Literacy
Reading @ SKPS (Early Years)
We provide reading education that supports children to form a love of reading and to build the necessary skills to access and engage with information.
We focus on the ‘Big Six Skills’ of reading which help children to become successful readers:
- oral language
- phonological awareness
- phonics
- vocabulary
- fluency
- comprehension
Our Reading lessons are based on the Daily 5 framework. Trust, respect, community, choice, accountability, brain breaks and independence are the foundations that underpin the Daily 5.
Reading tasks are student focused and aim to develop and build on the Big Six Skills of Reading through daily opportunities to interact with a wide variety of texts, both traditional and digital.
With guided practice, behaviours that can be sustained over time are gradually developed and students will be able to independently manage their learning and choice of activity – where, what and with whom they would like to learn. Each activity has an opportunity for students to explore the learning intentions of the lesson.
In addition to our classroom literacy program, we employ a full time Literacy Intervention Teacher who supports students in Year Prep to Year 2 through a Levelled Literacy Intervention Program. The Fountas and Pinnell Levelled Literacy Intervention (LLI) is a powerful, short term intervention, that provides daily, intensive small group instruction, which supplements classroom literacy teaching. LLI turns struggling readers into successful readers with engaging levelled books and fast-paced, systematically designed lessons.
Reading @ SKPS (Senior Years)
We believe in developing a continued love of reading and to read with a purpose. We aim to engage readers by connecting them to literature that is relevant to their community and world.
Our teachers explicitly teach key comprehension strategies to provide students with the tools to become deep and insightful thinkers and learners. Students will develop the confidence and reading behaviours to be effective critical readers who can apply their reading skills and knowledge to their daily life.
We celebrate the connection between the art of reading and writing.
Writing @ SKPS
We want all students to develop a love of writing. In order to achieve this, we offer our students as much ownership as possible over what they choose to write and who they write for. Children also have opportunities to explore various modes of production, including those utilising digital technologies. We encourage children to write for pleasure and be authentic and purposeful.
The writing program moves through two phases: open cycle writing and closed cycle writing. Through both of these phases students are exploring literary, informative and persuasive writing styles with the support of the teacher.
During the open cycle children are given opportunities to work towards their personal writing goals by choosing the types of texts and topics they write about. While this is happening teachers are also explicitly teaching a particular type of text for a specific purpose and audience.
During the closed cycle students are asked to create a text that has been directed by the teacher. In each of the cycles, students are given chances to write independently, in small groups and one on one with the teacher.
