Literacy

                                                  

Reading

This term in Reading, students will continue to build on the skills they use to make sense of information presented to them in a range of mentor texts. Students will receive explicit instruction modelling these skills and have opportunities to independently practise new knowledge on mentor texts.

Comprehension strategies that we will focus on this term will include:

• Continuing to develop students' ability to understand the meaning of unknown words and use topic-specific vocabulary in their writing.
• Continuing to complete deeper “word investigations” in which students will attend to the phonology, morphology, etymology and orthology of new vocabulary.
• Making inferences about a text by combining text clues and image clues with our prior knowledge.
• Making connections with a text by relating and comparing text information to our memories (text-to-self), other texts (text-to-text) or real-world events (text-to-world)
• Modelling and unpacking how to answer comprehension in full sentences and with a sufficient level of detail.
• Determining an author’s purpose and analysing the tools an author may utilise to communicate a message to an audience.

Writing

This term, our primary focus in Writing will be on procedural writing. Students will explore the structure, characteristics and tools of a procedural text, and use these to inspire their own writing. They will learn to write clear and explicit instructions, such as recipes, and experiment with tools such as:

• Action verbs
• Ordinal language
• Sequential steps
• Subheadings

Students will also be revisiting writing foci we have completed in the past, including narrative, informative and persuasive texts. They will also begin to plan, write and publish longer written pieces, which will be supported by a weekly “stamina” write, aimed at increasing their confidence and stamina to write for longer periods of time. 

Students will also continue to improve their ability to produce pieces of writing using technology, including iPads and laptops. Students will complete tasks that involve publishing pieces of work on Google Docs or Slides. Students will also utilise the online platform ‘Typing Club’ to support touch-typing fluency.

Other literacy foci for the term will include:

• Explicit instruction in phonics to improve their knowledge of letter-sound relationships. This will allow them to continue developing their ability to decode increasingly complex words and become more independent readers.
• Reviewing and revisiting word parts such as prefixes and suffixes. 
• Reviewing previously taught spelling rules such as the 111 rule and consonant+y rule, as well as new rules such as the floss rule. 
• Investigating and exploring different word families to learn how different words can be connected by meaning, e.g. different words connected to ‘light’, like ‘lightning’ or ‘lighthouse’.
• Instruction on spelling a range of high-frequency words.
• Continuing to revise and review the entry and exit points of all capital and lowercase letters to support correct formation.