Minilit, Multilit and MacqLit

Dear Parents,
We are soldiering ahead with the use of three Literacy programs from Macquarie University:  Minilit for the younger students, Multilit for use with individual students and MacqLit, a group based program, aimed at students in the lower to middle primary years.
The programs cover a wide range of skills:  letter-sound recognition, sound manipulation, word formation, syllabification, fluency of reading, speed of reading, dictation, sentence formation and comprehension to name a few.
Children's progress is constantly measured and they see how successful they are as the lessons progress and the difficulty increases.
We are pleased to be able to offer these programs within the school and are delighted with the progress students are making!
Darine Groch

All About Occupational Therapy (OT) in Schools

OTs are health professionals, trained in behavioural and neurological sciences.

OTs in schools focus on activities that children engage in at school. They assist children to develop the skills to gain and maintain independence.  

They facilitate children’s independent engagement in school roles, activities and routines.  These include children as students, players and self-carers.

The role of being a student requires such things as the ability to:  stay seated, attend, wait, turn take, transition between activities and self-regulate

The domains targeted by OTs are:

·       Learning to learn (engagement and attention)

·       Activities of daily living

·       Play

·       Gross motor

·       Fine motor

·       Handwriting

       If we look at the Pyramid of Learning, we see that all areas of the pyramid need to be covered before reaching the top where academic learning takes place.  OT’s assist with helping underpin most of this pyramid if strengthening is required.

Darine Groch

Welcome to Term 3

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Term 3!  

We have many programs running to assist children with their learning:  Minilit, MacqLit, Multilit, IDL spelling, reading and typing, as well as Kewala Typequick.

The aim is to continue to provide help where it is needed to allow children to reach their potential in all subject areas.

Here's to another hard-working term!

Darine Groch

Some notes from a Literacy Talk at Cammeray this week

Oral language is the key to Literacy.  It is central to learning. 

Rich oral language around books further enhances these skills.

John Hattie (Professor of Education at Melbourne University) says that for good fluency children need to read books the way they speak.  When children concentrate on decoding they lose fluency.  Books need to be given at their level with no pain or boredom.  When children read accurately they solidify their skills.  Accuracy is considered reading at least 98% of words on a page correctly.

We understand a book in 2 ways:  by comprehension ie. understanding what the text says, and secondly by using critical thinking skills to dig deeper into the text.

He sees the 3 keys to reading as practice, success and enjoyment (feeling an emotion). 

Just some small points but gentle reminders at the same time.

Happy Reading

Spelling

Dear Parents,

A regular activity with children when spelling at school is the MASUTA process.  It’s an acronym for Meaning Analysing Synthesis Using Testing Applying.

With the teacher, children discuss a word’s meaning and use it in a sentence to display understanding.  They look at whether it has a prefix or suffix and if it does, the base word (morphology). They discuss its origins (etymology) and talk about other words in that family.

Then, using the Thrass chart, syllables are clapped, to check whether there is one vowel per syllable.  The word is segmented into phonemes (sounds), and the difficult grapheme (writing choice) identified.  Discussion would continue about digraphs, trigraphs and even quadgraphs.

Children write the word, often using a coloured pencil to identify their tricky grapheme. 

Part of this is the “I do, we do (together with the teacher) and finally the you do (children on their own) process.”

As you can see, spelling is not just copying letters but a much more involved study.

IDL Typing Reading Spelling

I'm very excited about a new program we are providing at Bayview to assist students with their typing, reading and spelling!

IDL is a multisensory touch typing software program that improves reading and spelling.  It has been designed to use sight, touch and voice to make links between visual, auditory and tactile pathways so spelling and reading can improve.  It is individually tailored to each student and monitored by a teacher or teacher’s aide. 

Students work on the program for 20-30 minutes four times a week.  Each lesson is tightly structured to provide comprehensive and specific teaching in sequenced modules with passages, spelling, grammar and punctuation exercises.  Each learning focus is introduced, demonstrated, practised and consolidated before progressing to the next focus.  Previous learning is continually reinforced throughout the program. 

Evidence based research suggests that students who participate in the program increase reading speed, listening comprehension and improve their writing.  It also helps students with confidence levels and transferring skills into the classroom learning environment.

Welcome to Term 2

Dear Parents,

For the first two weeks of Term 2 I will be assessing all children in Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 in the area of Literacy. There are three areas of focus:  phonological knowledge, high frequency word recognition and in Years 1 and 2, speed of reading.

A baseline of information is evaluated, built upon, and then reassessed throughout the year to monitor progress.  

It's an enjoyable task (other than the paperwork!!) as I get to spend time with each child on an individual basis.  It's also a fresh pair of eyes viewing how each child does the same task, as it's not only the results which are important, but also the process.  

Darine Groch