Marong Primary School’s English program is based on the teaching practices and high impact teaching strategies as outlined by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. Every classroom has a daily two-hour Literacy block consisting of one hour of reading and one hour of writing, with speaking and listening taught across the 2 hours.
READING
Reading and Viewing involves students understanding, interpreting, critically analysing, reflecting upon, and enjoying written and visual, print and non-print texts. We continuously monitor our students’ reading progress and set learning goals based on our ongoing assessment. We assess students formally using The Fountas and Pinnell Benchmarking System.
This researched and evidence based benchmarking system is designed to support the child's development of self-initiating actions she/he will be able to apply to a range of texts of similar difficulty. With daily teaching, the teacher helps the child climb the ladder of text difficulty with success. The goal of guided reading is to bring the child to the level of complex texts appropriate for the grade, in doing so, teaching must begin with where the child is able to engage with some success, so that there is a point of contact, thereby engaging the child's development of a self-extending system for processing texts.
We provide targeted reading intervention where appropriate through The Fountas & Pinnell Levelled Literacy Intervention System (LLI) is an intensive, small-group, supplementary literacy intervention for students who find reading and writing difficult. The goal of LLI is to lift the literacy achievement of students who are not achieving grade-level expectations in reading. The LLIsystems are designed to:
WRITING
Writing is a complex process that involves planning, composing, editing, revising and publishing. It involves using appropriate language for particular purposes and expressing and representing ideas and experiences. Our Writing program at Marong Primary School is developed in response to ongoing student assessment results. We follow the Seven Steps to Writing Success framework to deliver our writing sessions.
The seven steps are like building blocks to great writing. Isolating writing skills into individual steps ensures students don’t get ‘bogged down’ with writing the whole piece. They gain confidence in each building block, and then they pull it all together to become creative and engaging writers.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Speaking and Listening refers to the formal and informal ways spoken language is used to convey meaning. It involves the teaching of language and how spoken language changes according to the situation. Speaking and Listening also involves the development of active-listening strategies and an understanding of the conventions of different spoken texts. At Marong Primary School, we encourage students to share their ideas and to value the contributions of others.
