At CNPS we use the CAFE reading strategies, 6 Traits of Writing and Daily 5 strategies to organise our daily literacy lessons. We follow a Literacy Instructional Model that allows for the gradual release of responsibility – I do, we do, you do. Lessons will have an explicit teaching focus, then time for students to work in small groups or independently to put new skills into practice. During Literacy lessons students will meet with their teachers to discuss their reading and writing goals, receive feedback on completed work and have time to clarify their understanding.

CAFÉ reading is a list of reading skills broken into the four categories:
C: Comprehension, A: Accuracy, F: Fluency and E: Expanding Vocabulary.

The ‘6 Traits of Writing’ are broken into the following categories and the VOICES acronym is used to make the elements of writing clearer to students:

Voice (V), organisation (O), ideas (I), conventions (C), excellent word choice (E), sentence fluency (S).

The Daily 5 is a set practice which is conducted in the classroom daily over the course of the Literacy block: Read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work (spelling) and work on writing.

Students have opportunities to share their writing in class, assemblies, in the newsletter and in online forums and competitions.

For students who come to CNPS with little or no English experience, we have a dedicated EAL (English as an Additional Language) team who will plan a program to accelerate your child into communicating, playing, and learning in English. This can look like small group activities in the EAL room or support and resources in the classroom.