Literacy and Numeracy
Literacy
The learning experiences provided at Christ the King School assists students to become competent in English, and to use language effectively in a range of contexts.
Students from K-6 at Christ the King are actively engaged each day in literacy learning experiences involving talking, listening, reading and writing. The school ensures that students are provided with opportunities to develop their ideas, skills and understandings of English language and literature through a variety of experiences.
At Christ the King, we aspire to use the very best in reading research to close the gap for students who have struggled to learn to read in previous, more traditional settings.
Our results are powerful, as we skillfully align practices in using Synthetic Based Phonics, Explicit Teaching and the Heggarty Approach within the school, to offer proven methods of direct, systematic instruction and sync them with strong research-based comprehension and writing programs.
Together, these provide our students with a solid foundation, as well as the essential tools they need to achieve grade-level expectations in reading and writing. The School’s mission is to help students identify their strengths as learners, provide scaffolding to create a flourishing educational environment and foster reading goals and objectives that will ensure success in their lives ahead.
Shortly staff will begin extensive research into the Science of Teaching Reading and to prove how a strong literary base rooted in phonics and decoding will be the only way to effectively teach learner’s to read.
What Is the Science of Reading?
The term “science of reading” refers to the research that reading experts, especially cognitive scientists, have conducted on how we learn to read. This body of knowledge, over twenty years in the making, has helped debunk older methods of reading instruction that were based on tradition and observation, not evidence.
The Phonics Approach...
Based on the science of reading, the 2000 National Reading Panel Report stated that students need explicit instruction in the essential components of reading: Oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. The key differentiator between the science of reading approach and alternatives is phonics. The phonics approach teaches children to begin reading by manipulating the sounds in words, or “sounding out” words.
(Taken from: https://www.scilearn.com/the-science-of-reading-the-basics-and-beyond/)
Modern technology shows how the human brain learns to read.
All children benefit from explicit, systematic reading instruction using the six essential components of effective reading instruction. A formula introduced by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 known as ‘The Simple View of Reading’, demonstrates that Decoding and Language Comprehension are separate and necessary skills for Reading Comprehension. For example, a student with strong language and poor decoding will not achieve reading comprehension.
Teachers at Christ the King completed professional development with Dr Lorraine Hammond, building and understanding of the Science of Reading to further improve their teaching practice.
Numeracy
We use the West Australian Curriculum to guide our programme and planning in Mathematics.
We support students to become numerate by developing the knowledge and skills to use mathematics confidently across all learning areas. All teachers are working very hard to implement Launch, Explore and Summarise as a part of their maths teaching, which involves the language of maths, mental maths, problem solving and open-ended tasks.
Our students are encouraged to recognise mathematics in their everyday lives and they are explicitly taught a wide range of mathematical knowledge and skills.
They develop their mathematical knowledge and understanding by learning in context about the world around them. This knowledge is then integrated into other subject areas, which enables them to consolidate their wider learning.
Maths is an important lifelong skill. Students who are highly numerate will become successful learners at school and in their lives beyond school, giving them the attitudes and skills necessary for them to become active participants in their family, community and in the workforce.