Principle 1 - Effective teaching develops students’ own literacy skills and strategies
Teachers need to support students to read and write challenging texts, as well as prepare them to cope when their teacher is no longer there to assist. The ultimate aim of literacy instruction is to develop students’ own literacy skills and strategies. The difference between teacher support and student independence is illustrated in the table below.
| Teacher support | Student independence |
| Teacher provides activities such as brainstorms and concept stars to help students activate their prior knowledge before each reading or writing task. | Student surveys organisational features of text before reading and asks him/herself, “What do I know about this topic / type of text?” |
| Teacher teaches new vocabulary items. | Student uses strategies to solve unfamiliar words when reading and writing, for example, re-reading, knowledge of prefixes and suffixes, context clues. |