At St Bernadette’s Primary School, we believe English is the foundation of all learning. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening are taught in line with the Victorian Curriculum and embedded within the Catholic Education Melbourne’s, Horizons of Hope framework.
At St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary School we are committed to providing our students with a strong foundation in literacy through evidence-based practices informed by the Science of Reading. The Science of Reading refers to the extensive research and evidence surrounding how children learn to read and the most effective instructional methods to support their reading development.
READING
We recognize that reading is a complex skill that involves the integration of various components, including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Our approach to literacy instruction is designed to systematically and explicitly address each of these components, ensuring that our students become proficient readers. Teaching is focused on all aspects as outlined by the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 and guided by MACS 2030 and the Horizons of Hope framework developed by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools.
Scarborough’s Reading Rope Diagram
Phonemic Awareness:
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds, called phonemes. Students in Prep engage in daily Phonemic Awareness lessons, using the Heggerty Curriculum.
This program focuses on the 8 phonemic aware skills, along with two additional skills of letter and sound recognition and language awareness:
- Rhyming
- Onset fluency
- Blending
- Isolating final and medial phonemes (sounds),
- Segmenting
- Adding phonemes
- Deleting phoneme and
- Substituting phoneme
For more information about Heggerty and how you can help your child at home please visit: https://heggerty.org/parents/
Phonics:
In Years Prep to Year 2 we have 30 minutes daily explicit UFLI Foundations (University of Florida Literacy Institute) 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. 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 (e.g. my, was). Students are supported with their UFLI lessons through decodable texts, which they take home weekly to reinforce concepts learnt at school.
Vocabulary:
Explicit vocabulary instruction is integrated into our teaching practices. We believe that a robust vocabulary is essential for comprehension and expressive language development. Teachers provide explicit instruction on word meanings, context clues, and word relationships, equipping students with a rich and diverse vocabulary that supports their reading and communication skills.
Fluency:
Fluency refers to the ability to read with accuracy, speed, and expression. Our fluency sessions focus on repeated readings of short passages. This practice enhances word accuracy, expression, and comprehension skills, helping students become more fluent readers who can read with ease and understanding.
Comprehension:
Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. We teach explicit comprehension strategies to help students understand, analyze, and interpret texts effectively. These strategies include making predictions, visualizing, summarizing, asking questions, and making connections. By explicitly teaching and modelling these strategies, we empower students to become active and proficient readers who can deeply engage with a wide range of texts.
Our approach to literacy instruction is grounded in the latest research and best practices, ensuring that our students receive high-quality teaching that addresses the foundational skills needed for reading success.
DECODABLE TEXTS
In our early years we use decodable texts to teach reading. Decodable texts are books that are written for the beginning reader and contain the specific grapheme-phoneme correspondences students have learned. This provides learners with the opportunity to use their developing segmenting and blending skills to read words in order to develop automaticity, or the ability to recognise words quickly and effortlessly, and experience independent reading success.
Decodable books encourage children to sound out words using decoding strategies rather than guessing from pictures or predicting from other cues. They can be introduced once beginning readers have learned some simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences and can blend from left to right. The English language has a rather complicated sound system, and this must be taught explicitly for all children to be able to read fluently. The decodability of books will change as children progress and increase their knowledge of the code.
SPELLING MASTERY
Students in Years 3-6 learn to spell using Spelling Mastery which is a differentiated spelling program. The program uses an explicit, teacher-directed method of teaching called, Direct Instruction. Spelling Mastery is an effective, research-proven spelling program that teaches students the strategies they need to become successful, life-long spellers.
Spelling Mastery helps students to understand the relationship between sounds, word parts and spelling patterns and encourages them to become proficient writers. Through Spelling Mastery, students learn to spell in three ways:
- Students learn words using a phonemic approach. This sound-symbol method teaches students predictable spellings for different sounds.
- Students learn using a whole-word approach. This whole-word method teaches students common, irregularly-spelled words. For example, words like friend, answer and people, whose spellings can’t be figured out.
- Students learn rules about how to put different word parts together. These word parts are all called morphographs. Once they have learned to spell a few morphographs, students can mix them up to spell many words. They also learn the rules of putting morphographs together.
READING YEARS 3-6
English and Ochre Education:
Ochre Education is a not-for-profit organization that aims to improve student outcomes and close educational gaps in Australia. Ochre Education works with teachers to develop and support a curriculum that’s sequenced for learning. Ochre Education provides a library of free, evidence-based teaching resources that teachers can use across Australia.
At St. Bernadette’s we use Ochre Education’s novel study units to enhance English reading instruction for students in Years 3 to 6. These units provide comprehensive, evidence-based resources that align with the Victorian Curriculum, focusing on developing students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary, and critical thinking skills.
Each unit centers around a carefully selected novel, offering a learning sequence, discussion prompts, and activities designed to engage students deeply with the text. The structured approach encourages close reading and thoughtful analysis, fostering a deeper understanding of literature. These units integrate writing tasks that allow students to respond to their reading, further reinforcing their literacy skills.
By incorporating these targeted programs and approaches, we strive to minimize cognitive load, optimize learning capacity, and foster a supportive learning environment for our students. Through deliberate practice, repetition, and gradual skill development, we empower our students to become confident learners who can effectively apply their knowledge and skills in various academic contexts.
Assessment in English:
Regular assessment is integral to our program, with a focus on reading fluency, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and decoding skills. These assessments provide valuable insights into students’ progress and guide our tailored instruction to meet individual learning needs effectively.
WRITING
At St Bernadette’s writing is taught using structured approaches, such as The Writing Revolution (TWR), which emphasizes the development of clear and coherent writing skills through explicit instruction. The approach begins with teaching sentence-level skills, such as crafting complete sentences and combining ideas using conjunctions, to build a strong foundation. Teachers focus on modelling and guiding students to construct increasingly complex sentences, eventually progressing to paragraph and essay writing.
Writing tasks are often integrated into content areas, allowing students to develop critical thinking and deepen their understanding of topics. Collaborative activities, such as sentence expansion and shared writing, are used to reinforce skills, while regular feedback helps students refine their work. This approach ensures students learn to express their ideas logically and effectively, a key skill across the curriculum.
ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE (EAL)
English as an Additional Language (EAL) students come from a background where English is not the first language. It includes newly or recently arrived students from overseas, with languages other than English and students born in Australia. A student is defined as being from a language background other than English, if either the student’s mother or father speaks another language besides English.
An EAL Curriculum has been developed to support the learning of English. Teachers follow the Victorian Curriculum English scope and sequence, but will also refer to the EAL curriculum to ensure those students are being supported, and work is properly differentiated based on students’ language proficiency levels.
Victorian Curriculum
St. Bernadette’s Learning and Teaching programs are guided by the Victorian Curriculum 2.0