Literacy teaching strategies

A teacher leads a meeting of year 2 teachers in planning explicit literacy teaching strategies to meet the needs of students from diverse language backgrounds. She models a lesson for teachers with a year 2 class demonstrating 'Making Connections' to develop students’ comprehension skills prior to reading and writing a text, by making connections to their world knowledge. The teacher demonstrates the importance of developing students’ oral language skills as a basis for literacy learning.

The school is a co-educational primary school in the southwestern Sydney region. Ninety-six per cent of students come from homes where English is an additional language or dialect, including some from refugee backgrounds. The student group speaks thirty-nine languages and community language programs are offered in Arabic, Vietnamese and Samoan. The school has formed close links with the wider community, including TAFE, and runs programs such as TAFE classes for parents, a playgroup for refugee families and a homework centre. The school is a National Partnership School with a focus on Reading.