Reading is a high priority at Nashville State School. The aim of our whole school reading program is to produce confident and competent readers. Our school uses a range of reading procedures which include Modelled Reading, Shared Reading, Guided Reading and Independent Reading. These procedures fit with our whole school pedagogical approach following the Explicit Teaching Model - ‘I do, We do, You do’ where each procedure involves varying degrees of responsibility from both the teacher and the student.
Students are also explicitly taught reading strategies, including both word identification and comprehension strategies. Our aim is to develop efficient readers where the use of these strategies becomes automated.
The school also commits a large amount of its budget to fund a ‘Swarm Approach’ to assist with the explicit teaching of reading. This involves each class having at least two trained teacher aides in their room, three times per week when ‘Guided Reading’ is taking place. This allows teachers to work with small groups to effectively target individual needs.