At Dana Street Primary School students learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose.
We have high expectations that all students will grow and achieve their full potential in their Literacy learning. Literacy competence is a foundation for success in life, and we place a strong emphasis on explicit teaching and structured lessons. Our teachers work in teams to co-create rich lessons for Reading, Writing and Word Studies. Engaging sensory activities are utilised in the junior years for Reading Groups. Focussed teaching groups and Literature Circles are used in the middle and senior units.
Our whole school Instructional Model can be seen in practice in every classroom, where lessons include learning intentions, co-constructed success criteria, explicit modelling and differentiated content driven by data and individual learning goals to ensure all students are challenged. The Writer’s Notebook is an exciting new endeavour for our staff and students this year and provides a place for writers to store their seeds (ideas) for future germination! Students learn to make their own connections and schema for the spelling of words as part of our Word Study program. Technology is used as appropriate within Literacy lessons, with students accessing a range of applications and devices, to enhance and deepen their learning.
Home Reading takes place across all year levels and allows students time to practise reading skills that have been modelled for them at school.