The study of English is central to the learning and development of all students. At Dandenong South Primary School, we prioritise the teaching and learning of Literacy.

We believe that language acquisition is fundamental to every area of learning and enables students to participate fully in these areas. While helping them become confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens, being literate will also assist in their personal and social development as active members of society.

The English program implemented at Dandenong South Primary School is balanced and uses an integrated approach that includes a minimum of ten hours of literacy (consisting of daily five one-hour Reading sessions and five one-hour Writing sessions). All students are provided with opportunities to develop their capacity and extend their ability in Language, Literature, Literacy: Reading and Viewing; Writing and Spelling; Speaking and Listening in various, purposeful contexts in all curricular areas. Using a range of text types, students are explicitly taught skills and strategies in Reading and Writing. New technologies are also embraced by the effective use of multimodal Literacy to develop comprehension and research skills. Our goal is to equip students to become independent readers and writers with a passion for reading and writing.

Teachers assess students regularly to guide their teaching, using a variety of assessment procedures and to identify the learning needs of students. Students working above their expected level or those requiring additional support in their learning are provided with extension or intervention programs.

Some of these programs include:

• Prep Phonological Program – Phonological awareness is a pre-cursor in learning how to read and write. Students are provided with oral activities to build sound- letter relationships; identifying and working with rhymes, alliteration, syllables and sound patterns; onset and rimes.
• LEAP Oral Language Program – The focus is on students building on and extending their vocabulary and oral language using visual representations and activities.
• LEAP Phonological Program – This program is an extension of the Prep Phonological Program. Students develop their knowledge of letter and sound patterns. They then use this information to develop their reading and writing skills.
• LEAP Reading Program – In this program, we focus on developing independent readers. Students learn strategies to develop their comprehension skills.
• LEAP Writing Program- In this program, we focus on developing independent writers. Students are encouraged to put their thoughts and ideas down in writing. They have explicit instruction on text organisation, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, conventions, presentation and exploring different genres.
• Reading Extension Program– This is an accelerated program that focusses on further developing the students’ reading strategies and skills with continued emphasis on fluency, expression and comprehension.