It's time for a change!
At Holy Family, we are deeply committed to ensuring our students learn to read-and read well! Reading is not only an essential skill for children to find success in school but to thrive in society as they grow up in our world. We are learning more about what research says about how children learn to read, how to make sure every student learns to read, and what to do when a child encounters difficulty with reading. This body of knowledge we are learning about and implementing is called ‘The Science of Reading’.
Research has shown that we do not acquire a reading brain in the same way that our brain is wired for speech. In order to learn to read, we first have to recognise the speech sounds and attribute them to symbols (letters or letter combinations) and these alongside word meanings, then form a connection in our brain which is stored in the brain’s letterbox (Professor Stanislas Dehaene researched this in 2013).
Certain instructional practices can strengthen these connections to embed the
letter-sound associations such as:
● blending and segmenting words as we are learning new code.
● Spelling and activating pronunciation to assist us with mapping symbols to speech
sound.
● Reading decodable texts to provide students with opportunities to practise
reading to develop fluency at word, sentence and text level.
If your family has been a part of Holy Family for some time, you will soon start to notice some changes in how we are teaching reading; if you’re new to our school, welcome and jump on board our exciting journey! It’s an exciting time to be in education as we align our instruction to the ‘Science of Reading’.
If you would like more information regarding Literacy learning at Holy Family Primary School, please contact our Literacy Leader, Natalie via email on
ndib@hfmw.catholic.edu.au