Literacy Program

The Literacy Program at Rose Park Primary School provides a structured and comprehensive approach to literacy development, supporting the diverse needs of all students. Teachers implement our Literacy Agreement to ensure consistency and continuity across year levels. Aligned with the Australian Curriculum, the program emphasises explicit teaching, regular assessment, and high-impact strategies to foster confident communicators. Our teachers use a Three-Layer Model for Literacy Teaching: whole-class instruction, targeted small group support, and intensive individual intervention.

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

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 Initialit Reception – Year 2, and Promoting Literacy Development (PLD) Years 3-6 sequence of phonics, progressing from simple to complex.

InitiaLit R-2: This is an evidence-based program that focuses on foundational literacy skills. It is designed to support early reading and writing development through explicit instruction in phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For more information on the InitiaLit program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtxB_LJtcyQ

PLD (Promoting Literacy Development) Yr 3-6: This program integrates speech pathology and education to enhance literacy skills. It focuses on phonological awareness, phonics, and oral language skills, providing a multi-sensory approach to learning.

For more information on the PLD program: https://pld-literacy.org/decodable-readers/

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. Decodables texts support students to gradually master their decoding skills and progressively challenge them through a series of InitiaLit A to P levelled readers.
Alongside the use of decodable reading books, ‘tricky words’, ‘sight words’ and ‘high frequency words’ are introduced and explained with the support of the child’s teacher. Examples of irregular/tricky words include ‘you’, ‘do’, ‘said’, ‘water’, ‘was’, ‘people’ and ‘one’.

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.

How to use decodable readers with your child
Step 1: Every decodable book a child picks up should contain specific letter-sound knowledge. This is most often found on the front inside cover of the book.
Step 2: Practise blending newly learned sounds so students can read words found in the text featuring these sounds. Children read these quickly without sounding out each sound, as this promotes fluency and better demonstrates the purpose of sounds in the creation of a whole word.
Step 3: Time is taken to introduce tricky words. Students practise these words and say them as fast as they can. This also aids in fluency while reading the book.
Step 4: While reading, students may be encouraged to point to words and move their fingers along the page. This aids in blending sounds and helps them keep track of their reading. If an error is made, students are asked to blend the sounds again. Teachers may need to re-read some sentences out loud to students to model the correct blending of the sounds and proper expression.
Step 5: Decodable texts encourage students to respond to the text to check for comprehension. Students may be asked targeted questions (What, When, Where, Who, How, Why?) relating to the story itself or more open-ended questions such as if they liked the book and their reasoning or what their favourite part was.

Helping children to decode
● Track your finger under the word and say each sound the letter or letter string represents, blending the sounds as you go. /l/ /igh/ /t/ /b/ /oa/ /t/.
● Once your child has blended the sounds together and says the word, prompt them to read it again fluently. If they cannot blend the word, tell them the whole word.
● Echo read – say small phrases and sentences and the child echoes back.
● Choral read – read together at the same time.

Read other books to your child
It is important for parents/carers to continue reading quality stories or books of interest to children. This will support vocabulary development, world and topic knowledge, and awareness of language patterns that are not part of everyday speech.

EALD and Literacy at Rose Park Primary School

At Rose Park Primary School, we celebrate our culturally and linguistically diverse community. 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.