Background

Our proposal aims to improve academic achievement through the year 7 NAPLAN
performance in reading at Westfields Sports High School. The school has already
implemented a literacy program to address the widening gap of students' NAPLAN results
compared to other Australian students. The program is run as two separate 37-minute
classes each week and attempts to improve students’ general literacy skills through reading.
Despite the program’s goals, there has been little improvement of students' reading and
comprehension abilities. 

Scenario

Westfields Sports High School is located at Fairfield west, Greater Western Sydney, and
caters for a diverse range of students. The majority of students (67%) speak a language
other than English and the school contains a relatively high proportion of students within the
bottom quarter of the Socio -Educational Advantage Distribution (MySchool, 2020).
Research suggests that students transitioning from primary to secondary schooling has
negative effects over their reading ability. Therefore, it is implied that a need for an
enhanced transitioning process and support can benefit newly emerging secondary school
students with regards to effective secondary school literacy learning (Hopwood, Hay, &
Dyment, 2017). The purpose of our program is to support a diverse range of students in their
reading skills through differentiated reading and comprehension materials, which is tailored
through specific KLAs. The existing program in the school attempts to address literacy
needs, that has shown little progress in improving upon reading and comprehension (Figure
1 & 2). The modified program we propose aims to focus on improving literacy skills across all
subject-areas, specifically starting with our respective subject-areas of English, Science and
TAS. This approach aims to ensure that all year 7 students are reading at the appropriate
level corresponding to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority
(ACARA)  Literacy continuum (ACARA, 2020).

Project Plan

Goal: To improve upon all students’ reading and comprehension skills across all
curriculum areas and ensuring they are achieving a stage 4 proficiency level.

The main goal of the project is to improve year 7’s reading and comprehension skills across
the curriculum. A goal that will run alongside the main aim of the project is to ensure
students are all reading at a minimum stage 4 (level 9) proficiency. Regarding students at or
 above the stage four proficiency, it is hoped they will extend their abilities by a minimum of
two levels. Another overall arching goal for this program for teachers is to self-evaluate the
success of this intervention and provide ongoing constructive feedback to further improve
the program.

Within the short term it is hoped that the students understand the importance of the program
and why they should engage with it. Also in the short term it is also hoped that teachers
undergo professional development regarding teaching literacy skills and administering and
analysing literacy tests. The end goal is to have the program fully embedded and operating
efficiently throughout the year.

Type of intervention that you intend to undertake?

We will be conducting a classroom-based learning intervention through student-levelled reading

and comprehension tasks. 

The classroom-based learning and student-levelled reading takes inspiration from Westfield
Sports enrichment program. This program uses student levelled reading materials and
comprehension tasks to promote and develop a students reading skill (Perace, Wheldhall &
Madeleine, 2006). 

By using this approach in a classroom setting we can target all students as each one will have a
personalised leveled text to study with corresponding comprehension assessment. Santi and
Reed (2015) highlights this need for personalised reading as he noticed a decline in reading and
comprehension results amongst Australian students. However the original enrichment program
solely targets extending refugee-students or students with minimal English
speaking/reading/writing ability. To address this limitation, the intervention will provide higher
order-based comprehension tasks and reading materials for gifted and talented students (Munro,
2019), as it is noted that these students are commonly viewed to be skillful in this area, and
therefore, neglected for any improvements. However, this intervention will provide opportunities
for high-achieving students to extend their skills and ability with regards to reading and
comprehension. The use of Bloom’s taxonomy will help facilitate this improvement as these
students will be asked to create, evaluate and analyse their readings.  

Overall, the intervention will be an in-class reading and comprehension program schedule during
the schools enrichment program. Each student will be given a levelled book suited for their
reading ability that comes from a faculty chosen text. Teachers will demonstrate reading and
comprehension skills to students during the first phase. During the second phase students will
read their text in both the class and in their own time. In the third phase students will complete a
comprehension task based on their text (either physical or online). Students can complete the
task earlier with teacher discretion. Rewards will be given to students who succeed in the task
while students with no interest in the program will be referred to the learning centre in the school
as a type of negative reinforcement. All year 7 students will be required to undertake the program
while from year 8 onwards, this program becomes voluntary.       

How do you intend to measure improvement? 

To initially assess where each student is at regarding reading ability, the program will
implement a diagnostic test of students’ ability prior to beginning their first term. The
program posits using two reading diagnostic tools listed by Forster (2009). The two
tests chosen include the Tests of Reading Comprehension (TORCH) which can be
administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the
Wide Range Reading Test (WRRT), administered by a teacher trained in its use.
These diagnostic results will be compared alongside students' NAPLAN data from
year 5 to help place the students within a reading level that corresponds to the
ACARA Literacy continuum (ACARA, 2020).

During the third week of each key learning areas literacy development the student
will perform the WRRT and a comprehension booklet. Successful completion will
result in the student progressing up a level in reading ability, whereas failure to
achieve a 95% success rate will result in students remaining at their level. Student
progression through these reading levels will be tracked using the spreadsheet as
seen in figure 3. When students complete a reading level they will earn points, which
go towards rewarding their progress. 

Figure 3: Spreadsheet of student progress through reading levels. 

 Once students sit the year 7 NAPLAN test their performance can be compared
against their progress so far and their previous NAPLAN results. 

How does this lead to a cycle of continuous improvements

It requires teachers involved to engage in professional development to find ways of

developing the aims of the program. The effectiveness of these approaches will be analysed
from student-results, which will again form new professional development and improvements
to the program. 

At the end of each term, teachers involved in the program will be required to evaluate
student performance in this program. This will help teachers identify areas of improvement
within the program in which adjustments can be made to address limitations. As part of the
professional development step, self-evaluation is an end of each term process, in which the
participating teachers/faculty will work together to manage the intervention function and its
effectiveness. This inbuilt aspect of the intervention promotes continuous improvement as
there is a recurring timeframe of improvement.