The Minister for Education Ben Carroll last Friday announced the updated Victorian Teaching and Learning Model, which will be implemented in all government schools across the state from 2025 with explicit teaching at its core.

“All students from Prep to Grade 2 will be taught using a systematic synthetic phonics approach as part of their reading programs, with a minimum of 25 minutes daily explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness.

This will be a core component of a comprehensive reading program that also includes explicit teaching of oral language, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension.” 

We are excited about this announcement as it reinforces the decision we made to implement InitialLit in grades Foundation to Two at the beginning of 2024,  at our school.  InitialLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program providing all children with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. InitiaLit is a three-year program, covering the first three years of school. It has involved some changes to our practice and what the children are bringing home as readers. We are excited by the progress that students are already showing us through the assessments that have occurred during this term.

Whilst the students are “learning the code” of reading we are now using Decodable readers that allow students to read books which include the sounds that they know. Students feel success as they read and are gaining confidence in their ability as readers. Once students have “cracked the code” they are then moving onto reading books of interest to help foster a lifelong love of reading. 

We must also congratulate our teaching staff in Foundation to Two who spent part of their summer holidays learning about teaching phonics and since the start of the year have been implementing the InitialLit program, ensuring that students are learning at their point of need. Our teaching staff have put in many hours learning the program and working collaboratively to ensure that  students can access the learning activities to the best of their abilities and engage them in the program.

Student Led Conferences

The children have been very busy preparing for the student-led conferences. They take pride in their work and are looking forward to sharing this with you tonight and tomorrow night. Please be prompt as the teachers may have continuous appointments and may not be able to fit you in if you are not on time.

END OF TERM

A reminder that Term Two finishes on Friday 28th June at 1pm. There will be no school buses running on this day. Reminder: All Country Bus Travellers will need to renew their applications for Term 3 if they are a full fare paying traveller.

IMPORTANT DATES

• 18th - 19th June - Student Led conferences
• 28th June - Last Day Term Two (1pm finish)
• 15th July - Start of Term Three 9am 
• 18th July - State Cross Country - All the best to Tessa Jennings & Poppy Howe
• 26th July - Whole School Mass
• 26th July - District Basketball

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