The Thistle - An E-Newsletter of Scotch College, Perth, Western Australia

Academic Support

Early Intervention: MiniLit

This year the Junior School has introduced the MiniLit (Meeting Initial Needs in Literacy) programme for Year 1 and 2. It is an evidence-based, explicit and effective early literacy intervention programme for teaching reading skills.

Our trained MiniLit specialists, Mrs Michelle Scarvaci and Mrs Amanda Jenkin deliver the programme to three groups of boys in Year 1 and 2 before school four days per week. The synthetic phonic programme is highly engaging. The boys actively participate in 30-minute lessons, which involve oral sound work, written sound work, shared reading and games. The sound component involves kinaesthetic learning. The boys count sounds and track them with their hands and fingers. MiniLit consolidates basic letter/sound knowledge, decoding skills and extends word attack knowledge by teaching commonly used digraphs and longer words.

Our MiniLit specialists closely monitor and track students' progress. It is very exciting to see impressive gains. The students are becoming more and more confident in all areas of literacy: reading, writing and spelling. MiniLit is providing a solid foundation for our boys. It's setting them up for success and preparing them for future learning. Special commendations go to those Year 1 and 2 boys who commit to before-school learning.

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Mrs Janet Lopez
Head of Academic Support