LITERACY
At Preston Girls Secondary College
All students can learn to read and
write well.
Goal of Whole School Literacy
Programs:
To have all students on grade-level
within three years of implementing
the program.
MERGING OF TWO PROGRAMS
We have a large group of students without basic
decoding skills
 John Munroe believes these are pre-requisite
skills
 Carol Christensen offers a program to teach basic
decoding skills
 At our school we are running both programs to
ensure those without pre-requisite skills are
catered for

Shared belief
Phonemic awareness
prerequisite for effective
reading. (Phonemic awareness
is awareness of phonemes that
are the smallest units of sound
in English).
Munro approach
The explicit teaching of vocab
and also reading aloud.
Christensen approach
Decoding taught explicitly
through the decoding program
The importance of oral
language as a building block to
written language and the need
for “active” reading.
Reading aloud procedure,
paraphrasing, summarising,
what questions does the text
answer?
Choral reading, Shared
reading, student directed
reading.
The need to visualising and
access images in the brain.
Getting Knowledge Ready,
Vocab, paraphrasing,
reviewing
Getting Knowledge Ready
Paraphrasing (Visualising)
Summarising (Visualising)
The need for full sentences to
be practised.
The need for meta-learning
and self talk.
Mental models in
comprehension and critical
literacy (strategies) groups
Decoding program
Sounds in a word and word in
a sentence.
Practise of the “formal
register”
After each procedure students Students are asked to write and
need time and activities to
discuss as a group and class
make them aware of what
how they did things.
they’ve done. Students need to Students are informed why
understand why the do things they are doing the activities
and how their brain works.
and how their brain works.
THE START
Decided to focus initially on year 7’s and 8’s
 Tested all year 7’s and 8’s with the TORQ 3 test
 Based on their results put into groups- 6 times a
fortnight, 37min session

GRADE
SCORE
GROUPING
Prep- 2
0-34
Decoding
3-4
35-56
Transition
5-6
57-74
Comprehension
7-12
75-95+
Critical
Literacy
WHAT IS DECODING?



Written text is a code for spoken language.
To read, students must learn to ‘crack the code’ –
or decode.
Spelling is the opposite process: students must
turn spoken language into written text – or
encode.
6
WHAT IS IT LIKE NOT TO BE ABLE TO
DECODE?
Find the fast way
from A to B.
Line 1 Line 2
A
E
C
N
D
L
L
D
K
J
G
M
to
get
Line 3 Line
G
K
N
N
D
O
P
B
4
7
DECODING (6 STUDENTS IN A GROUP)
Letter sounds are introduced in small groups 6
intially then 1-2 new sounds a lesson
 Say the letter sound
 Think of a word starting with that letter
 Blending practise of list words (4 new words per
lesson)
 Spelling test
 Read through list and do a time trial
 Finish with reading aloud- either students or
teacher
 Video

TRANSITION

Run the same program as Decoding but move
through it faster, do two lists in a lesson
COMPREHENSION
What students are like
 Have decoding skills
 Often lack expression when reading
 Can’t answer questions related to the text
 Can’t answer questions when text is read to them
•
•
•
•
Strategies
Predict
Clarify
Summarise
Ask questions
CRITICAL LITERACY
Larger groups
 Work at improving their meaning making motor
 Analysing

OUR RESULTS THREE MONTHS IN
TABLE OF RESULTS
Decoding 1
14
18
Decoding
Decoding 2
26
33
Decoding
Decoding 3
33
64
Comprehension
Transition 1
37
57
Transition
Transition 2
42
50
Transition
Transition 3
50
64
Comprehension
Transition 4
53
84
Critical
Literacy
Comprehension 62
75
Comprehension
Comprehensi
on
72
86
Critical
Literacy
Critical
Literacy
87
95
Critical
Literacy
IN ALL CLASSES ACROSS THE SCHOOL

We are introducing John Munroe HRLTS so
these can be used in other classes to further
improve skills and focus on literacy
GKR
We have run two PD sessions on GKR
 We have asked staff to have a buddy from
another faculty
 Have given staff 20 mins planning time in one of
the sessions to plan using GKR in a class in the
next week
 Next meeting we have randomly chosen 6 staff to
talk about their experience
 Plan to introduce Vocabulary

TO AID US IN IMPLEMENTING THESE
STRATEGIES SCHOOL WIDE
Got 3 early finishes approved by school council
 We plan to run a PD session at each of these
Already
Getting Knowledge Ready
Session 1
Vocabulary
Session 2
Reading aloud, paraphrasing
what questions does the text
answer
Session 3
Summarise and review
Posters in every room
Beginning of next year ½ day devoted to revising
strategies and how they have worked
