Reading Update

Our commitment to implementing structured literacy to improve student outcomes is broken down into practical steps that provide teachers with strategies to support each student at their personal level. As supporting individual learning styles is something we do so well at GSS, sounds easy, right? Not quite!

As soon as a commitment is made to improve something, the first question becomes how will we do it? And the second, how will we know if it’s working? This semester, teachers have been exploring evidence-based ways of working that will provide measurable outcomes for students with the first focus being phonemic awareness. Phonemes are the individual sounds that make up words. For example, 3 sounds make up cat, c-a-t and 3 sounds make up this, th-i-s because 2 letters, t and h, make one sound, “th”. With the focus on understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds, or phonemes, students learn to identify, blend, segment and manipulate these sounds in words as the first step in decoding. The sounds letters make is not taught in a memorised traditional alphabet pattern but in a systematic order that supports students to apply what they learn sooner.

Exploring books and being read to is still a wonderful way to engage early readers without spending money. We will send home our Class Newsletter and Parent Calendar in the first week of Term 3. Don’t forget to find time for a trip to the Gympie Regional Library over the break – so many books, so little time!

Jodie Sargeant

Expert Reading Team Leader