English

English study is mandatory in NSW from Kindergarten to Year 12.

Students learn about the English language through written, spoken and visual texts of increasing complexity as they progress through their schooling.

An understanding of the English language is central to how we communicate and essential for intellectual, social and emotional development.

The study of English should develop a love of literature and learning and be challenging and enjoyable. It develops skills to enable students to experiment with ideas and expression, to become active, independent and lifelong learners, to work with each other and to reflect on their learning.

Literacy programs

A selection of literacy programs that are used from Kindergarten to Year 2.

Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a school program offering help to Year 1 children with Reading and Writing, the details are:

• Selected children take part in Reading Recovery for approximately 20 weeks.
• A trained Reading Recovery teacher works with each student for 30 minutes every day.

This individual support is additional to classroom Reading and Writing lessons.

Language, Learning and Literacy Program

Kindergarten and Stage 1 classes participate in the very successful Language, Learning and Literacy (L3) program. This program is a research based classroom intervention targeting text, reading and writing.

In small groups of three to four, students receive explicit instruction in reading and writing strategies from the classroom teacher.

They then rotate to independent individual or group tasks while the teacher supports the next small group.

This occurs in the daily Literacy session. Staff receive ongoing professional development to ensure that they are up to date with the latest approaches to teaching literacy in the early years.

Jolly Phonics

Along with L3 program, Kinder students are also exposed to Jolly Phonics.

This is a child centred approach to teaching the 42 letter sounds and uses fun actions to motivate and reinforce learning.

The sounds are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically) and this allows students to begin to build words as early as possible.

The five skills taught in Jolly Phonics are:

• learning the letter sounds
• learning letter formation
• blending
• segmenting 
• tricky words.