Structured Literacy

At Glenbervie School, we are following a Structured Literacy approach for our teaching of the English Curriculum.  A Structured Literacy approach is a highly explicit and systematic way of teaching all important components of literacy. These components include both foundational skills (e.g., decoding, spelling, handwriting and letter formation) and higher-level literacy skills (e.g., reading comprehension, written expression).

We have invested in the iDeal Online Platform for all teachers, which includes professional learning, assessments, reporting systems and multi-sensory resources to explicitly teach foundation literacy skills. We utilise assessments for placing learners at particular levels/lists so that they can learn the patterns they are missing that are evident through our assessment. While the reading programme in the junior rooms is focused on teaching in this way, the middle and senior rooms are all on board too. This approach adds another tool to their literacy toolbox and all students are being introduced to explicit phoneme teaching. Our aim is for all our readers to use phonemic awareness alongside their use of meaning and syntax to decode books and enable sound comprehension. 

We are building up the iDeal decodable texts to be used in the scope and sequence. We have been fortunate enough to have Ricoh Northland commit to printing all of these copies for us. We have also purchased Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL) decodable texts and are looking at buying more texts with sponsorship money. 

We began our journey in 2022 and want to acknowledge the support of the BOT and business sponsors for reading resources, professional development for staff and the commitment of our teachers. 

Two full days of Professional Development around Structured Literacy in 2023 have given the teachers further skills. We thank the community for supporting us in taking these Teacher Only Days.