Literacy
Literacy at Parkside
Literacy at Parkside provides a structured and comprehensive approach to literacy development, supporting the needs of all students.
Teachers implement our Literacy Agreement to ensure consistency and continuity across year levels. Aligned with the Australian Curriculum. Our teachers use a Three-Layer Model for Literacy Teaching: whole-class instruction, targeted small group support, and intensive individual intervention.
The Big 6 of Reading
The Big 6 Literacy program emphasises the following components of reading, which are crucial for literacy success:
- Oral Language: Developing strong communication skills as a foundation for reading and writing.
- Phonological Awareness: Understanding the sound structures of language, which is essential for decoding words.
- Phonics: Teaching the relationship between sounds and their corresponding letters or groups of letters.
- Vocabulary: Expanding word knowledge to improve comprehension and expression.
- Fluency: Developing the ability to read with speed, accuracy and proper expression.
- Comprehension: Enhancing the ability to understand and interpret text.
Reading at Parkside
We are deeply committed to teaching every child how to read. Learning to read is an essential skill for success in school, to function in society and to experience the joy that reading brings.
Rigorous research on how students learn to read, the essential knowledge and skills for reading, and the most effective teaching methods all inform our evidence-based reading instruction. This research is called the Science of Reading and informs us that the process of reading must be explicitly and systematically taught to ensure success for every child.
Explicit and Systematic Phonics Instruction
All learners focus on acquiring the skills to ‘crack the code’ of our alphabet and the speech sounds of English. To ‘crack the code’ children must first learn to decode (sound out) words before they can understand the meaning of text. Therefore, we follow the Departments Spelling scope and Sequence from Reception to Year 6.
Decodable Readers
The Department for Education recommends a move away from levelled texts to decodable readers. Ongoing research shows that levelled readers rely on the memorisation of whole words and guesswork to develop reading skills, which is known to be much less effective as a teaching method.
Children learning to read will bring home letters, words, phrases and sentences that only use the code (letters and sounds) they have been taught. By building on the child’s emerging skills for segmenting and blending, decodable texts facilitate the ability to recognise words quickly and easily. As students learn more of the code, they will bring home short decodable readers that contain the letter combinations they know.
Students will not need to change their readers every day. They will keep the same reader to practise for several days. This repeated practise enables a child to read a text accurately, fluently and with expression. This can help to eliminate the frustrations of learning to read and make it a more enjoyable experience overall and as we know a child that enjoys learning to read is much better placed to excel at learning.
Each year parents of Reception and Year 1 families will be invited to attend a reading session in Term 1 to learn more about our approach.
English as an Additional Language or Dialect
Our English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) program provides tailored support for students who are learning English, ensuring every child can access the curriculum and thrive.
Through explicit literacy instruction and differentiated learning, we empower students to develop confidence and competence in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Our dedicated EALD teacher and staff work in partnership with families to foster inclusive learning environments where all students build strong literacy foundations. We are committed to nurturing lifelong learners who can communicate effectively and participate fully in our global society.
