A term of structured literacy...

 There is such a debate at the moment (not sure if it ever stopped.) Structured literacy vs balanced literacy.  Sometimes however it feels that many argue without even knowing what they are arguing about.  In fact it is becoming increasingly obvious to me, that those that argue against structured literacy have very little understanding of the Science of reading and basically think it is just about phonics.

The argument is, children can't just be taught to sound out words...that is not an effective strategy, children need to experience language to be exposed to great vocab, to be surrounded by literature, to love reading...what is funny is this, structured literacy does all of these things and more!

The other argument is often from those who have children that naturally took to reading (I had two of those myself) they don't see the need in all children learning this way and believe it to be boring.  Well I can say hand on heart, that even my more duck to water readers LOVE this.  They love learning heart words, they find it playful, they have success and my own two duck to water readers could have done with structured literacy, because let's just put it this way, spelling isn't their strength.  What it isn't is boring.  It is not drill and kill...children experience success and really enjoy the process.  Who doesn't love feeling successful?

That's the other thing people don't realise actually, this isn't just about reading, it is as much about spelling as it is about reading....show me a very able reader and very often they will be a weak speller...they need this too.

But I digress, the point of this post is to show you structured literacy in photos....to show you what a term has encompassed and to help you see this is not phonics.  This is a structured, systematic way of explicitly building successful well rounded readers and writers, who are excellent communicators and can use what they have learned to help them in their day to day existence.  No more 'reluctant' writers because they have been forced into writing before they had the hand strength to do so, or the understanding.  No more children who believe that reading is not their thing.  No more undoing poor spelling habits because children have just been allowed to free write without any direction.

I will just ensure I do acknowledge that structured literacy occurs at our place through a developmentally informed lens and within a play based environment.  

So what has this term looked like?

Well for a start it is all about the individual...our goals can be found here....Individual Goals

The important thing to note here, is these are individual...the little assessments or observations along the way inform us.  This means if a child is struggling with fine motor, it would not be appropriate for us to expect them to hold a pencil for longer than they actually want to.  If that child is struggling with gross motor etc it may be more appropriate for them to stand and practice drawing on a window.  The steps in allow us to make modifications and scaffold children individually, within our whole class sessions.  If a child has just started exploring and developing phonological awareness it is more appropriate for them to story tell out loud from a picture.  Equally if a child is developmentally advanced and comes with a lot of understandings already, we can engage with them where they are at.  

We can adjust what we do, based on individual need.  

This is not holding children back, it is scaffolding them and supporting them right where they are, and giving them what they need next to assist their development, wherever that may be.

I should probably also say, along with being developmentally responsive, we are also applying a trauma informed lens, we understand how learning works, how the stress response impacts this, how a child's age developmentally may be different to their chronological age (this applies to all ages) how regulated we need to be, along with the child in order for learning to stick.

The individual goals are very important to us, they travel through the first three or four years at our place and allow us to see and cherish progress.  They are something that have morphed and changed over the years and a result of the work and research we have engaged in over the years.

A great starting place for anyone wanting to know what structured literacy actually encompasses, is  Scarboroughs rope, start by understanding it is not just phonics and move on from there to learn more.

Images of structured literacy in my class - Term 1 (Year 1-3 class)

Storytelling with our friend Edward, fun for exploring language and the structure of stories.  The children love him!

Heart word learning, sound to print.  Say the word, identify the sounds, talk about the irregular parts, spell it down, practice and say the letters out loud in order, put it in a sentence.  Done both whole class and then individually or in a group dependent on stage.  Children do not learn words visually, for heart words we still have to map the sounds.  Heart words are words with irregular spellings (may be that we have not yet learned that pattern) not sight words that children have mapped and stored away because they have seen them often.  Learning to spell them (encode) greatly helps the reading (decoding)

We work together to write dictated sentences from the story.

We use counters or other things we can manipulate to explore the alphabetic code

 and assist children to consolidate the sounds they need for that stage.  For many, building the word and pulling out the sounds they need, really assists progress.

Each child has a home/school book.  In here we practice speed words, heart words, things we need to practice that they can also work on at home.

We do this as a whole class, and children LOVE it!

  The ability to tune into the word and the part that needs to be changed is a real skill that assists their spelling greatly.

A new addition over the last two years has been the Magic Caterpillar,  we finished learning the shapes last week and now are using these to revisit the sounds and spell them with correct formation...I am noticing a big difference!  

Talk For Writing - Storytelling

This term I have been playing around with this, deepening my approach to story telling and it has been awesome.  Drawing from the story, learning the story off by heart, retelling the story, planning out parts of the story, performing the story out loud for the class and other classes and then writing our own witch stories.  Lots and lots of vocab development, exploration of new words, heaps of scaffolding, and just pure joy.  I was surprised that children loved working with the same story all term, they just ate it up!  Fits brilliantly with mantle of the expert and is something I will continue refining.

Collaborative writing, that children then went and worked on independently.

The start of our planning.

Love using decodable books, the scope and sequence was something that was new learning for me several years ago.

This term we have read Amelia Jane and now then the class voted on this one, so far they are loving it!!!

Of course we also read a wide range of awesome picture books!

Regular practice.  We do have explicit writing sessions that sit alongside our storytelling sessions.  Two different approaches with the same ultimate goal.  In our explicit sessions we look at how sentences are formed, we explore spacing, directionality, punctuation, heart words we may need, how to generate an idea.  We work together and then children move off to write on their own.  I am already noticing the mix of storytelling and the explicit approach is coming together to mean that as children gain fluency, they start to readily add detail to their own writing.

Exploring the speed words first in a story is assisting fluency when reading.  Also a great opportunity to explore now vocab and the meaning of words.

When we work on heart words, we use blocks or counters, or dots to symbolise the sounds in the word and talk about the irregular parts.

Using the counters to build the words from the story helps as a scaffold for those that need it.  Others may be writing dictated sentences that go with the story.

For children that struggle with the size of their writing, but are able to make it smaller, I find drawing a shape to keep the writing inside, helps.

love the visual nature of these cards.

We use these as a class and link them in with our handwriting and phonetic sessions when working within the stages. 

Love these decodable books!

This might not seem to link in, but we use discussions a lot and this helps not only to develop oral language tunes children into noticing and questioning, developing this ability is a wonderful asset to all areas of learning.

This works in our play-based class, it works for us when applied with a developmentally informed lens, it works for all and is absolutely essential for many.  

This does however come down to teacher understanding, because while children respond to different approaches,  we need to deeply understand what it is we are doing, how learning works to be able to provide experiences that will work for the specific need a child has.  

I feel like a detective some days, but wow is it rewarding when you can find the specific need and work on an approach that will help!