Treendale Primary School has a whole school approach to teaching English, through the embedding of various evidence-based programs into literacy instruction. Teaching and learning also takes into account the requirements of of the WA Curriculum. Students work independently and cooperatively to build their knowledge and skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing.
Reading strategies and comprehension are explicitly taught during Shared Reading and Guided Reading lessons, providing students the opportunity to receive targeted instruction at their level. The high quality synthetic phonics program Letters and Sounds is taught from Kindergarten to Year 2 and the structured synthetic phonics approach PLD is used in Years 3 – 6. The school is currently embarking on a professional learning journey to adopt Talk 4 Writing, an oral language approach to improving writing.
Education Assistants facilitate Tier 2 intervention programs using the Letters and Sounds program and Macqlit to provide additional literacy instruction to those students requiring extra support.
Home Reading is valued and promoted across the school, with students borrowing reading books and library books each week. Students are encouraged to read at home each night in order to develop reading fluency. Home Readers are not intended to be challenging. Instead, the purpose is to use these texts to consolidate classroom learning and apply skills independently to unfamiliar texts. Reading progress is tracked through ‘Rocketing to Reading’ log sheets, which students complete and return for a chance to win class and individual rewards.
