At Templestowe Park every student participates in a rigorous literacy program. 

The English curriculum is broken into three key learning areas:

• Language – Students develop knowledge of the English language and how it works. They discover the patterns and purposes of English usage, including spelling, grammar and punctuation in sentences and extended texts. Students explore ideas, express viewpoints, form arguments and build vocabulary.  

• Literature – Students study a wide variety of rich literature of personal, cultural, social and aesthetic value to learn about the world. These include picture story books, short stories, novels, fiction, non-fiction, print, digital and multimodal texts. They learn how to explain, analyse and evaluate ways in which stories, characters, ideas, experiences, opinions and contexts are reflected in texts, before creating their own. 

• Literacy – Students develop their ability to read, discuss and write different texts with appropriateness, accuracy, confidence and fluency. They learn to apply their knowledge of the English language to communicate effectively for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts.  

‘The Big Six’ of Learning to Read 

Learning to read is a complex process. There are six important parts which all require explicit teaching: oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.  Templestowe Park’s P-6 programs address all these elements. 

Systematic Synthetic Phonics Approach 

Templestowe Park uses a systematic synthetic phonics approach to teach reading in the early years.  When they begin to read and write, students learn the sound (phonemes) and letter (graphemes) correspondences of English, and how these combine. We conduct a daily review or practice of previously taught content including sounding, blending, segmenting, and reading words and sentences before explicitly teaching new content.  There is a set structure of teaching groups of letters that we follow to ensure all students learn the necessary building blocks in learning to read and write. Our beginner readers are taught to look carefully at the words to sound out chunks and practice reading decodable texts daily. They are taught to check that what they read makes sense.  

Explicit Teaching for Reading and Writing  

As our students move through the school to become intermediate and proficient readers, more complex letter patterns are introduced, and comprehension plays a bigger role.  Students are given explicit instruction to build vocabulary knowledge and engage in reading and writing tasks that support comprehension. Daily reviews form part of our literacy lessons so that we can practice previously taught skills and concepts before learning new content.  Knowledge rich units are used to engage students. 

Spelling Mastery 

Templestowe Park teaches spelling using the Direct Instruction program, Spelling Mastery. This program is implemented from Grade 1 – 6 with specific lesson instruction four days a week. Students each have an individual workbook. The program includes learning about the phonemic strategy for regular spelling patterns (sounds and letters used), the morphemic strategy (meaning parts) with prefixes, suffixes, base words and spelling rules, and the whole word strategy for common words with irregular sounds. 

Ongoing assessment by our classroom teachers monitors student achievement which ensures any gaps are identified and further teaching and practice can be given. 

Parents are strongly encouraged to support their child’s reading development by daily practice of reading at home.  TPPS has a wide range of home reading material and online access to digital libraries.