Literacy
Literacy
Foundation to Year 2
At Torquay College we follow evidence-based approaches to Literacy that are aligned with the Science of Reading Research.
These approaches include: Phonics Plus, Heggerty, Spelling Mastery, Teach Like a Champion, The Writing Revolution, the exploration of the morphology and etymology of words, the building of core knowledge and development of a rich and robust vocabulary instruction through text study.
This helps to further enhance the students comprehension of texts.
We explore our vocabulary through both our literacy and Humanities units, which correlate with each other to ensure that students are exposed to concepts throughout each term.
In Years F-2 we have 60 minutes daily explicit Phonics Plus lessons, which is a systematic-synthetic phonics approach to the teaching and learning of decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling/writing), as well as phonological and phonemic awareness activities.
Through Phonics Plus, the students also engage in daily fluency routine practices including coral, echo partner reading.
We teach ‘Heart Words’ in conjunction with this, which are irregular or high-frequency words that students must learn before the specific sound concept has been taught (Eg. my, was).
Students are supported with their Phonics Plus lessons through decodable texts, which they take home weekly to reinforce concepts learnt at school.
Students also engage in 60 minutes of text study, where they explore texts to further enhance their knowledge of vocabulary and comprehension.
These texts are closely linked with the Core Knowledge units, incorporating Humanities as cross curricular links.
Years 3 to 6
The Year 3 -6 classes engage in daily Spelling Mastery sessions, which focuses on the etymology and morphology of words.
At Torquay College, students engage in novel studies for vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction, as well as the teaching of grammar, sentence and text/genre level writing.
Many of the novel studies are linked to the Core Knowledge units, also incorporating the Humanities as cross curricular links.
We focus on the five keys to reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Writing instruction is embedded throughout the literacy block and other areas of the curriculum.
This includes explicit handwriting and typing lessons, sentence dictation to further enhance students knowledge and practice of phonics and morphology codes, as well as grammar, knowledge of vocabulary, sentence structure, text structure, audience and idea generation.
Students also write about what they learn and read across subjects.
The literacy lessons at Torquay College are very scaffolded, ensuring students have opportunities to watch the teacher model, participate while being heavily guided by the teacher and then participate in an independent activity.