Literacy and Numeracy
St James Primary School
Literacy News
Novel Studies
In Years 3 to 6, our Literacy curriculum is centered around novel studies, utilising high-quality, whole-class texts to build a vibrant community of readers. By sharing and discussing the same books, all students gain equal access to rich content and sophisticated vocabulary while developing deep, text-level comprehension (Lemov, Driggs, & Woolway, 2016).
To support this reading, our daily instruction is structured around three key components:
- Daily Review: A brief, fast-paced session designed to reinforce previously taught content.
- Literacy Skills: Focused explicit instruction covering grammar, handwriting, spelling, and reading fluency.
- English Block: Dedicated time for guided reading, incidental and explicit vocabulary development, and sentence to text-level writing connected directly to our class novels.
The novels are selected from the following lists at each year level.
