CURRICULUM

Phonics Instruction in Grade Prep - 2 

It was wonderful to see so many parents attend our open mornings during Education Week to see the phonics approach to reading in action.

Each phonics lesson has key components where children are explicitly taught how to apply their phonics knowledge to reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Each set of lessons involves the following  key elements:

• Activation of Prior Knowledge - Students revise prior learning, ensuring children have multiple opportunities to practice previously learnt content.
• Phonic and Word Knowledge - hearing sounds, reading words and blending sounds, spelling using letter sound knowledge and segmenting (breaking words into smaller units of sound). 
• High frequency words (Taught in Prep and revised in Grade 1) -  These are words that occur often in books, some can be sounded out but others cannot.
• Dictation - Students write short phrases or sentences. This is to consolidate letter / sound correspondence, revisit previous learning and to develop automaticity hearing and recording sounds.
• Handwriting - with a focus on letter formation, size and line placement
• Building Fluency and Making Meaning - Reading decodable passages to practise decoding skills and develop reading fluency.

Each phonics lesson is timed to be one hour, with children engaged in further rich literacy experiences encompassing reading, writing, speaking and listening following this.

Children receive immediate 

 feedback throughout the lesson 

  Shared reading builds fluency

  and helps children make meaning