Reading Programs at Larrakeyah Primary School
At Larrakeyah Primary, we want to make sure all our students are supported so they can become excellent readers. Reading is an essential skill that sets our students up for all of their future learning and their life beyond the school gates.
Reading is more than just decoding the words on the page; our readers need to be able to understand what the words mean and how they fit together to tell a story.
How we teach reading
Our approach to teaching reading across all year levels is based on our Reading Pedagogical Framework. This framework sets out how we teach our students to read and understand what they’ve read, what resources and strategies we use and how we assess reading and comprehension skills so we can make adjustments as needed.
Our approach to reading includes 12 age-appropriate steps for reading and comprehension including:
- Understanding words
- Finding information
- Identifying the main idea
- Sequencing
- Finding similarities and difference
- Predicting
- Concluding
- Summarising
- Inferring
- Cause and effect
- Fact or opinion
- Point of view or purpose.
Each stage builds on the skills taught in the previous stage and gives students more independence and opportunity to discuss what they’ve read and what it means to them.
Our reading programs
At Larrakeyah Primary, we take the most up-to-date research and resources on reading and put that information into our programs. Students from Transition right through to Year 6 are assessed by their classroom teachers on their reading ability and given resources and activities that suit their skill level.
Our programs include:
- The PM Reading Program where students begin reading books at different levels supported by their teacher. Books are graded up to level 30 and these levels help teachers assess a reader’s skill for future programs.
- The Independent Reading Level involves take-home books for students to practice their independent reading and comprehension skills outside of the classroom. These books are also graded by level and are matched to the individual reader.
- The Literacy Pro Program is based on the Lexile Reading Measure test and scores the students level of reading when matched to a book at a similar level to their reading skill. Multiple choice comprehension tests are taken in Week 1 and Week 6 of each term so teachers can keep a close eye on how students are progressing with their reading and identify any areas where students might need some extra assistance. Larrakeyah Primary students and their parents can login to our Literacy Pro Page and monitor their progress.
Guided Reading
Guided reading is an approach to in-classroom reading that has been embraced by our staff here at Larrakeyah Primary. In guided reading sessions, students are grouped with others at the same skill level as them and guided through a reading text with their teacher or a support staff member.
Students are supported and prompted throughout the session to read in turn, talk about the book itself and events within it, focus on challenging words, make predictions about the book and learn strategies on how to work through unfamiliar words, sentences and topics.
Good reader strategies
When reading with your own young people, there are lots of great strategies you can help them with to set them up for reading success. Encourage them to:
- Look at pictures to find context clues
- Sound out words
- Chunk sounds and words together to make them easier to figure out
- Read on – skip the challenging word and using other words around it to help figure it out
- Predict what will happen in the story
- Check if what they read made sense.
These strategies can be used individually or together to suit the particular needs of each student and help them grow their skills and their confidence.
Let’s get reading!
We’re really excited to see how our students progress in their reading and comprehension across the school year. We will keep refining our reading programs to make sure they are working for all our students and setting them up for success.
