The Western Port Word
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Science of Learning Update

Assistant Principal: Donna Geritz

Learning Specialist Science of Learning: Vanessa Dennis

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Literacy Intervention: Semester 1 LEAP Update

Our Year 7 and 8 LEAP students have enjoyed a highly successful first semester of LEAP.  Our LEAP team has continued to design resources that connect to the topics our students are learning in other areas – (see our Reconciliation Week newsletter article for an example of this!) This means that while our Year 7s are improving their reading skills in LEAP, they are also deepening their context knowledge of such topics as Ancient Egypt, mummification, Federation, and Health topics like puberty and resilience. The same goes for our Year 8 LEAP students – they practice their reading skills while also engaging in learning about elements and the Periodic Table from Science, Vikings, and Medieval Europe from their Humanities classes, and puberty and contraception from their Health classes just to name a few.

 

2026 has seen the consistent application of mini whiteboards for all students in every LEAP class, so they can demonstrate their understanding of content to their teachers. This has made an immediate and enormous difference in classes this year. Teachers have been able to ascertain how much every student is understanding, and able to provide real-time feedback to students directly at their point of need, before moving on, or re-teaching something they can see their class has not yet ‘got’. Mini whiteboards have also seen our LEAP students complete much more writing in classes than previously which is a huge bonus. Our LEAP students are leaders of our school-wide Science of Learning practices, and participate in model choral reading, daily reviews, and checking for understanding every lesson. We couldn’t be prouder of them!

 

From a data perspective, we would like to share with you some of our LEAP success stories of semester 1.

 

Year 8

38 Year 8 LEAP students have completed their DIBELS reading assessments, and have a Beginning of Year (BOY) to Middle of Year (MOY) correct words per minute count (WPM) range that allows us to track growth.

Of those:

  • 27 students increased their WPM

  • The average increase across these students was 9 WPM

  • 11 of the 38 decreased their WPM

  • The average decrease across these students was 5 WPM

Of note: 

  • Of the students who decreased in their WPM count, only 3 had attendance of over 80% 

 

This tells us there is a direct correlation between high attendance in LEAP and improved reading outcomes.  

We would like to specifically recognise the following Year 8 students for their individual reading growth:

  • Willow Alexander 24 WPM

  • Lexi Howard 19 WPM

  • Tyler Adlington 19WPM

  • Eva Whitworth 18 WPM

  • Eva Burgess 17 WPM

  • Mia Berryman 16 WPM

  • Alex Kraulis 15 WPM

  • Tora Broom 14 WPM

 

Year 7

We have had 64 students in our Year 7 LEAP classes for both terms. Of these students, approximately 10 will graduate out of LEAP and into Indonesian for semester 2, due to consistently reaching benchmark reading fluency levels. 

 

Of the 64 students Year 7 LEAP students who have completed their DIBELS reading assessments, and have a Beginning of Year (BOY) to Middle of Year (MOY) correct words per minute count (WPM) range that allows us to track growth, we can see:

  • 52 students increased their WPM

  • The average increase across these students was an incredible 14 WPM!

  • 12 of the 64 decreased their WPM

  • The average decrease across these students was 7 WPM

  • While just like the with the Year 8 data, we see a correlation between attendance and lower reading improvement; we can also see connections between decreased reading fluency data and students’ demonstrating behaviours that indicated they were not ready to learn.

 

We would like to specifically recognise the following Year 7 students for their astounding individual reading growth:

  • Aidan Makeham 50 WPM

  • Linc Dawes 43 WPM

  • Archie Howard-Ravet 40 WPM

  • Ace Scammell 36 WPM

  • Phillip Stavrakas 30 WPM

  • Finlay Newbery 29 WPM

  • Alex Liston 28 WPM

  • Chaise Chatfield 27 WPM

  • Abby Lynch 26 WPM

  • Heath Bacon 26 WPM

  • Noah Dawson 25 WPM

  • Tom Rogers 25 WPM

  • Amelia Wakeman 25 WPM

  • Gemma Bardelmeyer 25 WPM

  • Cash Broom 22 WPM

  • Damon Phillips-Derby 21 WPM

  • Zoey Baker 20 WPM

 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our LEAP students for a fantastic first semester, and challenge you all to increase your reading fluency results even more in semester 2. 

 

Additionally, a very big thank you to our amazing LEAP teachers – Renae Knowles, Robert Last, and Melissa MacKenzie – and our semester 1 tutors Tate Ascott, Oli Blakeney-De Kretser, Laila Conroy, Beau Finch, Sarah Garnier, Daniel Hester,  Chloe Manders-Elgin, Lauren Rebbeck, who design our resources, collect and analyse our data, and continually strive to improve their practice week in, week out for the benefit of our students. Finally, we are very excited to welcome to our intervention team some more tutor support – Kiera America, Grace Harris, Bronwen Hocking, Ashleigh Masterson, Tom Polkinghorne, and Trent Watson. 

 

What a second semester of student growth awaits us!