English learning at St Mary MacKillop Catholic Primary School underpins every facet of our school curriculum. All teachers are charged with the goal of encouraging lifelong learners and lovers of literacy. We aim to support children to become confident and articulate speakers, attentive and active listeners, accomplished and critical readers and confident and crafty writers.
Teaching is focused on all aspects as outlined by the Victorian Curriculum and guided by the Horizons of Hope framework developed by Catholic Education Melbourne.
Our structured literacy approach is supported by researched and evidence-based practises in line with the science of language and reading. Our Literacy approaches ensure that all students are involved in explicit direct instruction lessons targeting the Big 6 of Literacy – Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, Comprehension and Oral Language. Our students are taught the alphabetic code through a systematic synthetic phonics approach from Prep to Year 6.
Some of the programs implemented at St Mary MacKillop Bannockburn are: Little Learners Love Literacy, Promoting Literacy Development (Spelling), Big Talk and Big Write & VCOP.
Developing a love of literature is celebrated at St Mary MacKillop. Each year during Children’s Book Week in August, we focus on the love of books with a ‘Favourite Book Character’ parade. All staff and students enjoy participating in the Book Week parade and enjoy a day filled with fun and engaging Book Week activities.
Literacy is inseparable from opportunity, and opportunity is inseparable from freedom. The freedom promised by literacy is both the freedom from- f from ignorance, oppression, poverty- and freedom to – to do new things, to make choices, to learn
Koichiro Matsuura