Literacy

At Manifold Heights Primary School, we understand that the development of strong literacy skills for all students is essential to support all learning and we use evidence-based methods and approaches to ensure all students succeed in this area.

Explicit and systematic teaching of fundamental knowledge and skills is the pillar of our approach at Mano. We aim to provide the best possible environment for all students to develop the ability to read, write and understand the rules that govern the English language.  Teaching is based on research and evidence-based approaches including a daily Structured Literacy Approach to teaching basic skills in Phonics and Phonemic awareness, while differentiating for all students needs through their engagement in a daily Reading and Writing workshop.

The Ron Yoshimoto Orton Gillingham approach and scope and sequence is used as the basis for structured teaching of encoding and decoding P – Grade 2.  This includes:

• Explicit teaching of phonological awareness and phonics
• Teaching of irregular/high frequency words
• Guided practice to improve fluency
• Use of decodable texts to develop decoding and encoding of the English spelling code 
• Take home books for students to read daily with families
• Vocabulary development (including morphology from P – 6)

Explicit teaching of comprehension strategies occurs through P –Grade 6 including;

• Summarising
• Questioning
• Inferring
• Visualising
• Predicting
• Making connections
• Synthesising

Lesson Structure:

A Reading and Writing workshop based on best practice approaches is used as the basis for lesson planning and includes explicit whole group mini lessons and differentiated small group activities daily, with the approaches used dependent upon the needs of students in the class.  These include;

• Guided, Modelled or Shared Reading and Writing
• Independent Reading and Writing
• Reciprocal Teaching
• Literacy Circles
• Close Reading
• Language Experience

   

As a whole school we celebrate Literacy and Book Week each year and offer the students the opportunity to participate in a range of activities including our Book Parade, writing competitions, visits from authors and sharing published texts with other grades across the school.