Additional Assistance
Apollo Parkways Primary School offers additional assistance to students experiencing difficulties in literacy learning. A range of specialised programs which target reading acquisition are offered across the school and include the following.
Reading Intervention - Grade 1
This program is an early literacy intervention program that provides additional assistance for students who are having difficulty learning to read and write. The program operates on a one to one basis with one specially trained Reading Recovery teacher.
The Program
The program is taught by a Reading Recovery trained teacher on a daily basis and uses classroom books that have been specially levelled. Each student has a thirty minute session based on an individually designed reading and writing program that aims to meet each student’s particular literacy needs. The student may participate in the program for between 12 to 20 weeks. The program continues until the student has developed strategies to help them read and write effectively in the mainstream classroom.
The Lesson
Each day the student works with the teacher and participates actively in the following activities:
- reading 2 or 3 familiar books
- writing a sentence of their own
- re-assembling the cut up sentence
- reading a new book to further develop their skills and strategies.
- using an iPad with appropriate apps to support reading and writing skills
Parental Support
As the student participates in the program daily, it is very important for parents to make a special quiet time to read together with their child every day. The Reading Intervention take home book and cut up sentence can also form part of this home learning time. It is important and necessary for the child to receive praise and encouragement for the efforts they make when reading a book. Enjoyment and understanding are key elements of the home reading time.
Language & Literacy Support Program
The Language & Literacy Support Program provides a wide range of students, across all grades, with additional assistance in the development of language and literacy skills. The program focuses on small groups of students with like needs working a number of times each week with a teacher aide on an individualised program of activities designed to address their specific needs. The aides may also have time allocated for general classroom support - allowing for them to support students in the transferral of skills from their language program into regular classroom activities. The program and activities have been developed in conjunction with our DEECD speech pathologist.
Grade levels with students involved in Corrective Reading/Fast Track will not have the Language & Literacy Support Program running concurrently - we recognise that these two programs may involve the same students and their frequent absence from classrooms makes regular classroom programs more difficult.
Prep Phonological Awareness Program
The Prep Phonological Awareness program aims to develop the early literacy skills of identified Prep students. All students are introduced to letters and sounds in their classroom program and teachers identify those students not utilising this new knowledge in their literacy. The students are then further screened and the most in need participate in the program.
The Prep Phonological Awareness program focuses on identifying sounds in spoken words and matching sounds to letters and letter combinations. It is a one to one program facilitated by trained teacher aides and parent volunteers. Students participate up to twice a week for 30 minutes to complete the 16 session program.
Learning Leaders - Prep and Grade 1
The Learning Leaders program is provided to identified Prep and Grade 1 students (Grade 1 - Term 2 & Prep - Term 3). Interested Grade 6 students write an expression of interest to take on the role of Learning Leader. They are then trained and implement the program using their iPad for part of three lunchtimes per week for approximately seven weeks. The Grade 6 learning leaders are buddied up with a younger participant and assist them to read their take home book, learn letters and sounds and practice reading their ‘Magic Words’.
The Prep and Grade 1 students build a positive learning relationship with the Grade 6 learning leaders while practising their essential early literacy skills.
Learning Leaders from Apollo Parkways Primary School on Vimeo.