English

At St Benedict's Primary School we believe that Literacy is at the heart of learning in all areas. Literacy involves a complex and flexible set of skills and strategies to communicate in a particular context with a particular purpose. Students can develop mathematical literacy, religious literacy, scientific literacy, etc.

Core Curriculum

At the core of Literacy is the ability of students to be literate in the English language. The Australian Curriculum: English Foundation to Year 10 is organised into three interrelated strands that support students' growing understanding and use of Standard Australian English (English). Together the three strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking and writing. The three strands are:

• Language: Knowing about the English language
• Literature: Understanding, appreciating, responding to, analysing and creating literature
• Literacy: Expanding the repertoire of English usage.

Teaching & Learning Opportunities

At St Benedict’s we implement a Structured Literacy approach across the school.

Throughout Kindergarten - Year 2, the InitiaLit program is delivered. This is a whole class literacy program that incorporates a synthetic approach to the teaching of phonics alongside a rich literature and vocabulary component. 

We also offer the MiniLit (Years 1-2) and MacqLit programs (Years 3-6) as intensive reading support programs for small groups of students who have been identified for inclusion using a variety of assessment data.

In Years 3-6, the Literacy program is also aligned to the Science of Learning (Reading) and focuses on the five essential components of the Simple View of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The spelling component of the program is underpinned by the ‘Effective Approach to Spelling’ and writing instruction is currently being reviewed to follow the principles of the Hochman Method (The Writing Revolution) which emphasises explicit instruction, sentences as building blocks of all writing, teaching embedded within curriculum content, grammar taught in the context of student writing and the importance of planning and revising in the writing process.