Literacy

Victorian Premiers' Reading Challenge

The 2026 Premiers' Reading Challenge is about to begin! We will notify families via Dojo once the Challenge portal has opened and we have registered all students to participate. This event promotes reading for enjoyment and is a wonderful opportunity for children to track their reading and to try new books. This year's VPRC theme is 'Stories to discover. Stories to tell.'

What have we been reading in our classrooms at OLSC?

Prep - Our Prep students have continued to enjoy big books written by Joy Cowley. After listening to Meanies, they created their own Meanie using coloured paper and collage. They retold the story of Mrs Wishy-Washy using stick puppets and made animals out of playdough in response to the book, The Farm Concert. For each of these books, the teachers have been explicitly teaching the children the parts of a book (eg: author, title, front cover, spine), and they have been focusing on making predictions before reading a book.

Year 1/2s - The Year 1s and 2s have continued learning about seasons in Australia, this time through the text, 'Ask Aunty - Seasons'. This book has opened their eyes to the seasons of our First Nations people who live in the Kimberley region on Bardi Country. Aunty Munya teaches them about the six seasonal changes the Bardi people experience, and how these are characterised by changes in animal behaviours, the weather conditions and what food grows at different times.

Year 3 - The Year 3 students have listened and responded to books by the Australian author, Phil Cummings. Their focus has been on the characters in the books and the emotions they experience, how the author has used his words to describe the setting of the story, and finally, how to summarise a story they have listened to using one or two sentences.

Year 4 - Over the last three weeks, the Year 4 students have been reading picture books written and illustrated by The Fan Brothers. They have discussed how illustrations sometimes add more to the story than just relying on the written text, and have been writing simple summaries of the books they have read. While reading these beautiful books, the children have learned lots of new vocabulary like topiary, gobstopper, and inquisitive.

Year 5 - This term, the Year 5 classes are all reading 'War Horse' by Michael Morpurgo. This novel study takes the reader back to World War 1 and follows a brave and curious horse called Joey as he carries British soldiers into battle. Students and teachers have been engaging in rich discussions about the experiences of the main characters and how their lives changed throughout the story. It has been a great opportunity for the students to share their own emotional responses about the events in the text.

Year 6 - Our senior students have begun reading their own novel based on a historical event, 'Rivet Boy' by Barbara Henderson. This story highlights the impacts of child labour during the construction of the Forth Bridge in Scotland in 1888. The students have been working on improving the structure of their sentences by adding greater detail and by using high modality words to persuade others.

Little Learners Love Literacy Parent Info Session

On Monday this week, we held an information session for all parents who wanted to learn more about Little Learners Love Literacy, our junior school phonics program. During the morning, these parents had the opportunity to ask questions about how to support their children with reading at home. Please see below the slideshow we used for the presentation.

Here are some of our Year 2 students during a Little Learners Love Literacy lesson, practising their reading fluency and hearing syllables in words.

Kristina Morrissey

kmorrissey@olscwyn.catholic.edu.au

Literacy Leader