At Bayswater Primary School, our goal is for every student to become a confident, fluent and capable reader, writer and communicator.
Our approach to literacy is informed by research from the Science of Reading and Learning Science and aligns with the Victorian Department of Education's Victorian Reading Position and Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0).
We explicitly teach the knowledge and skills students need to become successful readers and writers, provide purposeful practice to build fluency, and create rich opportunities for students to apply their literacy skills independently, flexibly and creatively.
In line with the Victorian Reading Position, our approach to reading is built around the Big Six of Literacy – six interconnected areas that research shows are essential for successful reading development:
These skills are explicitly and systematically taught, practised and revisited as students progress through the school. Alongside this instruction, students engage with a wide range of high-quality texts that build their vocabulary, knowledge, comprehension and enjoyment of reading.
In the early years, students receive daily, explicit and systematic teaching in phonemic awareness and phonics. UFLI Foundations provides a structured approach to this teaching, helping students learn how the sounds in spoken language connect with written letters and how to use this knowledge to read and spell words.
As students progress, Spelling Mastery provides systematic instruction that helps students understand and apply the sound, pattern and meaning-based knowledge needed for increasingly sophisticated spelling.
Students are also provided with regular opportunities to practise reading so that accurate reading becomes increasingly fluent and automatic. As fluency develops, students can devote more attention to understanding, thinking about and responding to what they read.
Strong oral language provides an important foundation for both reading and writing.
Across the curriculum, students are given frequent opportunities to develop their speaking, listening, vocabulary and ability to communicate increasingly complex ideas.
Story Champs provides explicit and systematic teaching of oral language and narrative skills, supporting students to understand, retell and create increasingly sophisticated stories.
We explicitly teach students the knowledge, skills and strategies required to become confident and increasingly independent writers.
Expressive Writing provides structured and explicit instruction in foundational written expression, helping students develop accurate and increasingly fluent sentence-level writing skills.
We are also introducing Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) to explicitly teach students strategies for planning, organising, composing, revising and improving their writing. As students develop expertise, teacher support is gradually reduced so students can use these strategies increasingly independently.
Students then have opportunities to use writing for authentic and creative purposes across the curriculum – to tell stories, explain ideas, persuade, inform, investigate, reflect and communicate their learning.
Writing also depends on being able to efficiently get our ideas onto the page or screen.
From Prep, handwriting is explicitly taught and regularly practised, with a focus on correct letter formation, accuracy and developing fluency.
As students progress through the school, handwriting continues to be developed alongside the explicit teaching and practise of typing and keyboard skills in Years 3–6.
Our aim is for handwriting and typing to become increasingly fluent and automatic, allowing students to focus their attention on the more complex and creative aspects of writing.
We regularly assess students' literacy development to understand what they have learned, identify what they are ready to learn next and recognise early when additional support may be needed.
When students require additional support in literacy, targeted and increasingly intensive teaching is provided through our Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). Student progress is closely monitored so that teaching and intervention can be adjusted in response to each learner.
Our aim is to ensure that every student develops the knowledge, skills and confidence to read, write and communicate successfully – at school and beyond.
