Tamara Carrigan

This term, our Literacy Professional Learning Committee introduced a new Active Reading Framework across a variety of key learning areas, aimed at strengthening key comprehension skills in our students. The initiative was driven by analysis of Year 7 reading data from NAPLAN, PAT testing, and other internal and external sources. The data highlighted two critical areas for development: retrieval of directly stated information and inference skills.

In response, the committee developed a research-backed framework with a common language and set of resources to support teachers in explicitly teaching these skills. The strategy also empowers students to become more independent in applying them across disciplines.

To make the framework engaging and memorable, it incorporates three of our college team animals:

Eagle – Fly Over: Skimming and scanning a text

Dingo – Hunt Through: Locating directly stated information

Shark – Dive Deeper: Inferring meaning from a text

You can support your child’s reading at home by asking them to be an eagle, dingo, or shark when exploring a text, whether it’s a news article, a recipe, or a storybook. Encouraging them to skim like an eagle, hunt for facts like a dingo, and dive deep like a shark to uncover hidden meanings is a fun and effective way to build lifelong literacy skills.

See below for some of the strategies and resources being used in classrooms.