New approach to phonic to be rolled out in Victoria

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Victorian government says a new system for teaching children how to read will be 'life changing' for students. From next year, all students from prep to grade two will learn to read using phonics which focusses on the relationship between sounds and letters.

Transcript

00:00All students will learn this new approach, a blanket approach, across all government

00:06schools from next year and essentially they'll be taught to read using the synthetic phonics

00:13approach and they'll be given a minimum of 25 minutes daily explicit teaching of this

00:19new method.

00:20Right now many students are taught to read under the balanced literacy model, which as

00:25part of that learning process essentially gets students to guess words and sounds based

00:30on pictures and other prompts, whereas phonics is teaching children the sounds of the English

00:34language and the letter combinations that make them.

00:38It's more of a direct teaching approach and at the moment principals of all state schools,

00:44it's at their discretion which method is taught to children.

00:48This method, or this new announcement, will bring all government schools under the same

00:53method.

00:54The government made this announcement today and said that it is based on research which

00:59has been done here in Australia and internationally, which is all pointing towards this phonics

01:04method being the best way to teach children to read.

01:08The Education Minister, Ben Carroll, spoke to the ABC this morning.

01:12He says that the research is showing that children who are taught under this method,

01:16the phonics method, are two years ahead of their peers.

01:19Take a listen to what he had to say a short time ago.

01:22We're teaching children at the moment how to guess words and all the evidence shows

01:28we need to show them how to spell out the words and really read them from the beginning.

01:35From 2025 it's a significant policy change.

01:38It will require lots of change in schools, particularly the schools that have implemented

01:46already the balanced literacy model.

01:49It will require teachers to change the way that they are teaching students to read and

01:55no doubt from today this policy announcement will spark significant discussion today, in

02:02the coming weeks, in the coming years, about the best way to teach children to read.

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