Dear Parent and Carers,

At St Benedict’s Primary School, we are deeply committed to delivering on the promise of education and equipping every child with the ability to read -- and read well! Learning to read is such an essential skill to not only find success in school and to thrive in society, but to also experience the joy that reading brings to life. We want every child to be successful in reading! We are learning more about what research says about how children learn to read, how to make sure every student learns to read, and what to do when a child encounters difficulty in learning to read. The research that we’re learning about, and implementing is called the ‘Science of Reading’.

When We Know Better, We Do Better!
The reading scores of Australian children have remained somewhat stagnant for over 40 years! Each year, the data shows that only about 35% of 4th graders are proficient in reading! We’re not satisfied with that! While the nationwide trend has been to accept that that is the way it is, we at St Benedict’s and in Catholic Education want more for our kids. The research is telling us that while reading is more challenging for some students than others, with evidence-based reading instruction, nearly every child can become proficient by the end of 3rd grade. With the research available to us now, we can realistically set 95% proficiency as our goal in three years.

Decades of research have determined that reading occurs in a specific way in the brain in all people. It does not occur naturally the way that speech does. The process must be taught. It is a process of building neuropathways in the brain that link sounds of speech to written symbols or letters. The strings of letters are attached to meaning, and then those ‘letter strings with meaning’ are stored in the brain’s “letterbox” for later retrieval that is instantaneous and effortless. This process is called orthographic mapping and it is our goal to help our students build a giant ‘letterbox’ of instantly retrievable words. That translates into fluent reading and subsequent comprehension. Guessing at words based on context does not aid in orthographic mapping, phonic decoding does.

The Science of Reading
 “The body of work referred to as the “Science of Reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students.” - Dr. Louisa Moats

At St Benedict’s we currently use MiniLit (meeting initial needs in literacy) and MacqLit (the Macquarie Literacy Program for small group instruction). MiniLit is an evidence-based, explicit, and effective early literacy intervention program for teaching reading skills to children who are in the bottom 25% of the expected range for their age group in Year 1 or 2, whilst MacqLit is an explicit and systematic reading intervention program for small groups of older low-progress readers. It provides a comprehensive sequence of lessons that includes all the key components necessary for effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Next year at St Benedict’s we will be introducing InitiaLit. InitiaLit is an evidence-based whole-class literacy program providing all children with the essential core knowledge and strong foundations to become successful readers and writers. InitiaLit is a three-year program, covering the first three years of school (Kinder to Year 2). 

Next year we will also work towards implementing a Kinder to Year 6 scope and sequence for Literacy. With the help of Catholic Education, we will be working closely with experts in this field, which is very exciting for everyone involved.

Stay safe and healthy.

God bless.

Rachel Smith
Principal