English study is mandatory in NSW from Kindergarten to Year 12.
Students learn about the English language through written, spoken and visual texts of increasing complexity as they progress through their schooling.
An understanding of the English language is central to how we communicate and essential for intellectual, social and emotional development.
The study of English should develop a love of literature and learning and be challenging and enjoyable. It develops skills to enable students to experiment with ideas and expression, to become active, independent and lifelong learners, to work with each other and to reflect on their learning.
We have a passion for reading at Fort Street!
Fort Street Public School is dedicated to helping students develop a lifelong love of reading. This begins with the use of Jolly Phonics in infants’ classrooms to give students a fundamental understanding of sounds. The school has a broad collection of texts, featuring decodable readers and PM+ readers to support the development of decoding skills, sight words recognition and fluency. Fort Street is resourced with many quality literature sets featuring multiple copies of books from the best authors around Australia and the world. Who doesn’t love a book from Anh Do or Jackie French? These sets are used in literacy groups to help students develop stronger vocabulary and great comprehension skills.
The school library is packed with amazing fiction and non-fiction books, covering the needs of our students from Kindergarten through to Year 6 and beyond. We encourage regular reading at home, providing students with log books to record their reading each day.
Writing
The writing program is structured to make the writing of students vibrant and interesting to read, while professional development for teachers emphasises the importance of spelling and grammar. Rubrics are used to track students progress in line with the NSW Literacy Progression.
Naplan marking criteria for writing
- Audience: The writer’s capacity to orient, engage and persuade the reader.
- Text structure: The organisation of the structural components of a persuasive text (introduction, body and conclusion) into an appropriate and effective text structure.
- Ideas: The selection, relevance and elaboration of ideas for a persuasive argument.
- Persuasive devices (for persuasive writing): The use of a range of persuasive devices to enhance the writer’s position and persuade the reader.
- Character & Setting (for narrative writing): The portrayal and development of character and the development of a sense of place, time and atmosphere.
- Vocabulary: The range and precision of contextually appropriate language choices.
- Cohesion: The control of multiple threads and relationships across the text, achieved through the use of referring words, ellipsis, text connectives, substitutions and word associations.
- Paragraphing: The segmenting of text into paragraphs that assists the reader to follow the line of argument.
- Sentence structure: The production of grammatically correct, structurally sound and meaningful sentences.
- Punctuation: The use of correct and appropriate punctuation to aid the reading of the text.
- Spelling: The accuracy of spelling and the difficulty of the words used.
What’s our secret to dynamic writing? We follow the Seven Steps to Writing Success.
Speaking and listening
We are dedicated to high performance in public speaking at Fort Street with our students achieving success in both public speaking and debating competitions.
To support literacy learning at home, Fort Street facilitates online access to Literacy Planet and the PM eCollection.
Support Staff
The school’s learning support staff work with students who are learning English as an additional language or dialect (EALD) or have additional support needs. Individual and small group programs target the specific needs of students and ensure that students feel engaged in the process of learning.