Primary News

Welcome back to school for term 2. I trust you have had an excellent Easter break. My family and I spent time in the big Karris forests at Pemberton and visited some of our beautiful beaches around Albany.

The season of Djeren is upon the Great Southern region and I notice the cooler nights and dewy mornings as we all eagerly wait for the breaking rains. 

Running

This cooler weather is also a call for long distance running training to intensify at ACC. We love running and are blessed with the bushlands and beaches of Albany. Last term we started the Thursday morning big run where the whole primary school chose to either run around the oval or along the Cross Country track next to the school. 

I have noticed some very promising runners coming up through the years as well as some of our newer students. The Run Club, on a Tuesday morning at Collingwood Oval, is a great way to train with other keen runners. Mrs Bresanello leads the training from 7.45 rain or shine. There will be some additional special Thursday training sessions. The first main event of the cross country season is the ACC Cross Country on the 2 May with primary school running in the morning and secondary from 11am. This is held at the school and parents are welcome to attend.

Harmony Day

On the 20th of March, we celebrated the start of Harmony Week. This year we tried a food theme and thanks to parents and carers for providing dishes from the cultural background of our students it was a great success.

All classes had quite a spread of dishes from spring rolls to biltong. The students extended their appreciation of differing cultures by trying a range of food outside their normal realms. Fritz Norton raised the bar by bringing along a wok and cooking in front of the appreciative Year 5 class. After discussions with the children, we are keen to extend this idea in 2025 with a street market style event so research your heritage now.

Swimming Lessons

These will take place at Albany Leisure and Aquatic Centre from May 20 - 31st with Pre Primary to Year 6 having a lesson a day for 10 days. More information will come to parents via the Sentral for Parents app.

Science of Reading

The Science of Reading informs educators with data driven evidence about how young children learn to read. At ACC, we endeavour to understand the cognitive science behind learning to read and use this to inform our decisions about programs and teaching strategies. Two of our Primary school staff attended Dr Jan Hasbrouk’s Reading fluency seminar in Perth to find out more. Jan Hasbrouck, Ph.D., is a leading researcher, educational consultant, and author who works with schools internationally. 

There are 6 big skills needed to learn to read and even missing one of them can have effects on development. The skills are; oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The Scarborough reading rope below gives a great visual of these skills. When one of these twins is underdeveloped, intervention is needed as early as possible.

So what happens at school and what can we do at home to help our child?

In Kindergarten, we introduce and practice Phonemic awareness based on our PLD spelling program. This is becoming aware of sounds and syllables and manipulating these into words and sentences. Phonics are introduced in Kindergarten for the alphabet letters then in Pre Primary for the digraphs and blends of letters. We introduce complex vocabulary in our early years and extend this all the way through to Year 12. We teach fluency explicitly and comprehension through the Literacy Shed program we are trialling in the upper primary years and our reading hierarchy warm ups. 

We identify children quickly through our BAS reading tests, ACER comprehension tests and spelling tests. If Intervention is needed we provide a program called MultiLit from Year 3. The program is based on sight words and phonics. In the younger years one to one assistance is provided by an educational assistant and the child will have follow up homework.

What can we do at home? Regular reading to children and listening to your child reading is fantastic for fluency development. If focussing on correct speed the aim is for the reading to sound like speaking, not too fast or slow. Rereading over the same passage until the correct speed is achieved works well. Exposing children to a wide range and complex vocabulary by learning new words together, watching documentaries or even doing a crossword puzzle increases vocabulary.

Encouraging children to use complete sentences when speaking and copying complete sentences assists oral language development. I found road trips a great place to have fun with oral language, even just an eye spy game.

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.‌

Reading Reading Reading - Our Term 2 focus.

In term 2 we focus on reading across the Primary. I am excited by the novels the teachers have chosen for the term.

Year 1 and 2 will read - The Enchanted Wood Enid Blyton

Year 3 - James and the Giant Peach

Year 4 - A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L'Engle

Year 5 - Wonder- R. J. Palacio 

Year 6 - Holes Louis Sacher

We find that focusing for a whole term on one novel provides the opportunity for the development of comprehension skills, reading strategies and book reports.

We look forward to the learning and events of the term and as you can see we have plenty planned. Please keep an eye out for information on the Sentral parent app, Facebook, Instagram and messages.