Teaching Literacy

Our literacy philosophy is based on the understanding that “no single reading instruction method works best for all children. If we have learned anything from this effort, it is that effective teachers are able to craft a special mix of instructional ingredients for every child they work with. But, there is a common menu of materials, strategies, and environments from which effective teachers make choices.” (Effective Reading Instruction - Education | vic.gov.au)

Our Balanced Literacy Approach

At Bellaire PS, we believe that literacy is the cornerstone of all learning. To ensure our students achieve the highest levels of literacy, we implement a balanced and blended literacy approach. This method seeks to combine the most effective and impactful literacy teaching strategies, delivered consistently over a daily two-hour block, totalling more than 10 hours per week.

We adhere to the Victorian Curriculum standards in our teaching of English. These standards mandate a comprehensive and structured approach to literacy, ensuring that all students develop essential skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Our curriculum is designed to meet these requirements by incorporating a variety of teaching methods and materials that align with the Victorian Curriculum’s content and achievement standards.

Core Literacy Components

Our literacy program is comprehensive and multifaceted, encompassing:

  • Phonics: While we do not solely rely on a synthetic phonics program, we integrate its key elements to ensure students develop strong phonetic skills, particularly in the Early Years (Prep-Year 2). This foundation helps them decode words accurately and efficiently.

  • Fluency: We focus on building reading fluency through repeated reading practices, guided oral reading, and other techniques that improve reading speed and expression.

  • Accuracy: Attention to detail is emphasised to improve reading accuracy, helping students to recognise words correctly and comprehend the material fully.

  • Vocabulary Enrichment: A strong vocabulary is crucial for literacy. We introduce students to a diverse range of words and phrases across various contexts to expand their lexical knowledge.

  • Comprehension Strategies: Students are taught various strategies to enhance their understanding of texts. These include predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarising.

  • Spelling: We follow a structured spelling approach called SMART Spelling from Prep to Year 6, ensuring that students develop strong spelling skills progressively throughout their primary education. In a SMART Spelling classroom, students are explicitly taught spelling patterns one at a time. Teachers select a range of words, from simple to complex, and students are then guided to choose words from that list to meet their individual needs. Personal words are also a focus in SMART Spelling. Teachers use their professional knowledge to give meaningful feedback to students about their spelling in writing, teaching at the point of need.

  • THRASS: We incorporate the Teaching Handwriting Reading And Spelling Skills (THRASS) approach to support phonics and spelling instruction, helping students understand the relationships between sounds and letters. This helps reinforce our SMART Spelling teaching.

  • Handwriting: We explicitly teach handwriting aligned with the Victorian Curriculum, ensuring that students develop clear and legible handwriting skills. This includes proper letter formation, spacing, and alignment, which are essential for effective written communication.

Daily Literacy Instruction

Our daily literacy block is carefully structured to include a mix of:

  • Direct Instruction: Teachers provide explicit teaching of literacy skills, using high impacting teaching methods and strategies to engage our students.

  • Guided Practice: Students work on literacy tasks with the support of the teacher, allowing for immediate feedback and targeted instruction. This is usually done either at a whole-class level, in small groups or one-to-one.

  • Independent Practice: Time is allocated for students to apply their literacy skills independently, reinforcing their learning and building confidence.

  • Collaborative Activities: Group work and discussions are used to promote literacy through peer interaction and cooperative learning.

Literacy Across the Curriculum

Literacy skills are not confined to English lessons; they are embedded across all subjects, including our Specialist areas and even in Mathematics lessons. We integrate literacy instruction into every part of the curriculum to ensure that students continually practice and enhance their reading, writing, and comprehension skills in various contexts.

Levels of Support

We support and extend learners in various ways to meet their individual needs. This usually includes:

  • Classroom Level (Core Instruction and Supports): Our teachers deliver a blended literacy approach within the classroom. This includes phonics, vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategies, shared reading, guided reading, and individualised strategies for specific students. Teachers adapt and differentiate learning tasks and incorporate various tools (like specific apps or decodable readers) to support and extend diverse learning needs.

  • Targeted Supplemental Instruction and Intervention: Our programs, such as the Oral Language program for early years and literacy intervention programs like MiniLit and MacqLit, provide targeted support. We also offer various extension programs to further strengthen student knowledge and skills. These programs use specific assessments to identify students who need additional help and provide structured interventions to enhance their literacy skills.

By embedding literacy in all areas of learning and using a balanced approach, we ensure that our students develop strong literacy skills that will serve them throughout their academic careers and beyond.

Victoria’s Approach to Teaching Reading in Prep - Year 2

Key Changes Announced by the Deputy Secretary

The Deputy Secretary recently announced key changes to Victoria’s approach to teaching reading which will be implemented in all Victorian government primary schools from 2025. These updates are aimed to give our students the most effective literacy education from the early years of primary school.

Teaching Reading Prep - 2

The essential elements of reading are the ‘Big 6’ (Konza, 2014), each of which should form part of a structured literacy approach:

  • Oral Language: Knowing and using spoken words to express knowledge, ideas, and emotions.

  • Phonemic Awareness: Knowledge of sounds (phonemes).

  • Phonics: Knowing the sound (phoneme) and letter (grapheme) relationships.

  • Fluency: Reading accurately and at an appropriate rate with expression.

  • Vocabulary: Understanding words in isolation and in context.

  • Comprehension: Making meaning from text which includes developing knowledge of grammar.

These are the foundational skills that have a reciprocal relationship and are all necessary to enable students to independently read and respond to increasingly complex fiction and non-fiction texts.

In the early years of primary school, the development of decoding skills will be supported through implementation of a program that includes a minimum of 25 minutes of daily explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness - using a systematic synthetic phonics approach.

This means teachers will use a clear scope and sequence. Students first learn to pronounce single letters and sounds and then blend them to form words. The approach also involves teaching students to segment sounds and spell words to make the link between reading and writing.

Decodable texts are used to practice the letter-sound combinations that students have been taught. This builds students’ skills so they develop automaticity and so can read words quickly and accurately.