Coomandook Area School- Literacy Agreement 2018

Context and Purpose

Coomandook Area School is a small Reception to Year 12 school located in the Coorong Mallee region with a cohort of
approximately 130 students, 16 teaching staff members and 11 support staff. Staff have developed a literacy agreement
with the purpose of ‘rowing as one” (Lickona and Davidson, 2005). Our vision is to allow students to access transferrable
literacy skills cross-curricular to become successful literacy learners and to improve our students’ writing. A Literacy
agreement provides students with consistency across the site and collaboration amongst staff. Staff have used the Big 6 of
Reading methodology to inform the creation of this agreement. This agreement has been devised to be applied across all
year levels, learning areas and classrooms.
Quality Curriculum and Assessment
Coomandook Area School’s practices are aligned to the Australian Curriculum Outcomes and Achievement Standards. The
Literacy General Capability is weaved throughout the school and transferrable between learning areas. Progress is
monitored by:
• Running Records for primary years (Ongoing)
• Morrison-McCall for Years 3-9 (Every 4 weeks of teaching)
• NAPLAN (Annually, Term 2)
• PAT-R (Annually, Term 3)
• PAT Spelling (Annually, Term 3)
• Phonics Testing for Year 1 (Annually, Term 3)
Comprehension
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve literacy amongst our students by getting them to read their own texts
aloud for fluency prior to handing it to the teacher.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve our students’ literacy levels by implementing the writing process when
drafting sustained texts.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve students writing by supporting students to draft their work using self-
editing processes.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to increase our students’ ability to respond to texts by using TEEL paragraphs in
secondary classes.
Oral Language
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve the oral language skills of our students’ by providing an opportunity for
students’ to complete at least one oral language assessment piece a semester.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve oral literacy by allowing students opportunities to hear subject-specific
texts aloud so they are able to hear the words and recognise them at a print level. This includes using subtitles when
watching films and clips.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve the oral language skills of our students by providing opportunities for
students to have focused, subject-specific discussions in class frequently.
Vocabulary
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve the vocabularies of our students by implementing word walls/word
collectors/word banks into every class.
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve the literacy of our students by identifying challenging words in our unit
plans and explicitly teaching the meaning of these words.
Phonics
• At Coomandook Area School, we aim to improve students’ spelling by using Jolly Phonics in Junior Primary and Spalding
in Upper Primary and Secondary

Respect Honesty Persistence