Pedagogical approaches
At Southport Special School Comprehensive Literacy Instruction is the pedagogical approach utilised to support the students develop their skills and knowledge to support them learning to communicate, read and write. The pedagogical model addresses the differentiated learning needs of emergent, transitional and conventional literacy learners.
In keeping with the school's vision that we aim to empower every student to reach their full potential we acknowledge individual students require explicit teaching utilising evidence based High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS). The selection of these strategies is based upon student data and allows teachers to deliver highly effective and differentiated instruction to each individual student. The school has adopted this evidence based pedagogical practice as it acknowledges the complexities of learning students with disability experience and aims to address their learning needs through explicit teaching practices.
It is essential every individual student with complex communication needs has access to a robust communication system and is supported in their receptive and expressive language development. Within the Comprehensive Literacy model there is the potential to ensure students language development is heavily supported, monitored and developed by teachers and teacher aides through focused teaching and modelling of the use of their relevant communication system across each school day.
“Emergent literacy begins at birth. It is not restricted by age or disability and develops as a result of opportunity and experience" (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association).