By Paula Fisher | Posted: Sunday September 25, 2022
This is Kaikorai Primary School's first article in a series related to Structured Literacy. In this article, you will find information about the meaning of Structured Literacy, how Structured Literacy came about, and some key words and their terminology.
*What is Structured Literacy?
Structured Literacy is the explicit teaching of reading, writing and spelling so that nothing is left to chance. Students at Kaikorai are taught Structured Literacy, as part of their literacy programme. Teachers at Kaikorai follow a specific scope (the content that is taught) and sequence (the order that we teach it in).
*Why are we teaching Structured Literacy?
The underlying basis for the content and principles of Structured Literacy is The Science of Reading - scientific evidence from accumulated research on reading/writing acquisition and instruction.
Today in 2022 we now know:
*There is a Science of Reading
*The Science of Reading came about through a large body of research from a large body of disciplines: Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics and Education
*We are not born to read, we must be taught
*Teaching foundation skills is a must
* Structured Literacy is necessary for all and crucial for some
*Structured Literacy - Guide to Terminology
There are many key words related to Structured Literacy. Here is a guide to some of the Terminology:
*Decode = reading
*Encode = writing
*Phoneme = a sound
*Blending = putting sounds together
*Segmenting = breaking a word into sounds
*Finger Spelling = is a way to segment words systematically from left to right