at St Anthony’s
In February 2024, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) introduced a new plan to help every student succeed: our Vision for Instruction.
We maintain high expectations for all students in our school, aiming to build a strong foundation in literacy, numeracy, and social skills. By using explicit instruction methods, we aim to provide the most effective support to help children develop the knowledge and skills they need to thrive and become lifelong learners.
What is explicit instruction?
Explicit instruction involves teachers introducing complex skills in small steps, with clear explanations and demonstrations of what students are expected to learn. Students then practise what they learned and receive feedback from their teacher until the skill is mastered.
How do we teach reading and writing?
Our vision for reading instruction involves:
- phonemic awareness – understanding that speech is made up of words and sounds
- phonics – knowledge of the letter–sound relationships and the ability to use these relationships to decode words
- fluency – ability to read accurately and quickly to derive meaning from text
- vocabulary – understanding word meanings in isolation and in context
- comprehension – ability to understand and derive meaning from text.
What is phonics?
Phonics is a method of teaching reading and spelling by explicitly linking letters or letter combinations (graphemes) with their corresponding sounds (phonemes).
For example, children learn the sounds for ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’, allowing them to spell and sound out words like ‘at’, ‘as’ and ‘sat’.
English spelling is complex, with many letters and letter combinations representing multiple sounds (e.g. ‘ea’ in ‘heap’ and ‘head’). Phonics instruction begins with the most common letter–sound relationships, as they can be used to read many new words, then moves to less frequent ones.
Research suggests that learning 60 to 100 of these relationships, along with some common sight words, enables children to read independently.
Want to find out more about our approach to teaching reading and writing?
Come along to one of our Parent Information nights hosted by our Literacy Leaders Meaghan Nixon and Lauren Calleja. These nights aim to inform parents about current teaching practices and how they can strengthen the connection between school and home learning. Parents will also learn some tips on how to foster a love for reading.
- Tuesday 20th May – Foundation – Year 2 parents
- Tuesday 3rd June – Year 3 – Year 6 parents
