Newsletter 2 Term 2 2019

Congratulations  to those students who are coming to school every day: remember ‘every day counts’. Your education is important, so please keep coming.

Reading at Pia

As an educator for many years (and facilitator of reading instruction programs for teachers) I understand the importance for schools to provide a reading program that meets the needs of its students.  It is also important for parents and carers to understand the background to our English language. 

We all want our children to read proficiently here at Pia School.   Reading is critical to a successful education.  If children struggle with reading, they suffer in other areas of education, because they cannot access information contained in our written language. The bottom line is that learning to read is not easy for many children. We can, however, help a child to read proficiently by intentionally teaching exact skills in a direct, systematic and complete manner.

Some of the fundamental skills necessary for children to learn to read are supplemented through my own experiences, carefully observing children learning to read and evaluating specific errors.

First, students need to acquire the skill that words are made up of sounds. Students ability to hear, recognise and manipulate sounds of a word  or the word shape is crucial to learning to read.  For example, puppy is made up of the sounds /p/  /u/  /p/ /ee/ or the word ‘shape’ is formed by the sounds /sh/  /ay/  /p/.  Developing an ‘ear for sounds’ is critically important  to reading and spelling success.

Sound or phonemic awareness can be taught and learned to assist students to develop an ‘ear for sounds’.  Explicitly taught Phonemic awareness (sound)  instruction should include some of the following in a teachers toolkit.  And useful for parents to know.

Teacher instruction should include:

• The ability to isolate and distinguish individual sounds ( fish starts with /f/ and cat ends with /t/
• The ability to identify sounds or phonemes ( bat and boy start with the /b/ sound and tall and toy start with the /t/ sound
• The ability to categorise similar sounds and recognise sound patterns, for example, recognise rhyming words –cat, mat and fat and an ability to identify rhyming differences bake and bike start with the same sound but do not rhyme
• The ability to blend sounds together ( the sounds /h/ /or/ /s/ put together make the word ‘horse’

Second,

Children need to acquire knowledge of the entire phonetic code or the symbol=sound relationship.  Children also need to know the alphabet, but they also need to know the complexities of phonograms.  Phonograms are combinations of letters symbolizing specific sounds within written words.

Examples of these include consonant digraphs (th, - the-there  sh, sheep-share  wh where-when , and ck kick-brick) and vowel combinations (ee, oa, oe, ai, ay, oi, oy, ea, ow, and ou…)  this is complex for students and they require systematic instruction.  When all sounds are learned and patterns practised, most words can be phonetically decoded.  A school reading curriculum therefore, must have these concepts in mind when developing a curriculum.

Third,

In English we read and write from left to right. Correct directional tracking of looking at and processing all letters in order from left to right is essential for reading success. Poor readers frequently make errors processing letters out of order.  They exhibit erratic eye movement as they jump around searching for ‘whole words’, familiar parts or word families.  These incorrect tracking strategies contribute to reading difficulty.  To read proficiently, the child must not only know the individual sounds but must process all letters in order left to right.  I have encouraged students in the Senior Class, ( Jennifer’s Class) to use their right index finger to track what they are reading from left to right.  Additionally, students (when tracking with their finger) do not leave out words while reading nor insert inappropriate words to prevent incorrect comprehension.

Fourth,  Blending.

To read proficiently, students need to learn how to blend individual sounds smoothly together into words without pauses between sounds.  Some students’ inability to blend smoothly creates a block with their reading development.

Students not only need to say individual sounds but know how to hook these sounds together.  When sounding out the word mast it is blended /mmaassst/ instead of a choppy /m/…  /a/…  /s/…  /t/.  To further emphasise blending smoothly students can be encouraged to blend words with one breath.

And lastly,

Attention to Detail.

When listening to students who struggle with reading, you will observe numerous errors because they fail to process details.  To overcome common errors, students must process all sounds in order, without skipping , adding or changing any sounds.  Paying attention to detail is intertwined with proper tracking and correct phonologic processing.

Community Consultation Committee

I would like to thank Julie Ryan for her participation in an important Community/ School meeting that saw Julie Sign Off important agenda items for the school.  At Pia School, it is a priority that the community is involved in decision making and aware of the strategic direction(s) of the school.  The items that were signed off will be in our Business Plan.  Further to this, there are two theories of action that the school undertakes when involving the community.  These are mandatory and supported by the Principal.

 In the coming weeks Pia School’s Business Plan will be completed.  The Community Consultative Committee will have an opportunity to read through the document.  I will seek their comments and approval to finalise this important document.

W.A. Athletics and Athletics Australia.

We were blessed last week to have a representative from  W.A. and Athletics Australia come to our school and take the kids through some awesome conditioning and skill activities.  The  activities challenged our students to concentrate while moving in all directions, jumping, hopping and throwing while having a good time as well.  I would like to thank Shane Ellis for his passion and commitment sharing his knowledge with us and providing a wonderful suite of skill-based activities.

Explicit Teaching

Pia school is an Explicit Teaching school (and, one of our goals in our Business Plan).  This method of instruction is based on research.  Which means it is best for students who sometimes find traditional class teaching less effective for their learning.  Explicit teaching introduces the topic to be taught, then breaks the content into distinct components, for example, students observe what is required (I DO), practise with their teacher(WE DO) then have their turn (I DO).  This is an opportunity for the teacher to assist learning.  This is called scaffolding. The students are assisted through their acquisition of knowledge, until over-time, they can complete a task on their own.   In the Senior Class Ms Jennifer has Explicitly taught sewing with a follow-up lesson, music, how to use contractions correctly, division, developing addition skills, survey analysis and prediction.  Ms Jennifer has aligned this instruction with data from her base line math assessment  test, the four (Westwood Assessments) basic operation assessments and her daily maths lessons.  Teachers are expected to complete three Explicit Teaching lessons per week.

Grants

I am pleased to announce that our School has been successful in gaining two grants.  I applied for a Sporting Schools Grant and was successful in gaining $1,500.00.  I am still working through which sport to engage and will let everyone know shortly.

I would like to congratulate Ms Moana Muntz for her contribution in gaining a $1,100.00 Grant from The Department of Local Government , Sport and Cultural Industries.  This Grant will be used for our Bush Tucker Program.

Fire Evacuation

Many thanks to Mr. Rick Ryan from Community Emergency Services for coming to our school to observe our Fire evacuation procedure.  Rick brought with him a theatre smoke machine to mimic a fire scenario.  We had our drill and from all accounts Rick thought it was a great success. Thank-you Rick for taking the time to come to Pia School.

Grams Visit

We were fortunate to have a visit from GRAMS to discuss with the students the dangers of smoking.  There was a competition to design a poster on smoking cigarettes and how it effects your lungs.

I followed up the GRAMS visit and assisted  our students to design their own poster during our combined senior/junior health lesson. The posters were brilliant and posted off the next day, hopefully some of our students can win an I-Pad or scooter!

What’s Ahead

In the coming weeks we will have a visit from Fair Game Australia.  They will take the students for a variety of sporting programs, and cook a healthy meal for our students.  In week 9 the TLG -Teach Learn Grow students will be with us for a week.  We look forward to the TLG visits.  These young adults are enthusiastic and provide our students with wonderful learning opportunities.

Regards

Ted

Mr Big is our new Talk for Writing text in the junior room. It’s a story of a lonely gorilla who wants some friends to play music with. He goes on an adventure and finds some buddies.

We have been practicing the story every day and are now up to innovating and changing the story. We now have some stories like Godzilla the Hungry Lizard, The Lonely Rainbow Rabbit, and The Rainbow Giraffe. They all follow the same structure as Mr Big and go on an adventure looking for something.

Come in and read the stories the kids have made.