Teaching children to read and write and to become readers and writers is a major part of the work of primary school teaching. Combining teacher knowledge with teaching practice is the work of Professional Learning and Development with schools. Our Structured Literacy PLD is based on the teacher knowledge needed and how to best implement into practice.
| Teacher knowledge needed | Implementing in practice |
| Oral language as the foundation of all literacy | Opportunities for talk; establishing dialogue and conversation; responding to story read aloud |
| What phonemes are and how they match to graphemes. How co-articulation affects phonemes | Teaching alphabet name and sounds. Teaching children to decode by matching graphemes to phonemes. Teaching children to spell by matching phonemes to graphemes. |
| A progression of learning the alphabetic code: Consonant and vowel patterns e.g., in English learning CVC words have short vowels; how to represent long vowel sounds | Teach the printed code for reading and spelling words by following a scope and sequence that advances gradually and cumulatively |
| Morphology is an important part of securing code knowledge and understanding word meaning | Building words by adding morphemes (suffixes and prefixes) as part of a code learning session |
| Letter formation is important and handwriting skill is vital. Handwriting takes time to secure and requires explicit teaching | Explicitly teach handwriting by explaining and modelling then monitoring as students follow the instructions |
| Building vocabulary through immersion and explicit teaching | Using quality picturebooks and topics of interest to explicitly teach new words across a week. |
| Teachers need to understand the language construction (e.g., The clause as subject/verb; simple sentences and conjunctions for compound and complex sentences | Sentence structure is built through immersion and explicit teaching. |
| Texts are used to support the explicit teaching and opportunities for implicit learning | Selecting the text that is right for the particular learners at this time. This might be a decodable text, a levelled text or an authentic text, depending on the stage of learning |
| Assessment of the components of literacy success | Using assessments that are time efficient and specific to what teachers need to know about each learner |
In addition to the content knowledge that teachers require, good teaching also depends on understanding pedagogy. Studies of learning reveal that tasks have a cognitive load that must be considered in teaching.
Short term or working memory cannot take on too much at once and teaching involves introducing new material in small steps, giving students a chance to engage and experience success, providing feedback, and independent practice.
Following these steps along with providing many opportunities for practice and review enables new learning to move into long term memory, a place that does not burden with a cognitive load.
Much of the daily work of teaching literacy involves things teachers do well in their classrooms. Teachers will consider what is best taught whole class and what needs a more specific small group approach. They will consider how one lesson provides a range of opportunities.
A handwriting lesson gives the opportunity for a spelling pattern or a sentence rule; a read aloud gives the opportunity for discussing story or for building vocabulary; a poem has opportunities for phonemic awareness and identifying rhyme. A small group lesson enables more specific noticing and responding to individual need.
PLD should support teachers in their ongoing efforts to teach with the most up-to-date knowledge and practice. Our PLD is relationship focused and builds from what teachers already do well but supports innovation and change where necessary.
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