LITERACY
At St John’s, we nurture every child to become a confident reader, writer, and speaker through a balanced, evidence based approach that puts children at the heart of learning. Guided by data to understand each child's strengths and next steps, we deliver high quality instruction across reading, writing, speaking, and listening, fostering a lifelong love of learning and equipping children to communicate with confidence.
Our Core Teaching Practices
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Explicit Literacy Instruction: Delivering clear, structured whole class lessons that explicitly build fundamental reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.
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Targeted Small Group Learning: Educators review assessment data every three weeks to group children intentionally by like needs, ensuring learning is differentiated and taught to each child’s exact point of need in the curriculum.
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Purposeful Practice & Application: Providing rich, supportive learning opportunities where children apply new strategies through guided practice, continuous feedback, and independent exploration.
How We Teach Reading
Evidence Based Early Phonics (Prep–2):
Drawing on key elements of the InitiaLit framework, we deliver explicit, structured phonics instruction to build strong foundations in decoding, phonemic awareness and reading confidence.
Literature Rich Classrooms (Prep–2):
Children explore high quality picture books and engaging stories to build rich vocabulary, early comprehension and a genuine love of reading.
In Depth Novel Studies (Years 3–6):
Older children explore immersive texts, developing critical thinking, textual analysis and comprehension through guided literary exploration.
Child Led Book Clubs (Years 3–6):
Collaborative book clubs give children voice and choice in their reading, sparking rich peer discussions and analytical dialogue whilst fostering their love of reading.
Targeted Small Group Support:
Using proven programs like Read3, MiniLit, and MacqLit, we provide focused consolidation for children who benefit from extra practice with foundational reading skills.
Curriculum Grounded Assessment:
Aligned with the Victorian Curriculum, our reading instruction continuously adapts to support and extend every child.
How We Teach Writing and Spelling
Book Making:
Children view themselves as authors, bringing their own passions and interests to life while applying early phonics, drawing, and fine motor skills.
Structured Early Spelling (Prep–2):
Drawing on key elements of InitiaLit, we explicitly teach essential spelling mechanics, focusing on segmenting sounds, blending, and mastering high frequency "tricky words."
Evidence-Based Spelling & Assessment (Years 3–6):
Guided by the research of Dr. Tessa Daffern and using the Components of Spelling Test (CoST), we analyse children’s orthographic, phonological, and morphological understanding to target spelling instruction precisely.
Writer’s Notebook & Writing Seeds:
Children cultivate their personal voice and creativity by collecting "writing seeds", ideas, memories, photos, and observations in their Writer’s Notebooks to spark meaningful, child driven pieces.
Authentic Genre & Project Integration:
Writing is purposefully linked to our Community Projects, teaching children how to write across diverse genres including narrative, poetry, persuasive, and explanation texts for real world audiences.
Explicit Grammar & Sentence Structure:
We build strong linguistic foundations by teaching grammar and sentence structure.
