English involves three areas or modes.
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Reading
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Writing
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Speaking & Listening
Within these areas, students deal with different kinds of reading or sources of information, including media, and writing and speaking for different purposes and audiences. Students come to understand that correct spelling, grammar and presentation are essential to successfully communicating their message or story.
Junior, Middle and Senior School students undertake activities according to their level of development.
Sound Waves – A whole-school strategy
Implemented across the whole school is Sound Waves, a reading and spelling program based on phonemic awareness.
Learning strategies to decode and encode the written word, inspiring logical and lateral higher-order thinking which students thrive on, by teaching other important concepts, such as rhyming, tense, prefixes, suffixes, Greek and Latin roots and ultimately leading to a genuine understanding of the mechanics of our language.
VCOP and Big Write – A whole-school strategy
One of the improvement targets for our school is to further improve and develop student writing. In order to do this we have started a project called “Big Write” and “VCOP”. It is based on the fast, fun and lively teaching of ‘writing voice’ through oral communication. It gives students the confidence and the understanding to develop control of a higher level writing voice without requiring the technical knowledge of syntax and grammar. Below is link to information for parents about the program.
Other English Programs we use at Beechworth Primary School:
Reading Recovery
The Reading Recovery Program is an accelerative one-on-one literacy program targeted at Year 1 students, who have been identified as experiencing reading and writing difficulties. The program provides comprehensive assessment to determine each student’s strengths and weaknesses and then uses this to deliver individually designed lessons for 30 minutes each day. The program usually runs between 12-20 weeks for each student. The program is taught by an experienced teacher who has specialist training in the areas of reading, writing and oral language.
Library
Students at Beechworth Primary School have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of literacy by borrowing books and attending 45 minute library lessons per week. Students are encouraged to develop an appreciation for reading and lifelong learning by being exposed to new pictures story books, the yearly shortlisted books and a variety of virtual learning sessions, available through the school’s Polycom.