Literacy is the ability to comprehend and communicate information confidently, fluently and accurately in a range of contexts. It involves the integration of reading and writing with speaking, listening, viewing and critical thinking. Roadmap 2011 for P-10 curriculum teaching, assessment and reporting

Reading involves decoding and comprehension

Decoding Strategies  Using illustrations  Sounding out  Reading on, reading back  Changing pace  Chunking, syllables  Look for similarities  Little words in big words  Self correcting  Self monitoring

Prior Knowledge: Use what I already know to help understand something new. Comprehension Strategies Making Connections: Make connections between different things I read. Predicting: Make a smart guess about what’s going to happen next. Questioning: Ask questions to understand what I’m reading. Visualising: Create a movie in my mind while I’m reading. Imagine a picture in my mind.

Identifying main/important ideas: Sort out the key ideas. The main idea is the author’s message. Inferring: Figure out what it really means from clues in the text. Summarising: Tell what’s important. Retell what happened in the story so far. Synthesising: Put the pieces together to see them in a new way. Reflecting/evaluating: Make judgements about what I read and explain why.

Self monitoring and self correcting: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? How can I check? Fluency

Small group reading with a teacher, aide or adult volunteer gives children the opportunity to practise explicit reading and comprehension skills taught in class. Most of small group reading time is spent reading (inturns, silently or modelled by the group leader) and discussing the text.

The main purpose of reading is to extract meaning from the text. Reading is more than words – it is a conversation about what has been read.