Literacy

Phonics

The explicit teaching of Phonics and spelling rules is the cornerstone of the Year 1/2 English Program at KPPS. Our children have been working hard and have acquired the skills to recognise and spell most of the 70 phonograms in the Australian English language.  The next developmental step is to be able to segment and blend sounds efficiently so that children develop some speed and accuracy when reading. This leads to  our children competently understanding the text they are reading.  Given that student growth is tracked each month, there are times when some children receive targeted intervention with Jennifer Campbell.  This allows them to receive some temporary support to continue to develop their reading and writing skills.

Reading and Writing

This term there has also been a focus on developing specific comprehension skills when reading, such as understanding opinions, point of view and comparing and contrasting characters.  These elements of comprehension have dovetailed beautifully with our writing program where children have been forming opinions based on a prompt, and have been able to justify these with examples.

In Year 1/2 we have been focusing on including a VCOP element into our writing each week. This term there has been considerable explicit teaching of editing skills.

Oral language is so important as it assists the reading and writing process.  The reflections that our children share after all workshops are possibly the most important element of cementing learning in the brain. After each Literacy workshop our children are encouraged to think about their learning and then articulate it.