English

Every day, students at Goollelal take part in a dedicated literacy block, a time for focusing on the different aspects of English: reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing. Teachers deliver a comprehensive literacy program, combining elements from the three strands in the Western Australian Curriculum of Literature, Language and Literacy. They plan collaboratively to deliver evidence-based programs designed to have maximum impact on student learning,.

Students learn to read and spell using the PLD (Promoting Literacy Development) system: a structured whole-school approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics. This is an evidence-based approach to literacy that has consistently been shown to deliver outstanding results for students.

The school has also implemented a whole school approach to writing called “Talk for Writing”. This is a contemporary model that incorporates what research says works most effectively, such as explicit instruction, modelling, rich feedback and student reflection. There are three stages to the process:

• Imitate – students learn a model text through making a story map and learning it orally first, along with actions. This helps students to learn patterns such as text structure, sentence structure and language features.
• Innovate – students adapt this model text by substituting, altering and adding.
• Invent – students draw on what they have learnt about the text, language and ideas to create their piece of writing.

Most importantly, students at Goollelal develop a love of reading. Our inviting library is the very heart of our school, and hosts countless activities dedicated to literature, reading and books. Teachers read aloud to students regularly, and Book Week is one of the highlights of our school year.