The Helipad - Literacy Hub

The Helipad - Literacy Hub We love supporting our families and watching their child's learning take-off!

We are passionate about helping children develop their language and literacy skills, which transforms their learning journey and boosts their self-confidence.

30/01/2026

On Wednesday, The Helipad team had the privilege of volunteering with Big Group Hub — an incredible grassroots organisation supporting some of our community’s most vulnerable children and families.

Big Group Hug works with over 350 amazing volunteers to collect and redistribute essential items like prams, cots, car seats, clothing and toys for children from newborn to 16 years, working through a network of 1,200 health and welfare professionals across 142 agencies.

In the past financial year alone, together they:
- Supported 7,734 babies and children
- Provided 139,284 essential items
- Delivered support valued at $2.7 million
- Saved 140+ tonnes of usable children’s items from landfill

We’re so grateful for all the work Big Group Hug does for our community. Thank you so much for having us - it was a pleasure spending the morning with you and your amazing volunteers who welcomed us with open arms 🩵

In speech pathology, when we think of "fluency" we often associate it with stuttering. When I'm talking about fluency, I...
12/09/2024

In speech pathology, when we think of "fluency" we often associate it with stuttering. When I'm talking about fluency, I am referring to "skill fluency."

When someone is fluent in a skill, they can use it both accurately and quickly, with little thought. Some people say they "can do it with their eyes closed" or "without even thinking."

If children can complete component skills (e.g. blending sounds together, reading words) fluently, then it decreases the working memory load when they have to use these skills in problem solving or comprehension tasks. For example, if a child can read words fluently in a reading passage, they can then focus their attention on understanding what they are reading.

When developing skills it is therefore important to not only focus on accuracy, but speed as well.

References:
▪️Archer, A. & Hughes, C. (2011). Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. The Guilford Press.
▪️Johnson, K. & Street, E. (2013). Response to Intervention and Precision Teaching. The Guilford Press.

We all know how important home practise is! Family life is very busy though, so it can be tricky for families to complet...
10/09/2024

We all know how important home practise is! Family life is very busy though, so it can be tricky for families to complete regular home practise. Here are some tips that might make it more achievable:

1. Stack it onto an existing routine
Encourage families to complete home practise before or after something that they do regularly, like after nightly readers or after their child has eaten an after school snack.

2. Complete home practise in the car
Some activities can be completed while commuting (e.g. blending sounds, for example saying "p...i...n...k" and the child then says "pink"). Some of our families also keep their home practise folders in the car so they can do some home practise while waiting at a sibling's extracurricular activity.

3. Aim for smaller chunks
Completing smaller amounts of home practise more regularly is not only more achievable than completing it all in one go, but also provides opportunities for repeated practise. Aiming for 5-10 minutes of home practise a few times a week is a good starting point.

What else do you find helps families complete home practise?

Blending can be really tricky for some children to learn. We have had success using this tip for lots of our children at...
05/09/2024

Blending can be really tricky for some children to learn. We have had success using this tip for lots of our children at The Helipad.

Children who are having trouble with blending are likely to still need lots of modelling and scaffolding, but reducing the variety of words and only making one sound change can really help!

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) of letter sounds requires someone to say as many letter sounds as they can in a period of t...
03/09/2024

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) of letter sounds requires someone to say as many letter sounds as they can in a period of time (e.g. 15 seconds, 1 minute).

We use this timed practise as one way of building and maintaining fluency in identifying letter sounds. It is a great way to get lots of practise and repetition in a short period of time. We mostly use 15 second timings and repeat this 2-3 times in a session.

Identifying letter sounds quickly also helps children when they are sounding out words - if they can identify the sounds in a word quickly, then they are more likely to then be able to blend the sounds together (as they are more likely to remember all of the sounds that they've just said).

You can see RAN of letter sounds in action in a couple of our previous posts 🙂

Address

95 Morris Road
Truganina, VIC
3029

Opening Hours

Monday 10:30am - 6:30pm
Tuesday 10:30am - 6:30pm
Wednesday 10:30am - 6:30pm
Thursday 10:30am - 6:30pm
Friday 9:30am - 5:30pm

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