English
At Bunbury Primary School we have a whole school approach to all learning. Our English programs foster the development of speaking and listening, reading and writing, spelling, grammar and handwriting. As whole school approaches to support literacy development, we use the 'Letters and Sounds' program from Years K-2 and the Words Their Way program from Year 3-6. We also use First Steps strategies.
To support the development of Writing skills, our school uses the Seven Steps to Writing Success approach. The program guides students through the use of appropriate planning, creating sizzling starts, applying dynamic dialogue, developing tension and exciting conclusions that have impact.
Additional support is provided to students through:
- SAER (Students at Educational Risk). Letters and Sounds and the Speech Intervention programs are used in small groups, as additional support.
- small sized, Literacy support groups run on a rotational, termly basis; and
- Hands Up for Kids program utilising community volunteers to support individual students.
Digital technologies are used to support the implementation of the English Curriculum. Online programs such as Reading Eggs/Express and Accelerated Reader are used to compliment reading programs and can be accessed from school or home.
In addition to accessing the online literacy programs, a variety of Apps are used such as Pages for word processing, Book Creator and Green Screen for story creation, iBooks for reading. A full list of Apps used within the whole school context can be found here (link to BYOD page).
To extend students' literacy, we encourage and provide opportunities for them to participate in literacy events such as:
- The Soapbox Speech Competition (a district interschool public speaking competition for Year 3-6 students). The competition focuses on developing persuasive writing. Students prepare, develop and deliver a persuasive speech on a relevant, current issue or select a topic of interest;
- the Literature Centre (formerly Fremantle Children's Literature Centre) works with schools to support the Talented Young Writers' Programme (TYWP). Year 6 students from around the region with an aptitude for writing come together for a full day workshop hosted by one of Australia's top authors for young adults; and
- the annual International Competition and Assessment (ICAS) for English conducted by University of NSW Global The test assesses reading and language skills in a range of contexts and require students to locate, identify, sequence, explain, interpret, analyse and infer information in and about texts.
We encourage our parents to support our school literacy programs at home. Home reading is highly valued and appreciated. This includes regular home reading, phonics and spelling practice.