Fairvale+PS

Team Members: Jessica Bushby, Despina Michael and Corinne Buchan.
 * __Fairvale PS __**
 * Project Coordinator/Facilitator: Kathy Needham **

 Fairvale Public School was established in 1956. The school is one of four public schools serving the inner area of Fairfield City. The school is situated within a residential area with the majority of children living within walking distance of the school.
 * __Context statement __**

Fairvale Public School currently has 559 students, 22 classes K-6, 90% language backgrounds other than English with an increasing refugee population. The school has strong involvement and participation through the Parents and Citizens’ Association. Literacy, Numeracy, Sports and Creative Arts programs are a feature of the school. The school receives funding through Priority Schools Program. Staff is a balance of experienced and early years career teachers. The school has partnership links with the high school and community of schools.

Fairvale Public School's NAPLAN results have maintained overall improvement in the last 4 years. Generally speaking in 2009, Year 3 and 5 achieved below the state average in the top 2 bands and above the state average in the bottom 2 bands in most of the assessment components. Some exceptions are Spelling in Year 3 and 5, where students achieved above the state average in the top 2 bands and in Year 5 Writing, where students also achieved above the state in the top 2 bands. Growth rates of matched students from Yr 3 to Yr 5 are consistently very strong and usually significantly above state average, however, reading growth is usually lower than the growth of Numeracy and Writing.

For the action research project, Year 3 has been identified as the focus group. All of the Year 3 teachers including one STLA support teacher will form the team for this profject. Comprehension has consistently been identified from BST and NAPLAN results as an area of need. Year 3 particuarly have difficulty making inferences about a character, interpreting information and connecting ideas across 2 paragraphs. K-6 currently implement various comprehension strategies (e.g. here, hidden and head: 3 levels of questioning) into guided reading and shared reading projects. Guided and shared reading has been a focus in our mentoring project called 'Partnerships' and training and development workshops for the last few years. Stages 2 and 3 have currently been working with Mrs Elizabeth Rump (PSP Consultant) to assist our school to develop shared reading programs to enhance students inferential and comprehension skills.

The facilitator of the project will regularly update the Literacy Committee with project information and in-class strategies. The Literacy Committee members will then filter this information into their teams so K-6 will benefit from this project, not just Year 3.