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ACT school boosts NAPLAN results through fostering a ‘love of reading’

An Australian Capital Territory school has seen a significant improvement in the reading levels of its students according to the latest NAPLAN results, thanks to a whole-school effort to foster a love of reading in students.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Charnwood-Dunlop School—a government school in a low socio-economic area with around 40% of students from non-English speaking backgrounds—made several changes as part of a strategy to improve reading levels across the school. These included opening a space for reading before school (called the ABC Cafe) and implementing a half-hour ‘hot read’ session every morning, between 9 and 9.30 am.

2017 NAPLAN results from the school show that year three and year five students had improved significantly in reading and grammar compared to the results from 2015, when year three and year five students were performing below or substantially below in reading and writing compared to similar schools across the country. The school is now performing on par or better than some of their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

Charnwood-Dunlop School’s teacher-librarian, Bridgette Manley, has been at the school for three years, following a period where the school ‘went without’ a teacher librarian for some time after the previous librarian retired. Principal Debbie Martens says that Manley ‘leads our literacy intervention and is a coach in literacy, building teacher capacity as part of our coaching team this year’.

Martens said there had been a tangible shift at the school. ‘The biggest change I see is just that love of reading,’ she said.

‘The kids don’t treat reading as something they have to do at school. You actually see them walking around the playground with their books and getting on the bus with them and taking them home. So it’s actually become a culture of enjoying reading.’

 

Category: Library news