in the classroom
Reading the room
How changing to phonics changes everything
By Erin Nixon
The federal government has committed $ 10.8m to a free voluntary ‘ phonics health check ’, with this year ’ s recent NAPLAN results revealing a third of year three students aren ’ t meeting minimum expectations for reading .
The phonics health check is a seven-minute assessment developed for students in years one and two , as well as for older learners struggling to read .
The federally funded Literacy Hub program developed the phonics health check to help teachers identify student-level decoding skills and those needing more help with phonics-based instruction .
Evidence shows that literacy standards are rising in schools that emphasise phonics , the sounding out of words ; however , not all children end up in a classroom that teaches explicit phonics instruction .
Public school teachers in South Australia , New South Wales , and
Western Australia use a structured literacy approach to explicit phonics – reading by presenting letters and sounds in a particular order , which aims to help learners blend and decode unfamiliar words .
Structured literacy is based on the theory that a word is committed to memory after a reader decodes it several times , and once it is dedicated to memory , the reader can progress to more complex words and sentences .
South Australia was the first to make sweeping changes to literacy instruction in public schools in 2018 , and the state ’ s 2022 year-one phonics screening results have shown a 25 per cent increase in literacy competence .
NSW joined South Australia three years ago when then education minister Sarah Mitchell declared “ the reading wars over ”, referring to the debate over how children should learn to read .
WA ’ s public schools use structured literacy already , and Tasmania will start implementing it in all public schools next year by 2026 .
Queensland recently committed to implementing a new , system-wide approach to explicit phonics instruction by 2025 .
Some teachers are reluctant to shift to structured literacy because they have not been trained to deliver it
INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION ( ITE ) OVERHAUL Advocates of structured explicit literacy refer to children taught using the ‘ balanced literacy ’ method as “ instructional casualties ”, blaming the nation ’ s literacy problems on the pedagogy used to teach young readers .
Balanced literacy is an instructional strategy that balances teacher-led reading and writing with independent learning ; it focuses on the meaning of words and requires students to immerse themselves in literature .
Some teachers are reluctant to shift to structured literacy because they have not been trained to deliver it .
The federal government has given universities two years to overhaul ITE courses to include evidence-based approaches to teaching reading and writing , including explicit phonics instruction ■
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