Fostering confident readers through inquiry and evidence-based literacy instruction
Learning to read is fundamental to academic achievement and developing a lifelong love of learning.
As an IB World School, Wesley provides a holistic education that is reflected not only in what we teach, but how we teach. In our Junior Schools (from the Early Childhood Learning Centre to Year 4), we embed literacy across all areas of learning, ensuring it is an integral part of every student's educational experience.
At Wesley, we nurture students’ natural curiosity to help them draw meaning and deepen their understanding of what they are learning. Through inquiry-based learning, students engage with texts and ask meaningful questions, fostering both curiosity and a genuine engagement with their learning. This approach encourages them to see reading and writing as essential tools for understanding the world around them.
But how do we blend student-driven inquiry with direct teacher instruction? The answer lies in a balanced approach - one that is vital for developing confident, capable readers and writers.
While inquiry supports engagement and meaning-making, foundational literacy skills such as phonics, decoding, and fluency require structured, explicit instruction. Our teachers provide systematic, direct teaching in key areas including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension, laying the groundwork for lifelong literacy.
Supported by educational research through 'the science of reading', Wesley employs the Sounds-Write approach to teaching literacy in Junior School, which teaches the alphabetic code, blending, segmenting and fluency through a clear, cumulative approach, ideal for building early reading skills amongst PYP learners.
Literacy is one of the most important foundational skills for young learners. Our approach to teaching literacy is grounded in both inquiry and evidence-based instruction, ensuring our students become capable, confident readers and writers. While our students in Junior School may still be young, they are developing crucial foundations for academic achievement and for their future careers in an increasingly globalised world.
