Literacy

Our Aim

At Waikiki PS we aim to create an engaging classroom that promotes a love of learning and celebrates children’s success.  Through English children will learn to become literate and develop the skills to communicate. We will support, instruct and inspire children to become confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens. Children will engage with purposeful listening, reading, viewing, speaking and writing activities for different purposes and contexts.

Our Plan

The English Plan outlines our approach to teaching and learning in English at Waikiki PS.  The plan provides guidance to teachers to make professional judgments in creating a learning program that gives all students the opportunity to grow through individual, small group and whole class instruction.

Our school uses Western Australian Curriculum, Early Years Framework, National Quality Standard, Western Australian Curriculum Kindergarten Guidelines, Talk for Writing, PLD Structured Synthetic Phonics across the school.

Our Beliefs

At Waikiki PS we believe:

  • Children bring with them to school a wide range of experiences with language.
  • Children will practise, consolidate and extend what they have learned.
  • Children are ‘learning to read and write’ and ‘reading and writing to learn’.
  • Learning English is enjoyable and varied.
  • The three strands of Language, Literature and Literacy are interrelated and inform and support each other.
  • Teachers understand how children learn and support this throughout the English programs.
  • Teachers and students use Standard Australian English.

Talk for Writing

Teachers at Waikiki PS use Talk for Writing as the basis for their planning and instruction.  We aim to have children develop a love of writing and become creative, independent writers.

“Good writers generate and develop ideas drawing on a breadth of reading; and understanding how to draft, refine and improve writing. For experienced writers, many of these processes are internal and automatic.  Talk for Writing involves the oral learning of model texts and the oral development of new versions so that children internalise the language patterns that they need for writing, adding to their linguistic competency.” (Talk for Writing – Improving Student Outcomes in Writing; Pie Corbett.)