Structured Literacy
At Tamaoho school, we use a structured literacy approach dedicated to establishing a firm foundation in reading and writing skills for all our learners. Through explicit instruction, we address any literacy gaps, ensuring swift progress in learning around the use of sounds and how words fit together.
Memory of Words
We also develop learners' memory of words through reading and writing. These words are systemic across our school to support a consistent approach to reading and writing. Learners just have to practise these words over and over again until they are stored in the long term memory.
Writing
All learners receive explicit instruction in various writing genres, such as persuasive, recount, descriptive, report, and narrative, while also mastering simple, compound, and complex sentence structures that form coherent paragraphs.
The resource linked below shows what key things learners learn at each level of writing.
Reading
Once students attain fluency in reading through our structured literacy approach, teachers shift focus to comprehension skills. These skills include retelling on the correct order, prediction, identifying the author's purpose, making inferences, drawing from prior knowledge, evaluating, and synthesising information.
Through shared books and poems, learners develop a passion for reading for pleasure. We place a strong emphasis on comprehension, encouraging learners to develop critical thinking skills to analyse and understand the content they read.