David's Message

Dear Sunshine Heights Parents and Carers,

By now, many of you may have heard the announcement by Ben Carroll about 'The way that students are taught to read in Victoria is about to change' (As quoted by The Age). Essentially the addition of a Structured Synthetic Phonics program taught by Explicit Direction Instruction will become part of the curriculum each day for students in Prep to Grade 2. 

In fact, for us, we have already been implementing Sounds Write for the past two years, and using an evidence based approach to the teaching of Reading. This is why you might have seen our students engaging with decodable readers as part of their reading, or heard about them working with a buddy during paired fluency sessions. What was not included in the announcement is the importance of working across the whole of the Reading Rope, as evidenced below:

As a school, we have been really excited about the announcement, and what it means for Victorian Eduction. For us though we are especially pleased that the great work our teachers, students and parents have been doing for the last few years has been recognised as being the best approaches for improving student learning outcomes. 

If you're interested in learning more about this, please chat to myself, Anthony or Vicki McMahon as our Literacy Learning Specialist. 

Best wishes, 

David and the Sunny Heights Team