Literacy and Numeracy

Ochre Education

Throughout this year teachers have begun using Ochre Education teaching and learning resources when teaching English.  These resources are knowledge-rich and use high quality literature as a basis for teaching reading and comprehension with a big focus on enabling students to broaden and deepen their vocabulary knowledge. You may have heard your children discussing some of the texts they have been reading in class.

Teachers directly teach Tier 2vocabulary—words that are common in sophisticated language across different subjects but are not everyday conversational words, for example, catastrophic, dismay, blissful, determined, flexible.  Students are taught short, simple definitions to support comprehension and engage in a variety of activities to build deep word knowledge including:

• Providing word associations
• Generating their own situations, contexts, and examples.

Incidental Instruction covers other words in the text, that are critical to understanding the plot or passage. This usually involves a quick definition and pronunciation during reading. Vocabulary taught explicitly is reviewed throughout the week and ongoing across the year to ensure long-term retention.