Literacy

"Families play a key role in developing from birth a child’s language and literacy skills."

Speaking and Listening

Your child is already well on their way in their literacy learning.
Our brains are wired for communication, and for most, learning to talk (or sign) and understand language is a natural process.

As parents, carers and teachers, we can harness this natural process and develop learning by engaging in plenty of talk with our children. We can ensure we develop confident speakers and listeners by helping our children by modelling and encouraging the following interactions:

· Listening and responding

· Questioning and clarifying

· Justifying a point of view

Playing around with language is also very important for speech and language development, and a stepping stone to reading and writing. Nursery Rhymes and Songs, I Spy games and tongue twisters are all very helpful for our children to tune into how language and words work.

At Eastwood Primary School and Deaf Facility, we continue to make Speaking and Listening a priority by giving students plenty of opportunity to speak with their peers and their teachers through informal small and large group discussions and more structured experiences like sharing their learning with the class.

We continue to develop the students’ control over spoken language through breaking words into syllables, blending and segmenting (phonemes) sounds in words, and manipulating and substituting sounds in words.

Reading

At Eastwood, we implement a Structured Phonics Program called 'Little Learners Love Literacy' for teaching children to read, write and spell with confidence. The Seven Stages sequence ensures that children are never asked to read something that is too difficult for them or that they have not been taught the skills to read yet. Decodable Books ensure students only use the sounds and letters they have been explicitly taught allowing them to apply their learning and build confidence.

The diagram above models 'The Simple View of Reading'. It shows that reading is a product of word recognition and language comprehension, and both are required for successful reading. Therefore, our literacy program focuses on both of these elements through phonics instruction (knowledge of sounds and the letter-sound relationship) as well as exposure to and discussions about high quality rich texts.

Reading at home

Reading to your child is important in making the link from spoken to written words and in developing book language. Throughout your child’s schooling, it is so valuable to keep reading to them. It helps them be exposed to a wealth of vocabulary that we don’t often use in our everyday conversations. Your child will never be too old to be read to!

· Discuss the pictures and encourage your child to talk about them

· Re-read favourite books

· Let the child hold the book and turn the pages

Please purchase the Eastwood black communication bag, as we use this each day for communication between home and school and to keep take home books safe.

For extended advice and handy tips with reading, please see the links at the bottom of the page.

"Research shows that families are the most significant influence on their children’s learning, development, health, safety and wellbeing. Your family can play a key role in helping your child prepare for school, and then succeed when they reach school. "

Writing

Encourage your child’s drawing and writing attempts. Involve them in authentic writing experiences like shopping lists, birthday cards or letters and notes. While accuracy in spelling is important, first and foremost your child needs to feel comfortable to give writing a go, and view themselves as a writer regardless of their spelling capabilities.

At Eastwood Primary School and Deaf Facility, we invest a lot of time explicitly teaching spelling skills and strategies, through phonics teaching, as well as through Structured Word Inquiry, looking into how words are built, and the history and origin of words.

In Writing lessons, spelling is just one focus. We also develop our students as writers by developing their:

· Ideas

· Organisation

· Voice

· Sentence Fluency

· Word Choice

· Conventions (paragraphing, punctuation, grammar, spelling)

· Presentation

We can’t wait to assist your child in their literacy progression when they come to our school!

Please take a look at the following document about tips to help your child every day.

Little Learners Love Literacy Information for Parents

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse