Reading & Writing at Columba
At Columba, we deliver clear and focused teaching in reading and writing, ensuring every child learns to read, write, and spell with confidence. Using proven strategies and quality resources based on Scarborough’s Reading Rope, we help students connect word recognition with understanding, strengthening their reading skills and confidence. Our approach is grounded in research and built around the Big 5 of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary knowledge, fluency and comprehension. (click on ink for more information)
Learning to Read: Junior school-Prep and Grade 1
Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) is built on the alphabetic principle. It is a structured, multi-sensory and evidence-based method of teaching reading whereby students are taught the link between letters and the speech sounds they represent rather than the alphabet.
We do not encourage children to guess the identity of an unknown word based on pictures, context, or the first letter of the word. (click on link for further information)
"Explicit teaching of alphabetic decoding skills is helpful for all children, harmful for none, and crucial for some." C.Snow and C. Juel (2005) Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Our phonemic awareness and phonics approach allow us to teach children the 44 sounds of the English alphabet in a sequential way from simple to complex; simple sounds for m, a, t, p etc. and then the alternative spellings, for example, a - ai, ay, ey o - ow, ough, oa. Using synthetic phonics gives children the skills to crack the code! At Columba Catholic Primary School, children learn how blending and segmenting words is a reversible process; if you can read a word, you can spell it!
There are five key skills for children to master:
- learning the sounds of letter symbols,
- letter formation (handwriting),
- segmenting sounds in words; p-l-ay
- blending sounds together
- and learning words which do not follow the normal patterns of phonics, for example, was, he, said etc.
Our Junior school students take home decodable books which are specially designed to support students in using their letter-sound skills to decode words rather than guess. After they have solid ‘code-cracking skills’ (they can read!) students take home a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts to enjoy.
Reading to Learn: Middle and Senior School
Once students have a good grasp of the phonics code, focus shifts from Learning to Read toward Reading to Learn.
We use evidence-based methods to design our learning sequences, considering up-to-date knowledge of how students learn best.
A big focus of reading throughout the school is developing reading fluency as this is a key indicator of reading success. Students learn to read accurately, using expression, at an appropriate pace whilst attending to punctuation.
Our English lessons aim to build a wider grasp of vocabulary and background knowledge and are aligned with our inquiry work, for example, if we are investigating the geography of Australia, much of the texts and vocabulary students are reading and writing in English classes, also build knowledge around geography.
How does knowledge power reading?
When it comes to reading, think of knowledge as both the chicken and the egg. Our students' ability to read texts depends on their prior knowledge, and the act of reading adds to their knowledge base and helps them learn more from subsequent reading. As teachers, we strive to find ways to weave background knowledge into our students' reading of nonfiction throughout the process of engaging them with texts.
We encourage families to work with staff to reinforce the fundamental reading and writing skills which aim to make students successful and engaged readers and writers.
Some links you may find helpful:
Preventing literacy failure and shifting the whole Bell Curve up
What is systematic synthetic phonics?
