ELALC

The English, Languages & Arts Learning Committee (ELALC) consists of classroom teachers, education assistants as well as the school librarian, music, and art teacher. The Committee oversees the organisation and implementation of the English Operational plan as well as promoting the English, Languages and The Arts curriculum learning areas. Whole school events including National Simultaneous Storytime, Book Week and the end of year Christmas Concert are organised and promoted by the committee.

At Edney Primary School in English, we implement a range of programs across our Early Childhood, Middle and Upper Primary School to support the developmental progression of our students Literacy skills.

In Early Childhood we implement the Letters and Sounds programme which teaches the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling. It progresses through all sounds, working from the simple to the more complex. The program effectively targets the development of oral language, reading, spelling and written expression in the early years. It aligns with the achievement standards outlined in the West Australian Curriculum and has been shown to significantly improve literacy outcomes. To ensure we capture students who need extra intervention and support in the early years we offer the Sounds-Write intervention program. It teaches the skills, conceptual knowledge and code knowledge that are essential for learning to read and spell successfully.

The Soundwaves Program is used in Year 3-6. The Sound Waves Spelling follows a logical scope and sequence and is organised around the 43 phonemes (sounds) of Australian English and the graphemes (a letter or letter combination) used to represent them in written language.

A priority for Edney Primary School is for students to improve their writing skills based on previous years NAPLAN results. All teachers at Edney Primary School have been trained to implement the Talk for Writing approach. A focus going forward is to ensure students develop the stamina to write for extended periods of time. T4W is a sequential process that uses spoken activities to develop writing skills. By developing and expanding students’ oral language skills and ideas for stories is extended into formative steps of being able to produce sentence, paragraph, and text ideas.