Teaching & Learning - Literacy
River Valley 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 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. In Year 3-6 we move onto Words Their Way which is a teacher-directed, student-centred approach to vocabulary growth and spelling development where students engage in a variety of sound, pattern and meaning activities, sorting pictures and words.
Words Their Way enables teachers to assess, clearly identify and document each student's spelling stage, group students with common needs and tailor activities to improve students’ spelling knowledge.
Education Assistants facilitate Tier 2 intervention programs using the Letters and Sounds program 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.