At Thornlands we aim to offer our students MORE (Making Our Results Excellent) by focusing on building on the previous year's achievements. This acts as a platform for the next year and beyond. For a snapshot of some of the amazing work that happens at Thornlands, please click the below links.
Curriculum @ Thornlands (PDF, 142KB)
Writing @ Thornlands (PDF, 250KB)
Reading @ Thornlands (PDF, 202KB)
Pedagogical Framework (PDF, 466KB)
Intentional Collaboration (PDF, 164KB)
IMPACT (PDF, 237KB)
Leap Into Literacy (P-2)
Leap Into Literacy is a structured, cumulative, multi-sensory and evidence-based method of teaching reading whereby students are taught the link between letters and the speech sounds they represent. Our students learn sounds (phonemes) are represented by letters (graphemes). We teach children that phonemes can be blended and segmented to read and write words. This is a bottom-up approach in that instruction starts not with whole words but with the most basic sound unit, the phoneme. The reading process involves decoding words into separate sounds that are blended together to read an unknown word.
Leap Into Literature (3-4)
At TSS, we are thrilled to extend our Structured Literacy approach into the middle school with our new program, Leap into Literature. This initiative builds on the strong foundations laid in Prep to Year 2 through our Leap into Literacy program. Structured Literacy is a research-based, systematic method of teaching reading and writing that acknowledges these are not naturally acquired skills, but ones that must be explicitly and sequentially taught. In Years 3 and 4, Leap into Literature shifts the focus from learning how to read to using reading and writing as tools for deeper language comprehension. As students master the basics of decoding—such as recognising, blending, and segmenting sounds—the program begins to develop their vocabulary and background knowledge. In writing, students move beyond phonics to explore how words work through the study of morphology (the meaning of word parts), orthography (spelling patterns), and etymology (word origins). As a result, parents may notice changes in spelling instruction, such as a move away from traditional spelling lists. Instead of memorising whole words, students will learn to understand how words are constructed based on sound and meaning.