At Windang PS, both students and teachers alike are life long learners. Our most recent learning included collaborating with other teaching professionals across our community of schools (COS) to unpack 'high expectations' and 'vocabulary'.

Focus on Vocabulary with our COS

Windang PS teachers and learning support staff worked together with Lake Illawarra High School, Primbee PS, Warilla North PS, Lake Illawarra South PS and Mount Warrigal PS to explore how important vocabulary is to reading, across K-12 grades, and throughout all subjects.

‘Reading has important reciprocal effects for vocabulary. Vocabulary is built through reading, and reading proficiency increases through vocabulary knowledge.’

Lyn Stone (2019) Reading for Life, p.31

We explored the importance of building student's knowledge of tier 2 words to help students access the meaning of words and texts they are reading, and be able to apply this knowledge across experiences such as reading, listening, conversation, spelling and writing. We learned about the importance of helping students understand the morphology of new and existing vocabulary, and explore language devices such as similes, metaphors and idioms to see how vocabulary can be used creatively. We explored the breadth and depth of vocabulary through etymology, multiple definitions, non-examples and synonyms.

The following quote by Dr Julie Washington expresses the importance of vocabulary.

'Vocabulary is a combination of word knowledge and world knowledge’

Amplify the science of reading podcast, ‘Linguistic variety and dialects: difference, not error’, Season 4, Episode 7).

To build on our understanding of how interwoven vocabulary is within the skill of reading, Windang teachers then explored Scarborough's Reading Rope, which is a metaphor that describes how interwoven the skills within reading are, and how skilled and fluent readers become increasingly automatic and strategic in their reading skills. We have created our own Scarborough's Reading Rope using macrame which was a lot of fun and will be very helpful to continually refer back to when helping children learn the complex skill of reading.

Teachers have worked shoulder to shoulder with our Speech Pathologist Mrs Jess Buchelin to observe lessons designed to build the decoding, blending, segmenting and spelling skills (including morphology and spelling rules) of our students. Tapping into to her specialised expertise has been amazing.

Parent Information Session for Beginning Reading and Spelling

We are very excited to announce that Mrs Buchelin and Miss Ferguson will be sharing their expertise at a Parent Information Session for Effectively Teaching Beginning Reading and Spelling on Tuesday 24 May 2022 (Term 2 Week 5) commencing at 9 am. This session is mainly applicable to parents of students in K-2 classes. More information will follow soon. We hope to see you there!

Focus on Fluency at Windang PS

We are also increasing our understanding of how important fluency is when reading. Reading fluency refers to the reader's ability to read texts accurately, at an appropriate pace and with appropriate expression. Fluent reading acts as a bridge between automatic word reading and comprehension.

Through assessment we have found that fluency is an area of need across our school. Throughout term 2, all classes will be building the reading fluency skills of students. As lifelong learners, we are increasing our knowledge and understanding of how important fluency is and how to best incorporate fluency into our classroom routines to support and improve student reading.

The photos below show students in 2/3 Warthogs who are working on building their reading fluency using texts that target particular spelling rules. Students listen to their peer read, read along at the same time, give targeted and specific feedback (in this case about the phrasing), positive feeback and constructive feedback. They then swap roles. Our fluency pairs give students lots of opportunity to read, be listened to reading, and consolidate the skills they have learned. Teachers provide immediate and constructive feedback to guide students learning. Our Warthogs have been wonderful learners in this area, have worked very hard to improve their fluency and provide helpful feedback to their peers. Very impressive start Warthogs!

We look forward to sharing the learning of students across the school throughout the term!

Mrs Carinya Barkley

Assistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction & Literacy Leader

Library Corner