a wider one year trial across Year 7 and 8 in 2020. Year 8 students already have access and can begin working with it across the holidays, whilst Year 7 will gain access as they begin Term 1 next year. We’ve also been using Spellzone this year, which also creates a personalised spelling programme for students who may have missed some lessons in spelling across their education. Congratulations to Bella Badoux, Alexander Dowling, Charlotte Kerr and Jordan Armian who all made outstanding progress with their spelling skills across 2019. 

Holiday Reading

Now is a good time as well to remind all students to visit the Hub, your local library or a bookstore to get hold of some great holiday reading (a good idea for the Xmas list). The holidays is one of those rare times when we find the time to be able to enjoy a good book of our choosing, so make sure you find the time to browse and make some good selections before the holidays begin. Booktopia, one of many online booksellers, has a useful list of books for teenagers and do vouchers for those who might be looking for that little bit extra for under the tree in 2019 (click here). It is worth noting that students who read recreationally for pleasure, three times a week for longer than 25 minutes, typically score one to two grades higher across all their subjects at the end of secondary school. So find yourself a great book to enjoy across the break. 

Speech Pathologist

We are also pleased to announce the appointment of Fiona Biss, our school based speech pathologist in 2020. Starting in January, Fiona is a very experienced speech pathologist who will be able to design personalised programmes for students facing particular challenges with their literacy. After the great work by the Melbourne Literacy Clinic across the last two years, we are pleased to be able to continue the programme and look forward to further supporting our students’ progress - this time at a much more affordable price for parents and carers. 

Andrew McConchie

Director of Literacy Improvement