The teaching of English at Chapman Primary supports our students to understand the three strands within the Australian Curriculum; Language, Literature and Literacy. Students progressively build essential skills, knowledge and understanding from Kindergarten to Year 6 to appreciate, respond to, analyse and create literature. This is achieved through the development of receptive modes (listening, reading and viewing) and productive modes (speaking, writing and creating).
The Balanced Literacy Program underpins all teaching approaches at Chapman Primary School. This program ensures that students receive high levels of scaffolding in initial instruction and modelling to less support as they approach mastery. The cyclical nature of learning ensures that all students move along this developmental continuum.
Teachers use First Steps Reading and Writing to inform their practice in reading and writing. First Steps is a research-based literacy resource that offers teachers an accurate means of assessing and monitoring children's competencies and progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening and viewing. This resource, and our approach, symbolises the interrelatedness of literacy learning. Comprehensive Assessment of Reading Strategies (CARS) and Strategies to Achieve Reading Success (STARS) are used from Years 4-6 as a diagnostic and instructional reading tool used to highlight reading strategies. We also use PM Benchmark Assessment texts to assess instructional and independent reading levels.
Chapman Primary School uses Words their Way texts to assist students in developing effective spelling strategies. It is a hands-on approach to spelling utilising word sorts to focus student's attention on critical features of words – sound, pattern and meaning. It caters for differentiated learning in the classroom. This approach coupled with a focus on high frequency words (Magic 100 and 200 words) from Kindergarten to year 2 and Spelling Matrices from Year 3-6 to develop independence and self-regulation ensures that students have a firm understanding of spelling features. We ensure that all students are resourceful spellers and are able to use a range of different strategies to spell different words.
For more information about the English content taught and sample portfolios at each year level, please see the Australian Curriculum Content Descriptions.