by Catherine Corcoran
The Science of Reading & Structured Literacy - Part 1
Catherine Corcoran — May 24, 2022
There is a lot in the media at the moment about the teaching of Reading and Writing, and the government's plan to mandate Structured Literacy for Years 1-3. We have been using a Structured Literacy approach at Years 1-6 since 2022, so feel we are already well prepared for any decisions to come.
When I was at school........
The way we have been teaching reading for the past 30 years is known as a Balanced Literacy or Whole Language approach. It involved some learning of letter names and sounds but also relied on children using sentence structure, context and pictures to make some educated guesses about words that could not be easily sounded out.
We used this approach because at the time, research and best evidence suggested that this was the best way to teach children to read.
Over the years we have settled into a routine of sending books home from Day One of school and followed this up with multiple books coming home each week, to be read at home with whānau.
The Science of Reading
Scientific advances have now enabled researchers to see what actually happens in the brain when a person is reading and therefore how they build those connections in the brain that support literacy learning.
How the Brain Learns to Read - An interesting video to watch
The Facts
There are 26 letters of the alphabet - 21 consonants & 5 vowels - the written letters are called graphemes.
There are 44 sounds in the English language - these sounds are called phonemes. Phonemes are represented by single graphemes or groups of graphemes.
For example:
A long /ā/ sound(phoneme) can be represented by:
a_e as in cake, ai as in rain, ay as in play, eigh as in sleigh, aigh as in straight, ey as Hey
Learning about the 44 sounds of the English language is the main focus in the first two years of school at YMS.
From Year 3 onwards, the focus shifts to using these 44 sounds to spell accurately.
Cracking the Code
Using phonemes and graphemes to unlock what is written in a book is like cracking a code. Once you know how it works, you're off! Some children pick up this code without even realising it and learn to read with relative ease. Others need more intensive targeted teaching before they start flying with their reading. A few children will always find the code time-consuming to crack but very few (2-3%) will never be able to read.
What has been noticed over recent years is that not as many children are picking up the code with that relative ease, and even those who do, do not transfer this knowledge well into their writing.
A Structured Literacy approach addresses these issues with the idea that a specific, targeted, systematic approach to teaching literacy is:- Important for all children but essential for some.
