Literacy
Words Grammar and Fun – Peel Speech and Language Service
Kindergarten and Pre-Primary Students complete this two-phase language program which is designed to target the semantic and grammar skills of children with the overall goal of improving oral language outcomes for all children.
Letters & Sounds
Letters and Sounds is a systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics. It is split into six phases, from starting to learn about sounds at Kindy to becoming fluent readers. Letter-sound knowledge (also called ‘graphemic knowledge’) helps students to ‘decode’ written language and teach themselves new words, since students can use letter-sound patterns to say the word, even if it is unfamiliar to them.
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum
Working alongside the existing structured synthetic phonics program of Letters and Sounds the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum Program is a systematic 35-week program of daily lessons that provide a high level of explicit modelling and student engagement from Years K-2. Each level of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum focuses on eight phonemic awareness skills, along with two additional activities to develop letter and sound recognition, and language awareness.
- Rhyming
- Onset Fluency
- Blending
- Isolating final and medial phonemes (sounds)
- Segmenting
- Adding Phonemes
- Deleting Phonemes
- Substituting Phonemes
Bridge the Gap Intervention Program is also available for those students experiencing difficulties in phonemic awareness who are in Year 2 and above.
SoundWaves
For Years 3-6 at DDAS Sound Waves Spelling teaches phonemic awareness, synthetic phonics, morphology and etymology. The program delivers explicit teaching and targeted practice in a way that is comprehensive and cohesive. The Sound Waves program explicitly teaches phoneme–grapheme relationships, and spelling and vocabulary concepts. This teaching is paired with targeted practice that allows students to apply their knowledge and skills in student book activities that mirror what has been taught in lessons.
Talk & Write (T4W)
The Talk for Writing approach enables children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. A key feature is that children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’, as well as close reading.
It is built on three stages of teaching:
Imitation
The children learn a text and the language they need.
Innovation
The children adapt the model text with ideas of their own.
Invention
The children create their own text using the language and skills that the model taught them.