Literacy
At Kingsbury Primary School, the major goal of our English curriculum is to provide a teaching and learning program that is challenging and appropriate to the needs of all students. We aim to foster in our students, a love of literature and a desire to read, write and communicate effectively and with confidence.
Teachers adopt a “Whole School Approach” which ensures that there is consistency in teaching and learning across the school. We carefully plan our program using the Victorian Curriculum as our guideline. The Victorian Curriculum F-10 incorporates the Australian Curriculum and reflects Victorian standards and priorities. It provides a single, coherent and comprehensive set of common achievement standards, which schools use to plan student-learning programs, assess student progress and report to parents.
The English program at Kingsbury involves the use of a variety of instructional approaches incorporating the explicit instructional model and expects reading, writing, speaking, and listening to be implemented daily.
Our program caters for the individual needs of children (establishing Individual Learning Plans), enabling them to experience success and a sense of progress and self-worth. The Reading and Writing programs teach children at the point of need and include the planning and implementation of authentic learning experiences to nurture curiosity in our students. The learning tasks are purposeful, clearly defined, differentiated and challenging.
Explicit Instruction is used for developing and improving students’ oral language, speaking and listening skills, phonological knowledge and phonemic awareness, reading strategies, comprehension, word knowledge, vocabulary and fluency.
In Writing, explicit instruction is used for developing and improving student’s writing across a variety of genres, as well as correct use of grammar and punctuation.
Many students at Kingsbury are bi-lingual or multi-lingual and are learning English as an additional language. We build English language proficiency for these students through the classroom program and an English as an Additional language withdrawal program. Students are also encouraged to attend Language School where appropriate.