Literacy at Mount Carmel

At Mount Carmel College, we are committed to ensuring that every student gets the support and opportunities they need to be successful in life. We provide our girls with rich, structured and systematic literacy teaching and learning, which includes:

1. A Phonological Awareness Program in Kindergarten
2. The use of an evidence-based, structured, systematic and explicit phonics program (InitiaLit) in Prep, Year 1 and Year 2
3. The use of decodable readers (both at home and at school) for our early and emerging readers
4. The use of evidence-based reading intervention programs (including MiniLit, MacqLit and Reading Tutor) for students in Years 1- 9 that may require some additional support in reading
5. The use of a direct instruction spelling program (Spelling Mastery) in Years 3-8
6. The use of an evidenced based writing methodology (The Writing Revolution) in both the Primary and Secondary
7. The use of universal reading and spelling screening tools, from Prep to Year 9, to identify students’ individual areas of strength, areas of growth and areas that require additional support 
8. The use of assessments to monitor progress, track growth and intervene with additional support where required.

We also incorporate rich literature into all our classrooms. We focus on teaching students the technical skills of reading and spelling, so that they have the knowledge to be able to apply letter-sound relationships when decoding (read) and encoding (spell).

We focus on teaching students the technical skills of writing, so that they craft well-structured, grammatically correct written texts for a variety of purposes.

We explicitly teach background knowledge and vocabulary so that students comprehend (understand/gain meaning from) what they are reading (which is the ultimate goal).