BSLA to expand into Year Three

Leaders of the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA), who developed this structured literacy teaching approach specifically for our New Zealand context have now extended the approach from teaching in Years 1 and 2 to teaching children in Year 3.

Professor Gail Gillon and Professor Brigid McNeill, University of Canterbury have led the development of BSLA along with a team of talented researchers and practitioners. The approach is currently being used in years 0- 2 junior school classes in over 900 schools right across the country. From July this year the Ministry of Education is funding teachers and literacy specialists supporting children in Years 0 1, 2 or 3 to enrol in the University of Canterbury BSLA professional learning and development University of Canterbury online micro-credential course and implement BSLA in their classes.

Recently-published research shows that BSLA is achieving outstanding results. Evidence shows its effectiveness in accelerating children’s foundational skills in phonics, phoneme awareness, vocabulary, oral narrative, and listening comprehension skills. All of these skills are critical for the development of comprehensive reading and writing skills.

Importantly BSLA is proving equally effective across schools of different socio-economic demographics and for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Data also highlight the benefits of BSLA targeted small group work (BSLA Tier 2 teaching) for children with greater learning challenges. Following 30 weeks of BSLA Teaching, on average children with additional learning needs who received 40 supplementary BSLA Tier 2 lessons caught up to their peers in their foundational literacy skills.

Professor Gillon is very excited with the extension of BSLA into year 3 classes. “Our team have developed BSLA lesson plans suitable for teaching in Year 3 to extend children’s vocabulary oral narrative and reading comprehension skills as well as continuing to advance their phonological and morphological skills”.

BSLA Educator Dr Andy Vosslamber says she is thrilled with new BSLA lesson plans developed for Year 3 children.

“We have built on the proven strengths of BSLA in Years 1 and 2 and created a structured literacy approach that moves beyond recognising words and knowing how to spell. I know the teachers will love engaging their learners in systematic ways to extend their vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. We have written the lessons around Junior Journals and the Chapters series, that are available online through the Ministry of Education website. This is an economical use of quality reading resources that are already available in most schools”.

Professor Gillon and colleagues from the BSLA team Dr Amy Scott and Dr Megan Gath recently presented scientific papers on the BSLA data at the Society for Scientific Studies in Reading conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. They were thrilled with the enthusiasm and support for the BSLA work that they received from leading reading researchers from around the world.

“It is clear that what we are achieving in New Zealand with the successful large scale implementation of BSLA is unique in the world” says Professor Gillon.

“We felt very proud to showcase the amazing work our teachers, literacy specialists, and speech-language therapists are doing in implementing BSLA around our country,” Professor Gillon added. “Leading reading experts from Canada, USA, Germany and UK were all keen to learn more about BSLA. In particular they are interested in our culturally responsive literacy teaching approach, our online assessments for teachers to monitor children’s early literacy growth and the effectiveness of our micro-credential model for upskilling teachers in structured literacy teaching at large scale.”

Christchurch’s Burnside Primary School has been using the BSLA since it was rolled out to schools in 2021; Junior School Leader and Assistant Principal Trudi Browne is an enthusiastic advocate for the programme.

“Many of our children arrive at school not knowing that ‘dog’ and ‘duck’ start the same way, so their phoneme identity is really low, and they are not able to blend sounds together,” Browne says. “With BSLA the children experience accelerated progress so that by the time they finish the end of Year 2 we have a much bigger proportion of learners [compared to before BSLA was introduced] who are actually working at the expected level of the curriculum.”

Browne says the approach has also worked particularly well across cultural groups enabling children who previously were underperforming in their literacy skills to thrive.

“Our Māori and Pasifika children really thrive on seeing themselves in the BSLA reading resources and the te reo words really hook them in. All of our children can really see themselves in those stories, they are really relevant for their ages and stages.”

Read the latest research article visit: schoolnews.co.nz/f2ld and
to learn more about the BSLA see betterstartapproach.com