Push for more phonics lessons, as kids not taught basic reading and literacy skills fall behind

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Learning to read is one of the building blocks of life, and yet there are concerns some children are being left behind. Schools explicitly teaching students to sound out words are seeing literacy standards lift.

Transcript

00:00 It's almost dinner time at the Bogart House and that means homework.

00:10 Twelve year old Zoe is a thriving student now, but in her younger years she struggled

00:14 to learn to read.

00:16 It was a little bit frustrating for me because no one was telling me how to do it or no one

00:22 was helping me understand what I was reading.

00:25 By year three Zoe was three years behind.

00:29 I do feel quite let down.

00:30 I put my trust into the teachers and into the public system and I've literally got no

00:36 result.

00:37 Noni found Zoe a tutor and moved her to a Canberra Catholic school.

00:42 There she was explicitly taught to sound out words instead of memorising or guessing them.

00:47 Zoe caught up within two years.

00:50 There's many what I would call instructional casualties which are kids that are failing

00:55 to learn to read, not because they can't but because they're not taught well enough.

01:00 More and more schools are moving to what's called structured explicit literacy where

01:04 children are taught letters and sounds in a particular order so they can decode unfamiliar

01:10 words.

01:11 Instead of using predictable readers which have been removed from the national curriculum,

01:16 it uses decodable readers.

01:18 Decodable readers promote guessing and there's lots of long words and tricky sounds.

01:27 A decodable reader promotes decoding and it has a restricted amount of letters and sounds

01:34 which the child has been practising.

01:37 We know that children who are effective readers early on are the ones who have acquired those

01:44 automatic decoding skills.

01:47 Professor Pamela Snow says there is huge variation in what schools are doing across the country.

01:52 It is a lottery unfortunately and parents don't know that they're signing up for a lottery

02:00 when they enrol their child at this school rather than that school.

02:04 Are you ready spaghetti?

02:06 Yes!

02:07 South Australian public schools started explicitly teaching phonics five years ago.

02:12 With the help of literacy coaches, the state's NAPLAN reading and phonics check results have

02:17 been steadily improving, especially among children from poorer backgrounds.

02:22 When we can see those results changing, that's always really good for teachers to be able

02:26 to go, "Oh, actually what you're telling me and what we're trying and doing here is actually

02:29 working for me and my students."

02:31 The big thing that I'm seeing in the children is confidence.

02:33 So when they come into our phonics lessons, because they're structured, they're explicit,

02:38 they have a routine and the kids know what to expect, they're all willing to have a go.

02:43 New South Wales and WA public schools also teach this way, while Tasmania and now Queensland

02:49 are committed to making a state-wide switch.

02:52 But the phonics first approach still has its critics.

02:56 I believe that a balanced approach works best because it allows the teacher to encompass

03:04 using a whole range of different strategies to meet the needs of the individual learner.

03:09 For Noni, there's no question what works best.

03:12 Her son Jagger was explicitly taught phonics from the beginning.

03:17 He's already nearly at a year two level in reading from doing his decodable readers.

03:22 Cracking the code for a fundamental skill for life.

03:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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