Success at Rosewood Primary with Early Start

EARLY Start Assessment data to identify where children are sitting in regard to their oral language, phonemic awareness and concepts of print has been a success at Rosewood State School.
Principal Georgia O’Shea said the new program called ‘Promoting Literacy Development’ focuses on oral language initially, segmenting and blending of sounds in words.
“We started this program last year and discovered that it had a significant impact on our Prep students’ learning, allowing greater traction in the area of reading, spelling and writing,” she said.
“Due to the significant improvements in the Preps with PLD, we upskilled all staff and now have this spelling program integrated across the whole school.
“As a result of this style of reading, the Prep students are writing for enjoyment out of the school environment, this has come from direct feedback from overjoyed parents.
“Learning across curriculum areas has improved after observing the results with reading, spelling and writing which has directly impacted our other learning areas.
“In conjunction with the program, students are reading ‘decodables’ as opposed to predictive text, this is a structured way to practise the skills that they learn with regards to their sounds.”
The ‘decodables’ teach students to sound out rather than guess, this is the new science of reading approach that innovative schools are now taking on.
“We have been practising this way of learning and leading the way in our local region,” she said.