NATIONAL LITERACY AWARD
St. Monica’s College is the proud recipient of the 2004
National Award for Excellence in Literacy. On August 26th, the Assistant
Principal, Ms Gaynor Robson-Garth led a delegation to Sydney to collect the
award from the Minister of Education, Science and Training, Dr. Brendan Nelson,
at Fox Studios.
The group included staff representative Ms Louise Bourke,
Head of Literacy Mrs Meredith Berry, two student representatives, Joel De
Rozario from 7 Green and Andrew Zapulla from 7 Orange and parent representative
Mr. Ray De Rosario.
The award is in recognition of the College’s whole school
approach to literacy and the work that has been done by the entire staff in this
area over many years. Fundamental to our approach to raising literacy levels in
the College, is the on-going professional development of teaching staff in
relation literacy demands. As a result, all Key Learning Areas incorporate
literacy activities into their courses and assessment.
The College offers both intervention literacy programs and a
mainstream approach to literacy, to ensure all students have the opportunity to
achieve their potential. In Year 7, reading skills have been targeted. All
students take part in Reading Circles as part of their English course of study,
while up to six students in each class participate for a semester in the
program, Learning to Read, Reading To Learn. This program was developed by Dr
David Rose from Sydney University. The program is a structured language program
that supports both reading and writing through intensive scaffolding of texts.
Sessions take place in the recently acquired literacy and numeracy centre,
Monica’s Cottage.
The literacy focus continues in later years where it is
integrated across all Key Learning Areas. For example, subject teachers prepare
models of key writing tasks, which form a basis for teaching each unit. The
literacy requirements of the task are assessed on Criteria Sheets and rubrics,
together with subject specific skills and knowledge. All faculties work with the
Information Technology Faculty to incorporate information and communication
technologies in at least one task per year and research skills are reinforced in
a coordinated approach across all year levels.
Measures of our success in this area include our improved VCE
English results where students have consistently performed above their
predicated ability levels as forecast by the General Achievement Test, whilst
pre and post testing of year 7 students shows significant improvement in the
literacy levels of individual students and the year level overall.
The challenge is ongoing and we continue to build on the
successes of the past to ensure that all students leave St. Monica’s College
literate in a range of areas, to enable them to thrive in today’s society and to
achieve at the highest levels.