Principal's Page
Kia Ora Koutou
Reflecting on Becoming Literate:
Many factors influence the practice of becoming literate.
Effective literacy teaching has always understood the importance of a child’s knowledge of letters and printed words, the child’s ability to hear the sounds in spoken language, and how to understand and use the relationships between sound and letter sequences.
Effective literacy practice must also focus children on meaning-making strategies and using context.
Rich phonological understanding and a focus on reading for meaning are found in all effective literacy programmes.
There are significant challenges to be overcome:
- The explosion of technology can deprive young people of learning through their senses - a powerful way to make meaning and deepen their understanding of language.
- The serious reduction in the enjoyment of reading. Reading is struggling to compete with technology, particularly at home.
- The damage to a broad and creative curriculum, particularly the arts, which encourages young people to explore and play with language.
- Often busy working parents have limited time to engage with children at home.
Phonological awareness - the understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds - is one of the keys to becoming literate.
Our junior school teachers support our children to develop their phonemic capability through the 'Heggerty' programme. We employ Structured Literacy, the Code and Liz Kane's Decodable Text programme as tools in our 'becoming literate' toolbox.
We employ a structured approach to Play Based Learning - focused on curiosity, exploring their world and learning and playing collaboratively. This ensures our children are exploring language in context and in literacy-rich environments.
Our junior teams have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into learning these programmes and how to implement them best.
They have worked closely with colleagues at Summerland and Sunnyhill schools and have even travelled to Fielding to observe best practices there.
They have now reached the point where other schools visit us to see how we support our children to become literate. In addition, Year One Team Leader Annette Pram is working with other schools, running workshops, supporting teams and speaking and presenting at conferences around New Zealand.
Our young learners are in great hands here - they will receive the best 'becoming literate' opportunities, resources, teaching and programmes at Western Heights.
As always - if you have questions or concerns about anything school-related - email me at macash@mac.com, and I will get back to you asap.
Take care all -
tofa soifua
noho ora mai
Ash Maindonald
Principal.
