Education News
The teaching of reading
At CSPS the Junior School students are learning to read using a Synthetic Phonics approach. Each morning Foundation and Year 1 students participate in a structured program that caters for their needs. Staff and parents work with the students in activities. Year 2 and middle school students usually work on this program in the middle sessions of the day.
Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching children to read that is based on decades of research into how children learn to read. Synthetic phonics teaching involves teaching children about written language in an explicit, systematic and ordered way. Research suggests that unlike learning to speak and understand language, learning to read is not a natural process, so children learn best when they are shown how written language works. Rather than exposing students to a variety of words and relying on a student's ability to remember them, patterns in words are introduced gradually and taught thoroughly, with simpler, more common patterns taught first and more complicated, less frequent patterns introduced when easier skills are mastered.
Students are initially taught the speech sounds that letters and groups of letters represent in written language. These visual representations of the speech sounds in language are called 'graphemes'. Graphemes are taught in a logical sequence, with more common, single letter-sound patterns taught first (such as c in cat and e in egg) , followed by multiple letter graphemes (such as the ch in cheese or the igh in light).
A synthetic phonics approach to the teaching of reading involves teaching students to apply their knowledge of graphemes to say the speech sounds that letters represent in words. Students say the speech sounds all the way through a new word, from left to right, when reading. Students are taught to 'blend' (or join) speech sounds together to read new words, even if they are unfamiliar to the student. This process is called 'decoding'. Decoding skills enable the student to be able to read unfamiliar words independently.
This approach has recently been highlighted in the news with the Federal government trialing a phonics test for all Year 1. students.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-30/australian-phonics-war-on-how-to-teach-kids-to-read-rages-on/11258944
If you would like to learn more about Synthetic Phonics please see your classroom teacher or Kendra Anderson in the Learning Hub.
Australian Mathematics Competition
The Australian Mathematics Competition will be taking place on Thursday 1st August. Students from years 3 - 6 are invited to participate. The cost to enter the AMC is $5.90 per student. It is a wonderful opportunity for students to extend their mathematical knowledge and challenge themselves.
Permission slips and payment are due no later than Thursday 25th July. Notices can be found here.
Below is a fun sample question. Can you solve it?
