Literacy | Riverdale

What does Literacy look like in Pae Ake?

During Year 3 and 4 your child will be transitioning from learning “how to read” and “how to write” to learning about the world through reading and writing.

Your child could be reading;

in a small group, with a teacher, learning decoding skills
to develop their comprehensions skills (such as; summarising, finding key facts, making inferences, combining information from across the text to make a judgement, explaining their thinking using evidence from a text)
independently from a book of their choice, developing their own personal interest in reading
a range of non-fiction texts about a subject to increase their knowledge on a subject
different styles of writing and discussing the language features and why the author chose that, for what purpose. Then using these skills in their own writing

Your child could be writing;

to entertain; this could be a narrative story, poem, or a moment in time.
to persuade; a letter or argument presenting their point of view, an advertisement or slogan.
to describe; a description of an person, place or object, or recount of a real event.
to inform; this could be an information report sharing their knowledge of a subject, or an explanation about how something works, or giving clear instructions on how to do something.

Your child could be;

learning about the language features of each of these writing styles in a small guided workshop with a teacher or as a whole class through shared writing.
practising their developing skills in the different styles of writing on their own, or with a partner, or even in a small group.
editing their work - looking to improve the surface features; spelling, punctuation or grammar..
proof reading their work - improving the quality of the message by adding more detail, giving examples.
self or peer assessing using a success criteria.

An important aspect of writing is Spelling. Your child will be learning;

The Essential Spelling words - a list of words that are common in writing
Word families and phonetic patterns eg. night, sight, light, bright

We have also noticed the children need to be explicitly taught handwriting skills; letter formation, pen grip, size and shape of letters. We have purchased a special book to help with these skills.