At St Mary’s we believe it is essential that every child confidently develops literacy skills and strategies to actively participate in our ever changing world.  We enhance personalised learning by incorporating multi-literacies to collectively improve student learning outcome.

St Mary’s is committed to setting high expectations of achievement in literacy learning with individual student’s goals.  Ongoing monitoring of student achievements assists teachers to identify student needs and to set goals for future learning in collaboration with each individual student.  This incorporates building a culture of best practice in literacy learning and teaching that is relevant to all students while supporting students with special needs.

Our Literacy program is personalised to address the needs and interests of all students within the classroom through a range of individual, small group and whole class activities.  St Mary’s provides its teachers with continual professional learning opportunities to continue their professional learning journey to improve expertise that will reflect within our innovative classroom practices.

St Mary’s aims to encourage and embed a modelling and mentoring culture of excellence in literacy learning.  The literacy program is highly structured with targeted teaching using the Victorian Curriculum on a daily basis.  Literacy teaching is integrated into all areas of the curriculum so that learning connects the students to the real world providing relevance and purpose. We encourage students to strive to achieve their best.  A differentiated approach is specifically designed to meet all the student’s needs.

In Literacy our P-2 students participate in Read Write Inc. Phonics. This is a rigorous program that is proven to create fluent, enthusiastic readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It incorporates effective classroom management strategies that ensure participation and fast progress for all students, and comes with comprehensive lesson plans and assessment resources.

Read Write Inc. Phonics is:

• a comprehensive, robust, curriculum-aligned literacy program

• a ‘phonics first and fast’ approach, with all aspects of literacy connecting

• a program where every teacher is trained and confident to teach every child

• best implemented as a whole-school, consistent, systematic approach

• proven in both the UK and Australia as a program that delivers results.

Our P-2 students also participate in a Bookmaking pedagogy during their Writing sessions, where students are free to explore text types themselves using rich, authentic mentor texts as models for good writing.