Learners Loving Literacy
Living Waters Lutheran School community in Alice Springs is enjoying a strong start to our year and an increase in enrolments.
At Living Waters, we are passionate about knowing our learners and serving their needs, evidenced by the proven success of our literacy program that is accessible to all our students from diverse backgrounds.
According to the Grattan Institute’s 2024 report ‘The Reading Guarantee’, a third of our nation’s children are failing proficient reading standards, attributed to this: “the reason most of those students can’t read well enough is that we aren’t teaching them well enough.”
While the report focuses on the mechanics such as mastering decoding new words, building background knowledge and vocabulary with comprehension the end goal, it misses a crucial contributing factor to the success of literate readers.
At Living Waters, we believe that parents are critical partners in education. We have seen great growth in reading competency and literacy achievement across multiple stages due to the expertise of our teaching staff in partnership with parents.
One of our Foundation parents, Ashlee, shares some of the excitement, engagement and enthusiasm for literacy being experienced: “At first my son asked, “why don’t we learn the letters in the alphabet order?” but with the approach at Living Waters, he was so excited to hear that the first 6 letters they learnt, “sat pin” can create over 100 words.”
Ashlee says, “He comes home sharing each of the new letters he has learnt and is really thinking about what he’s learning. For a kid who would generally choose free play over a structured activity it is wonderful to see his interest grow as he learns more and more. One day he was worried that he would miss out on learning a new letter when he had an appointment!”
This engagement is also shared amongst Living Waters Foundation peers: “I’ve watched other classmates enjoying books as much as him and sharing what they are learning,” observes Ashlee. “They’re so excited to identify classmates’ names and new words in the title of a book.”
And the excitement continues to build. “At bedtime we revisit all the letters and new words, as he avoids going to sleep. He loves sharing with his little sister the new letters he is learning. We have gone from “I can’t read a book because I don’t know the words” to creating confidence in his own stories because the readers at this stage don’t have words. He tells me he likes all the readers he gets.”
We are so proud of our confident and capable Living Waters learners who are freely flourishing. As an Independent School, Living Waters has the freedom to develop and use a bespoke approach to literacy that meets the needs of our learners rather than adopting systemic or cookie-cutter programs.
In March, we will hold Literacy Information evenings to introduce new parents and interested families to the Living Waters approach and toolkit that is seeing wonderful outcomes for our students’ literacy.
More Australian parents like Ashlee are choosing contemporary education through Independent Schools like Living Waters and we invite you and your child to flourish with us.
There is mid-year entry or 2026 enrolment with limited vacancies across the school. We understand current concerns if finances are tough right now, and we have a range of fee support to assist our community. Families may be eligible for Centrecorp assistance or LLL School Bursary, and there are other options that we would be happy to discuss.