Staff at Willaura Primary School are passionately committed to achieving best practice in the teaching of literacy and numeracy. Research shows that strong literacy skills are associated with success in the general curriculum. Literacy and numeracy skills also lay the foundation for an active and successful participation in life.
In Literacy we:
- Use a rigorous assessment schedule to track student achievement and progress. We assess what a student can do and where they need to go next.
- Have an equal focus on teaching decoding (saying the printed words) and comprehension (understanding). Research shows that many student results plateau in future years because they do not have the strategies to understand their reading. We explicitly teach key comprehension strategies right from Prep.
- Use Individual Learning Plans for all students in literacy, to ensure we focus on the specific literacy needs of each student.
- Place a high value on Home Reading. We recognise achievement in Home Reading in a number of ways, including certificates, acknowledgement in the newsletter and visits to the bakery for 200 nights of Home Reading!
- Are one of the few local schools to use BOTH of the two reading intervention programs that are backed by research: MULTILIT (Making Up Lost Time In Literacy) and Reading Recovery. We are relentless in our commitment to our students success in literacy.
- Model a love of literature and reading through whole school reading sessions, our Book Week celebration, reading aloud to students, talking about and sharing our love of books and reading.
Alongside literacy, strong numeracy skills are essential for students to lead active and confident lives. The 90 minute Numeracy Block is a feature of our school curriculum. All students spend time each day developing their skills and abilities in the three content areas of the Maths curriculum:
- Number and Algebra
- Measurement and Geometry
- Statistics and Probability
Junior students learn about numbers through a hands-on approach using a range of concrete materials. Older students are engaged in real-life maths investigations and activities while continuing to develop and extend their basic number skills. AusVELS emphasises students developing understanding, fluency, problem solving and reasoning in each of the above content areas. We have strong focus on fluency, so that students develop a bank of automatic maths knowledge (e.g. multiplication facts) to enable them to work in other areas of maths with confidence and accuracy.
