From the Head of the Junior School

This has entailed researching and evaluating our reading, writing, phonics and handwriting program throughout the Junior School, but specifically in our New Entrant to Year 3 classes, for the past 12 to 18 months.

Our goal is to ensure that we have great literacy learners within the Junior School, and our research has highlighted the inexplicable need to ensure that the mastery and manipulation of sounds and letters are explicitly taught in a well structured and sequenced approach to form a solid base for reading, writing and spelling. The skills to decode, read, and write all words are needed to ensure an effective literacy foundation is developed because the rest of their education relies heavily on this.

Research confirms what we have always known, that we can not leave learning to read, write and spell to chance in the hope that they will pick up literacy skills quickly by guessing, predicting, skipping words and looking at pictures or using cards.

Whilst we have always taught a phonics-based approach to support our reading programme, we have been researching and looking to implement a strategy that supports the principles of Structured Literacy and the science of reading combined. The approach we are implementing is based on scientific research about how the brain learns to read.

Teaching Structured Literacy encompasses both reading, writing, and spelling. Children learn letter sounds and spelling patterns to help them understand the English alphabetic code (there are 44 sounds in the English language but approximately 250 ways of representing those sounds).

The programme is based on developing three critical phonemic awareness skills: blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation. Children will be learning about their phonological awareness by breaking words into sounds, swapping sounds in words, and adding and deleting sounds to words.

This program is gradually being introduced, starting with our Year 1 and New Entrant classes with the view to developing into Year 2 and 3. We look forward to this work, building on the demonstrated success of our existing literacy programme.

Our first parent information evening was well received by our families, with many parents already commenting on the success that our young literacy learners are experiencing.

We will continue to hold parent evenings as part of our implementation plan and welcome any parents to these to learn more.

If you would like to come and see Structured Literacy Lesson in action, please feel free to contact us.