As you may be aware, I have a new role in the library this year. This Literacy role consists of targeted focus groups around comprehension and reading skills. The Inquiry part of the role enables year levels to participate in rotations throughout the year that focus on research, the inquiry cycle and creating a genre specific text with attention to strategies and skills that meet purpose, genre features and aid clarity. – Paula

Year 1 Reading Group

During reading lessons, a mentor text is used to focus on:

  • Reading and writing sight words
  • Spelling of ‘tricky’ words
  • Word building
  • Punctuation devices
  • Comprehension
  • Sentence writing based on text

Year 3 Reading Group

During reading we have spent a lot of time learning about key features and purposes of different genres. We have learnt to “orientate” ourselves as a reader to think about what type of genre the text is before we read, as the purpose of the text affects HOW we read for meaning. We focussed on the emotions of characters in narratives and the strategy of “text to self”, where we have identified similarities about when we have felt like the character. This helps us to learn how to predict and infer when reading.

Year 4 Reading Group

Right now, we are focussing on mapping the key events in a sequence of a simple narrative and identifying the emotions and perspectives of different characters.

Year 5 Reading Group

Focus on the comprehension text to self has enabled us to develop our skills in identifying and predicting how events in a narrative impact the reader. We have reflected on times we have felt like this and related it back to the text. This has helped us to clarify and understand what is being inferred.

Year 6 Reading Group

Recently we have been focussing on identifying keywords in non-fiction texts and using these to create infographics. This further improves our skills in identifying the most important information and being able to transfer our knowledge.

In poetry we have been learning about the effects of poetic devices, identifying themes  and further extending our vocabulary.