Literacy
Every child deserves to be able to read, write and communicate effectively.
At Campbells Creek Primary School including Guildford Campus we use evidence-based approaches to ensure that our literacy instruction is robust and prepares our children for the world. Literacy is a key priority at CCPS including Guildford Campus and we allocate 2 hours every day to literacy instruction. All teachers receive regular professional development to stay abreast of current research and provide rich learning opportunities for our students.
Comprehension
We love learning about our world. Our comprehension sessions equip our students with the skills they need by deliberately building their knowledge about the world. Through a carefully sequenced knowledge-rich curriculum our students love learning about a variety of different topics from ancient Rome to caring for our environment to outer space.
Books provide a great opportunity to not only learn more about the world, they also provide us a chance to reflect on ourselves. In our junior school we read lots of wonderful picture books and narratives. Our senior school participate in novel studies where we explore a text in-depth and continue to build our comprehension skills.
Little Learners Love Literacy
Students in Foundation-Grade 2 take part in daily Little Learners Love Literacy lessons. This is a fun and engaging program where students are introduced to letters and the sounds, they represent through friendly characters such as Milo Monkey, Sally Snake & Felix Frog. These characters take our early years students on a journey as they learn about the different sounds each letter can represent.
Phonemic Awareness
Our students in Foundation- Grade 2 participate in daily phonemic awareness activities. This gives our students the chance to develop their ability to hear the sounds in words and practice the three crucial elements of isolating, blending, and segmenting the sounds in words.
Heggerty/Kilpatrick
This is a call and response program, which involves students listening to the teacher and providing a response in unison. It focuses on phonemic awareness skills, sound recognition and language awareness. Each grade has their own unique way of delivering this program including things like making it a teacher vs student game and class rewards.
Paired Fluency
Each day students are paired up and take turns reading a text aloud to one another. This not only helps develop their fluency, but has the added impact of peers being able to support one another in their learning.
Vocabulary
Teaching vocabulary is vital in laying a foundation for students to build on. Students who know a wider variety of words can unlock the meaning of texts more successfully. Children with a broader vocabulary will also be better equipped to determine the meaning of unknown words when encountering them.
At Campbells Creek Primary School including Guildford Campus we follow a simple procedure to teach new words explicitly:
- Read the word in context. Our vocabulary words come from texts we read as a class. Students have encountered (or are about to encounter) the word and this provides a meaningful opportunity to teach it.
- Provide a definition. The teacher tells students the definition/s of the word in simple language.
- Give examples: The teacher uses the word in context in multiple ways.
- Have students use the word.
- Review: Encountering a word isn't enough for students to understand it. We want our students to not only understand these words, we want them to be confident in using them, so we provide them with plenty of practise. Our reviews are designed to take less than 5 minutes, allowing students to retrieve the words we have previously taught.
Spelling Mastery
Spelling Mastery is a heavily researched program that teaches students dependable spelling skills by blending three approaches:
1. The phonemic approach is used for letter-sound correspondences that are predictable (e.g. cat, fish, snake).
2. The morphemic approach is used for combining the roots, bases, prefixes and suffixes into words (e.g. re+search=research or imagine+ation=imagination).
3. The whole word approach focuses on memorisation of irregular spelling patterns (e.g. one, said).
The Writing Revolution
Our writing instruction is explicit & carefully sequenced. We deliberately build from single sentences into full compositions. Sentences are the building block of writing. We teach students how to form clear and powerful sentences so that they can craft longer pieces of writing. In the junior grades, sentence dictation is a powerful method to ensuring students can craft accurate sentences using GPCs and heart words they are familiar with.
We embed the teaching of writing within the content of our broader curriculum, particularly our knowledge-rich units and novel studies. Grammar is taught within the context of students’ writing. This approach enables all students to become proficient writers, readers, and critical thinkers.