Curriculum News and Class Homework Expectations
Curriculum News:
What We Believe About Reading at St Patrick's
At St Patrick's, we are committed to providing evidence-informed reading instruction so that every child develops the skills, confidence and knowledge needed to become a successful reader and lifelong learner.
We believe that every child can learn to read and that reading is one of the most important skills we can teach. Reading opens the door to learning across all subject areas and helps children grow in confidence, independence and understanding of the world around them.
Many parents may be interested to know that, like all Catholic and government schools in New South Wales, St Patrick's follows the NSW Curriculum. Recent curriculum reforms have drawn upon extensive research into reading development and reflect what we now know about how children learn to read most effectively. At St Patrick's, we have been proactive in adopting these evidence-informed approaches and ensuring our literacy practices align with current research. By combining high-quality teaching with structured literacy programs, we are working to provide every child with the strongest possible foundation for reading success. Every class at St. Patrick’s begins their English block with the Initialit (K-2) and Spellex (3-6) programs.
Research tells us that skilled reading develops when children are explicitly taught the building blocks of reading and are given opportunities to practise these skills regularly.
In the early years of school, our reading instruction focuses on helping children develop:
- Phonemic awareness – hearing and manipulating the individual sounds in spoken words.
- Phonics – understanding the relationship between letters and sounds.
- Fluency – reading accurately, at an appropriate pace and with expression.
- Vocabulary – understanding and using a wide range of words.
- Comprehension – making meaning from what is read.
One of the key findings from reading research is that children become successful readers when they are taught how to decode words. Decoding means looking carefully at the letters in a word, matching those letters to sounds and blending the sounds together to read the word.
A key part of reading instruction is teaching students the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent. Children learn that some sounds can be represented in different ways (for example, the long /a/ sound in cake, rain and play). Alongside phonics instruction, students also learn high-frequency words. High-frequency words are words that appear very often in reading and writing, such as the, was, said, could and people. While many high-frequency words can be sounded out using phonics knowledge, some contain unusual spelling patterns that students learn to recognise automatically. Frequently reading and discussing these words maps the knowledge to the learners’ brain. Developing a strong knowledge of both phonics and high-frequency words helps children read more accurately and fluently.
You may notice that the way reading is taught today is different from how many adults learned to read. While illustrations in books are wonderful for building understanding, encouraging discussion and supporting comprehension, we do not teach children to use pictures to guess unknown words. Instead, we encourage students to look at the letters and letter patterns in the word and use their knowledge of sounds to work out what the word says.
How Can Parents Help at Home?
Parents play a vital role in supporting reading development. Here are some helpful prompts you can use when your child comes to an unfamiliar word:
"Let's look at the letters."
"What sound does that letter make?"
"Can you stretch out the sounds?"
"Can you blend the sounds together?"
"Does that word match the letters you can see?"
"Try reading the whole sentence again."
"What word would make sense and match the letters?"
It is also helpful to:
Read aloud to your child every day.
Listen to your child read regularly.
Talk about books, stories and new vocabulary.
Encourage children to reread familiar books to build fluency and confidence.
Celebrate effort and persistence when reading becomes challenging.
Most importantly, we want children to see reading as enjoyable. The more children read and are read to, the stronger their reading skills become.
Further Reading for Interested Parents
The following resources provide clear and evidence-informed information about reading development:
Five from Five: https://fivefromfive.com.au
The Reading League: https://www.thereadingleague.org
Reading Rockets: https://www.readingrockets.org
The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO): https://www.edresearch.edu.au
SPELD NSW: https://www.speldnsw.org.au
Podcasts
Sold a Story (Emily Hanford)
Melissa & Lori Love Literacy
Science of Reading: The Podcast (Amplify)
The Reading League Podcast
At St Patrick's, we are committed to providing evidence-informed reading instruction so that every child develops the skills, confidence and love of reading needed for lifelong learning.
- Submitted by Anna Flanagan
Leader of Curriculum