Literacy @ City Beach Primary School

Thank you to the P&C for funding the purchase of reading books and materials that will align to the Letters and Sounds program which we are now using as a key instructional tool for the explicit teaching of phonics at City Beach Primary School.  Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the UK Department for Education and Skills in 2007. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. With the funds from the P&C we have purchased sets of Dandelion Readers and Big Cat Phonics to support the L&S lessons that teachers will be delivering in classes.

Today all staff from the early childhood classes ( Kindergarten to Year 2 ) completed the first day of professional learning on the L&S program. This means that everyone will have an in-depth understanding and knowledge of L&S to enable us to maintain high fidelity in the delivery of this program in our teaching each day, across the school K-2. Our L&S professional learning will be completed next Wednesday and teachers are looking forward to working collaborative plan and implement lessons. Alongside of the L&S program we will be running a targeted intervention program based on L&S assessments. Identified students will attend short bursts of targeted small group sessions with Mrs Nicola Hope-Johnson from Monday to Wednesday. If your child has been identified as benefitting from this support and will be involved in this program, you will receive a note about these sessions next week.

For a little more information about Letters and Sounds please click on the links below.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/what-is-letters-and-sounds/

The inclusion of the Letters & Sounds program aligns to one area of our new City Beach Primary School Business Plan 2021 – 2024 under the improvement Driver – Confident Curious and Creative Learners, where each of us… love learning, enjoy coming to school and supported to approach challenges with energy, effort and resilience.

It strongly aligns to the following initiatives supported by the key strategies to support the delivery of this driver:

Know the needs of every student.

  • Systematically collect and analyse student data to inform planning and teaching and monitor progress in reading, writing and numeracy.
  • Enrich student support in literacy and numeracy to target gaps or enrichment.

High Fidelity Teaching

  • Embed a school wide self-reflective culture focussed on improving classroom teaching.
  • Strengthen support for staff through professional collaboration: sharing, feedback, coaching and mentoring.
  • Engage in a professional learning plan that aligns to our strategic direction.
  • Connected practice using evidence based whole school approaches in literacy and numeracy.

The whole school also engaged in the Talk for Writing professional learning program on the School Development Day last Tuesday. This professional learning is complimented by coaching provided by Ashlee Booker our Room 3 teacher. These initiatives also align to the strategies outlined above in our Business Plan. The City Beach Primary School Business Plan 2021 – 2024 has been made available for community consultation and feedback. We are excited to be able to finalise the plan and publish by the start of Semester 2. We are looking forward to implementing many improvements, programs and initiatives that are outlined in our strategic direction: The CBPS  Business Plan 2021-2024, and also to sharing the journey with you.