Literacy and English
To be successful 21st century citizens students must be literate. Literacy involves students listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of contexts'.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)
It is important to understand the difference between literacy and the subject English. In the Australian Curriculum, the subject English and Literacy serve different purposes but are closely related.
1. English (as a subject)
- English is one of the eight learning areas in the Australian Curriculum.
- It covers three interrelated strands:
- Language - How English works (grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, etc.).
- Literature - Engaging with and responding to texts, including classic and contemporary literature.
- Literacy - Developing skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening for different purposes.
- English is explicitly taught in dedicated lessons.
2. Literacy (as a general capability)
- Literacy is one of the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum.
- It applies across all subjects, not just English (e.g., reading word problems in Maths, understanding scientific reports in Science).
- Focues on skills, such as:
- Comprehending and composing different types of texts.
- Using language to communicate effectively.
- Understanding and usig digital literacy tools.
Key Difference:
- English is a subject with structured content and assessment.
- Literacy is a broader skillset applied across all learning areas.
Background knowledge about Reading
Learning to read is a tricky process. Our brains are hardwired to speak and this is an automatic process. Learning to read and write does not come naturally and these skills must be explicitly taught. Since the process of learning to read and write needs practise and direct instruction, families and school working together is paramount to student success.
A lot of research has been conducted into how children learn to read. The most current and deeply researched information is that there are 6 components of reading and that there is a clear sequence in which they need to be taught.
Six Components of Reading
Phonemic awareness: the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) within words.
Phonics: the relationship between letters and sounds used to decode words when reading, and encode words in spelling.
Fluency: the ability to read with accuracy, automaticity and prosody; fluency is an outcome of the components of reading.
Vocabulary: the understanding of word meanings.
Comprehension: understanding the meaning of written text; comprehension is an outcome of the components of reading Oral language: provides the foundation for reading and writing.
As before mentioned, Reading is tricky and very complex and it involves the weaving together of all of these components. Different components are emphasised at the different stages of learning. No wonder it takes many of us a long time to become a confident and fluent reader!
Early Years
In our early years we implement particular programs to support student learning.
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Program
The journey to reading begins with phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes, and it's one of the best early predictors for reading success. Phonemic awareness comes before learning how to read and write using letters.
The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Program involves quick daily lessons, focussing on 8 phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness training provides the foundation on which phonics instruction is built. Thus, children need solid phonemic awareness training for phonics instruction to be effective.
Please visit this website for more information: https://heggerty.org/
Synthetic Phonics
In the past we have implemented Jolly Phonics for our synthetic phonics program. In 2025 and beyond we will be working with the program from Sound Waves. The advantage of Sound Waves is that it moves seamlessly as our children go up the school year levels. In addition, everyone will be working on the same sound at the same time! Having consistency across the school is beneficial for our multi-age classes. Although the weekly sound focus will be the same, the level of complexity will be increased as needed for each year level. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet but those letters work together in different ways to make up 43 different sounds. Each of those different sounds can have many different letter combinations use to spell a word correctly – making English a very tricky language to learn indeed! Think simple homophones for example – to/too/two, bare/bear, stationery/stationary.
Are you wondering what a synthetics phonics program is?
- Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children learn to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes, or letter symbols) and the sounds of spoken language. Synthetic phonics also teaches children how to identify all the phonemes in a word and match them to a letter in order to be able to spell correctly.
- Children are taught how to break up words, or decode them, into individual sounds, and then blend all the way through the word.
- New sounds are not introduced in alphabetical order, and they are introduced quickly. Synthetic phonics means that children are able to read a range of easily decodable words sooner. For example, once the students know the sounds for the letters S/A/T/P/I/N they can read (decode) the words – sat, pat, sit, pit, pin, tin, tap and nap.
Casey the Caterpillar Handwriting
The story of Casey the Caterpillar underpins The Magic Caterpillar Handwriting. It is a process to develop correct letter formation and is used worldwide now. The Magic Caterpillar Handwriting Process is regarded as the “hub" of literacy as it brings together:
- Letter shapes
- Concepts of left to right and back to the margin (the tee) and down to the next line (the branch)
- The concept of letter and the concept of word
- Building up of automaticity of high frequency words
- The start of sentence writing.
All elements are taught through the process of learning to write and recognise the shapes that form letters.
Read it Again
Children in our early years classroom are supported to learn about reading, books and oral language partially through the Read It Again Program. Read It Again is firmly based on current research regarding how adults can support children’s language and literacy development using systematic and explicit instruction presented in highly meaningful literacy events such as shared book reading. A key feature of Read It Again is the repeated use of children’s storybooks as a way to enhance language and literacy development. Studies indicate that repeated book reading influences both story-related vocabulary and story-related comprehension and that the average effect size for the relationship between repeated book reading and outcomes is larger when a book is read four or more times (Trivette, Simkus, Dunst and Hamby 2012; Zucker, Cabell, Pentimonti and Kaderavek 2013).
If you would like more information, please visit:
https://fivefromfive.com.au/phonemic-awareness/
Sight Words
It is useful to be able to automatically recognise high frequency words.
At Mount Mee State School we recognise the importance of supporting students to be able to recognise and use the relationships between sounds and letters in order to be able to decode words. There are some words however that have unusual letter/sound patterns and can be difficult to decode (sound out), especially for beginner readers. Two such words for example are: was and the. These words can be referred to as tricky words or weird words.
In the past, Mount Mee State School has implemented a sight words program as a way of building automatic recognition of sight words. This is not longer used as a strategy to support learning. Have a ponder, how do you think you would go if you had a list of words that look like this like this to remember: : I love reading!. For beginner readers, our alphabet can look a bit like that.
Instead in 2024, and beyond students have been taught how to decode weird words and then given the opportunity to practise so that they can recognise and read them fluently. The learning of these words is timed to align with sounds they are learning in our Phonics/Spelling program and reading.
Middle and Upper Years
As students move up the year levels it is appropriate for learning to shift towards a focus on reading and understanding complex multisyllabic words (longer words with more than one syllable) and complex curriculum texts. Students will move towards building their language comprehension. This is where literacy and English can differ. Students need to understand how words are built in many subject areas, not just English. It is important students have the ability to decode words like reproduce/producer in science and colonialism/multiculturalism in HASS.
Spelling
As with the early years students will be learning spelling through the Sound Waves Program.
Comprehension Strategies
Students will be explicitly taught strategies to help them make meaning from all of the words they have decoded. Below is a list of common strategies that our student will gain experience with. Even students in the early years classroom will work with some of these. A competent and fluent reader is able to utilise many of these strategies at once. Reading is such a dance isn’t it?
- Activating Prior Knowledge
- Self-monitoring
- Predicting
- Synthesising
- Making connections
- Summarising
- Predicting
- Inferring
- Questioning
- Visualising