Literacy is the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world. At St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School we aim to provide all students with the opportunity to write with purpose, read for meaning and develop skills for speaking and listening.
Students learn about the English language through written, spoken and visual texts of increasing complexity as they progress through their schooling. St Anthony’s Primary School practices a structured approach to teach reading and writing. Through explicit teaching, students are encouraged to learn and advance these skills in fun and interesting ways that excite students’ minds. Literacy lessons teach students the vital skills of reading and writing as well as develop equally important speaking and listening skills.
How we teach oral language
We use Story Champs as a multi-tiered, multisensory, language curriculum to promote our students’ use of academic language in the classroom. The primary focus of Story Champs is to provide a strong oral language foundation through narrative language intervention. Story Champs uses narrative language (storytelling), to improve our students’ understanding and use of story grammar, vocabulary and complex sentences. In addition, Story Champs uses information (non-fiction) texts to improve our students’ understanding and use of the five different information text structures, and content specific vocabulary.
How we teach Reading:
We adopt a simple view of reading which teaches decoding and comprehension through six components:
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| DECODING | COMPREHENSION | ||||
| Phonological Awareness | Phonics | Fluency | Vocabulary knowledge | Reading comprehension | Oral language comprehension |
| Phonological awareness is a key early competency of emergent and proficient reading, including an explicit awareness of the structure of words, syllables, onset-rime and individual phonemes, | Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences essential for beginning to read. Phonics involves learning the alphabetic code as letter-sound correspondences. | Capacity to read texts with rhythm, phrasing, intonation and accuracy. A critical component of skilled reading, Reading fluency; quality and accuracy are both necessary for the continued achievement in reading. | Knowledge of words including structure, use, meanings and links. Reading vocab is crucial to a skilled reader’s comprehension processes. Morphology is an important aspect of vocabulary instruction. | Involves understanding the meaning and intent of a written text. An active process in which cognitive engagement is central. Comprehension is regarded as a series of interactions between the text and the reader. | Oral language provides the foundation for learning to read and is directly linked to overall reading achievement. |