At St. John Vianney’s Primary School, literacy is central to all learning and staff are committed to implementing evidence based programs which have a positive influence on the learning progress of all students. All classes implement a daily two-hour literacy block which comprises of Reading &Viewing, Writing and Speaking & Listening.

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We follow the ‘Science of Reading’ (SOR) approach to the teaching and learning of reading. The SOR refers to a large body of research and evidence about how the brain learns to read and how educators should teach reading to ensure maximum outcomes for all students.

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Here at SJV, we use ‘Sunshine Decodable Readers’ and the associated scope and sequence of letters and sounds to complement our structured, systematic synthetic phonics approach to teaching reading in the junior years. This method of reading helps children to learn the relationships between the 44 speech sounds (phonemes) of spoken language and the letter symbols or spelling choices (graphemes) of the written language.  Being able to match the speech sounds with their corresponding letter symbol or symbols helps children to simultaneously learn to read and spell words. Research tells us that a sound knowledge of phonemes and graphemes in the early years are a strong predictor of a child’s reading ability in later years.

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In years 3-6, there is a strong focus on ‘reading to learn’. Once a student has learned how to ‘crack the alphabetic code’ and is proficient in decoding, emphasis is placed on extending students ability to comprehend texts. Teachers in the middle and senior school concentrate on developing student’s skills in this area.

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Our main aims for essential learning in literacy are for students to:

• read with fluency and understanding

• speak with fluency, expression and confidence

• develop and extend their vocabulary

• communicate their ideas in writing

• develop their multi modal communication skills

 

At St John Vianney’s, we use the ‘The Writing Revolution’ (TWR) approach to explicitly teach evidence based strategies to our students. TWR is based on the Hochman Method which begins with explicit instruction in how to write sentences, through to compositions. We know students need explicit instruction in writing, beginning in Foundation, and that sentences are the building blocks of all writing. We use The Writing Revolution method to enable students to master the skills that are essential to become competent writers.

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The school recognises that for many of our students, English is their second language so appropriate teaching strategies are applied to support those students with their learning of English.
 
We are fortunate to have specialist Literacy Interventionists and Literacy Leader who assist students requiring additional support in Reading, Writing and Listening & Speaking. This intensive instruction allows students to work with a specialist teacher in a small group setting in addition to classroom teaching.

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Students in years 3-6 who continue to require additional support with their decoding skills receive small group intervention using decodable readers for older students. Students are able to work in small groups where they receive explicit teaching in Literacy. 
SJV runs a Modelled Reading Program on Monday – Wednesday in Terms 2 -4 beginning at 8:30 until 8:45am. This allows students who would benefit from extra reading practice the opportunity to work with a tutor or mentor.  Often the tutors or mentors are senior students or parents/ parishioners volunteering their time.