Additional support programs

Melton Secondary College is committed to ensuring every student achieves success in their learning. The college offers additional support in Literacy and Numeracy across year levels 7-10 and has multiple programs running throughout 2025 to cater to student needs.

Students are identified for additional support in a variety of ways including Essential Assessment, NAPLAN, semester reports, teacher judgement, and skill-based screeners.

Numeracy Support

The 2025 Numeracy Support program, which encompasses an in-class support model, is underway this term within year nine classes.

Up to five times a fortnight throughout term one, our tutors work with selected year nine students in a small focus group, within timetabled mathematics classes. In term two, tutors will work with selected year eight students.

The aim of the targeted focus groups is to identify student strengths and areas for improvement in mathematics, while building on existing skills and knowledge to keep students engaged, motivated to learn and on track to reaching their potential. 

Tutors work on building student confidence, continuing to extend their learning and developing their capacity to work independently at a more challenging level. The work completed with tutors complements the explicit instruction from their classroom teacher during mathematics classes, with an emphasis on being able to confidently articulate the processes used to complete tasks.

Ongoing progress is monitored and discussed between the classroom teacher, tutors and team leaders in order to continue meeting students at their level of need.

Literacy Support

Melton Secondary College enrols at-risk readers in Sounds-Write, which is a highly structured, evidence-based phonics program that explicitly teaches students the key skills required to be effective readers and spellers. These skills need to be learnt to automaticity so learners can focus on more complex aspects of reading and writing.

Our reading support program allows students to practise, consolidate and internalise effective reading and spelling strategies, which assists their ability to decode and construct meaning; in turn, students can experience greater success in accessing the school curriculum via increasingly complex texts.

Students are organised into small groups based on their specific needs, which are determined through the analysis of diagnostic assessment tools. Small-group learning offered through focused, regular sessions, is an evidence-based approach for improving student learning outcomes.

Literacy Intervention staff also provide targeted support within junior English classes.

Tips for supporting your high schooler to read at home

Many parents ask how they can support their young person to read at home. Please see below for some strategies that can encourage engagement with text and foster an enjoyment for reading:

• Help your child select books that match their reading ability. It’s ok if not all books are ‘just right’ because it’s important for adolescents to experience and immerse themselves in many text types and genres. Please note: Students will be given assistance by their English teacher to choose suitable texts from the school’s library, which caters for students with reading abilities from Foundation onwards. 

   

• Encourage your child to read for a minimum of 20 mins per night. This could also mean taking turns reading aloud with them, such as a chapter each.

   

• Ask your child to verbally summarise a narrative and prompt them to predict what they think will happen next, tell you about main characters, the setting and the plot, and give their opinion and insights into the story. If it’s a non-fiction text, ask your child to share some factual information with you. 

   

• Encourage them to look up words or ask for clarification of words or phrases they don’t understand.

   

• Support your child to read a variety of materials, including novels, short stories, magazines, and appropriate websites. A combination of fiction and non-fiction texts is ideal.

   

• If you enjoy reading, share your love of books by modelling reading for leisure. Browse bookstores together and pop into the local library to encourage good reading habits.

A number of students in a high school setting read at a foundation-grade three level. These students need specific supports to access reading, usually including targeted phonics instruction. If you require further information on obtaining resources that cater for low-level literacy, please contact your child’s English teacher or our Academic 

Interventions Leader, Sarah Morrissey.