At the beginning of every year I gather and analyse a variety of data sets around our students’ academic achievement that inform our ‘next steps’ in our whole-school focus. Over the past two years we have focussed on writing, this year we have shifted this focus to reading. We have a strong belief and passion that all of our students are readers, and in the words of Dr David Yoder ‘No student is too anything to be able to read and write’. As a whole-school we will be targeting our professional learnings around the development and teaching of reading.

For many of our learners, reading is a shared experience with a strong focus on the interaction and communication between child and adult. Once a child is interested in pictures and words in a book (or on the wall or screen) focus shifts to naming pictures, letters, words and familiar items. From here we can focus on reading such as sight words, decoding words and reading comprehension. At home you can support your child’s reading development by sharing and talking about a variety of different texts, texts can be books, junk mail, movies, posters, television and even people and conversations. The most important thing to do is, relax and enjoy your time together as you interact and read.

Reading is fun!

At parade recognition is given to students who are demonstrating growth in their skills, it has been awesome to see student’s growth in communication and literacy skills. I have shared some photos that Senior students have been taking at parade.

Yours in education, Shellie.