Dear Parents and Carers,

At St Mary’s we are committed to ensuring that from the moment children begin school, they engage in exceptional learning in the subject of Literacy. In 2021, we began using a Kinder to Year Two whole-class Literacy Program named InitiaLit. This is a research initiative of Macquarie University which is based on 30 years of research undertaken by members of the MultiLit Research Unit. Since the inclusion of the program, we are observing our students thrive with their reading, writing, spelling and communicating skills.

Each class begins their InitiaLit lesson with an ‘On the Mat’ session. The teacher explicitly teaches reading, writing and spelling. The focus of these ‘On the Mat’ sessions include the following:

• InitiaLit–F teaches children that words are made up of sounds and sounds are represented by letters. Unlike learning to talk which children pick up naturally, children do need to be directly taught the relationship between sounds and letters. All children greatly benefit from the structured nature of the program, regardless of how many or how few skills they bring to the task.
• InitiaLit-1 builds upon the knowledge of the alphabetic code. Students learn that a letter or letters can make different sounds, and that two or three letters together can make a sound. They also learn key terminology such as ‘vowel’, ‘syllable’, ‘phoneme’, ‘grapheme’, and ‘digraph’.
• InitiaLit-2 By the time children reach Year 2, they should be able to work out most words they encounter for reading and spelling without guessing. The focus now moves to reading comprehension and spelling. There are four main teaching components in InitiaLit–2 spread across the week: comprehension and fluency, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. 

Following the whole class sessions, the students participate in independent work and group activities. These include a range of activities which consolidate learning where the teacher has an opportunity to work with small groups and individual students. Finally, the students engage in a Storybook session. This provides opportunities for students to develop oral language, vocabulary and comprehension. Our teachers monitor student progress by regularly completing assessments.

Results
The data below is a sample and represents student progress and compares InitiaLit assessments for each child in our K/1 class.

The first assessment was completed at the start of the year (SOY). The second assessment was completed recently (EOY). The second assessment was similar to the first, but included specific elements of reading, writing and spelling that the students had been focusing on. We are extremely pleased with the progress our students across K-2 have made this year through the InitiaLit program.

More information about the InitiaLit program can be found below. Or you can speak to your child’s class teacher.

God bless and take care