Literacy
InitiaLit
This term we will continue to use our InitiaLit program; a systematic synthetic approach to phonics.
InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program providing all children with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. InitiaLit is a three-year program, covering the first three years of school (Foundation to Year 2)
For Level 1, reviewing skills covered in Term Two will be ongoing, as well as learning
the following graphemes and phonemes:
- ow (cow), ou (cloud)
- aw, au
- _y, _ey, (ē)
- oy, oi
- eer, ear (hear), ear (bear)
Level 2 will also spend some time reviewing content from Term Two, as well as delving deeper into the following:
- Spelling and Grammer- ch (school) ph (phone) Silent letters k, b, w, Consonant + le (candle, bubble, table) and tion (action, station) We will also continue reviewing spelling rules from Term 2, along with continuing to introduce grammatic rules associated with nouns, proper nouns and pronouns.
- Comprehension and Fluency- The comprehension strategies we explore this term are inferencing, finding the main idea and summarising.
Writing
Our writing program will continue to use mentor texts over a series of 10 lessons to teach fundamental writing skills such as handwriting, spelling, text type, language orientation, grammar, pattern writing and authors purpose.
Level 1
- Letter Writing
- How to structure a letter
- What to include in a letter
- Persuasive Writing
- How to structure a persuasive piece
- Exploring purpose behind persuasive writing
- Narrative Writing
- Revise the structure of a narrative
- Build on our narrative writing skills
- Handwriting
- Writing using the dotted thirds
- Spelling
- Letter-sound relationships
- Irregular tricky words
- Morphological knowledge
- Grammar and Punctuation
- Using full stops and capital letters
- Sentence structure
Level 2
- Persuasive Writing
- How to structure a persuasive piece
- Using paragraphs to organise information
- Using topic sentences to state the main idea
- Imaginative Writing
- How to structure an imaginative piece
- Information Report
- How to structure an Information Report
- Developing note-taking skills
- Handwriting
- Writing using the dotted thirds
- Spelling
- Letter-sound relationships
- Irregular tricky words
- Morphological knowledge
- Grammar and Punctuation
- Identifying verbs, adverbs and noun group phrases
Take- home readers will continue this term and are swapped each Monday and Wednesday. Students will then bring home a free choice book on a Friday. The aim of having a reader for more than one night is to read it a few times. This helps to develop student's fluency.
Tricky word Spelling will continue this term. We would love to see all students in Level 1/ 2 practise their home spelling at least one night each week, as it really does make a big difference.