Abstract

This paper describes a unique literacy program Learning to Read, Reading to Learn, and its implementation in the Middle Years of Schooling (5-9) by the Catholic Education Office Melbourne, to successfully accelerate the literacy development of “at risk” learners, and close the gap between the most and least successful learners in our schools. It enables teachers to use mainstream texts to scaffold student learning, using a carefully sequenced series of reading, writing and spelling activities which can be applied in all disciplines. The distinctive features of this approach are that it uses high quality, challenging, age-appropriate texts, articulates strongly to mainstream curriculum and assessment practices and rewrites classroom discourse patterns to enable success for all learners. It can be used in mainstream or withdrawal contexts and models literate language features in both fiction and factual texts. Furthermore it is capable of extending the learning of the most competent students in the class or group. Data on student progress, collected over a two year period, shows improvement in literacy outcomes at an average of two to four times expected rates of development, for all students across all classes and schools.