13 Mar 2013
RFWS has just been awarded a Chairman's Trust grant by Credit Lyonnaise to develop their LEEP program - Local Excellence through Effective Partnerships. The project aims to develop the early literacy skills of rural and remote preschoolers and kindy students. LEEP will include several components:
- An early literacy package, building on an existing, partly developed program written by a team at the school as part of a Quality Teaching Indigenous Project. This program, SWAY (Sounds, Words and Yarning), was developed after a great deal of consultation with Aboriginal educators, parents and community members as well as an Aboriginal academic specialising in linguistics. The development team was made up of Aboriginal teaching and support staff, a speech pathologist, speech pathology students and a special educator.
- The published SWAY package, which will be available online, as an app on tablet computers and in kit form, will provide teachers and parents with activities to develop early skills fundamental to the development of strong literacy skills. Lessons will target knowledge and manipulation of areas such as sounds, vocabulary, story telling. The package will embed Aboriginal cultural knowledge, be high interest, activity-based and easy to use.
- Training of preschool and kindergarten staff in classroom-based actvities to develop early literacy skills. Training will be available online on demand,using a series of video clips, slide presentations and other resources.
- Partnerships with rural and remote preschools to measure the efficacy of the program and to devleop the program further in response to need. Data pre and post LEEP implementation will be used to inform the ongoing development of LEEP.
- Parent training will be a very important part of LEEP.