At CFPS, our Literacy program combines the latest research and Victorian Curriculum to develop students’ reading, writing and oral language skills. Our programs are designed to cater to a wide range of student abilities, and our teaching and learning model enables us to target instruction to each student’s point of need.
At CFPS, we follow a reading model that is built upon current best practice and research to deliver instruction in the Big 6 areas of literacy – Oral Language, Phonics, Phonological Awareness, Fluency, and Comprehension. As students enter our school in the early years, instruction is more aligned with the ‘Learning to Read’ skills, and as such students engage with our Structured Synthetic Phonics programs, as well as engaging in whole class picture book studies. As students learn to master the alphabetic code in the early years, the emphasis on instruction moves into developing reading fluency and comprehension. Throughout the middle years and upper years, teachers explicitly model reading fluency and comprehension strategies through targeted lessons, language experiences and novel studies. By the end of their time at CFPS, students will be able to use ‘Reading to Learn’ skills. Throughout their time at CFPS, students will participate in Reading Workshops which will be targeted to their instructional point of need (broadly speaking – decoding, fluency or comprehension). Below is a visual representation of our instructional approach to reading moving from Foundation to Year 6.
At CFPS, we utilise several programs to help develop students’ writing skills. In the early years, students use our Structured Synthetic Phonics programs to develop their alphabetic knowledge, in combination with the Peggy Leggo handwriting techniques, and the Colourful Semantics program to develop their knowledge of sentence structures. Teachers also utilise the explicit teaching components from the SMART Spelling program to develop students’ knowledge of spelling patterns. As students’ move through the middle and senior years, teachers also utilise strategies from the Six Traits of Writing to develop their students as authors, as well as instruction in Morphology and Etymology to help develop their vocabulary. This is combined with strategies from the Writing Revolution to target writing instruction to student point of need through workshops (broadly speaking – word level, sentence level, paragraph level and multi paragraph writing). All of our students will receive instruction in various text types, brainstorming and idea generation, spelling and grammar to help them become complete writers. Students regularly test their skills by participating in Big Writes, which they then use to reflect on their own writing skills and set goals for their improvement.