Learning & Teaching - English

In Prep, Year 1 and Year 2, we have recently introduced a new program for phonemic awareness called Heggerty, named after the developer Dr Michael Heggerty. This program is aligned with the Science of Reading and is grounded in the latest research about how children learn to read.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, recognise, and play with the sounds in spoken language. Phonological awareness is a group of skills that include the ability to:

• Identify words that rhyme
• Count the number of syllables in a word
• Isolate individual sounds in a word
• Recognise alliteration (words with the same beginning sound)
• Segment (break) a sentence into words
• Identify the syllables in a word

Phonemic and phonological awareness have been shown in numerous studies to be some of the best predictors of initial reading progress.  Introducing the Heggerty program is helping us at St Louis to ensure we are providing our students with the best learning opportunities and evidence based practices. It is also lots of fun! 

The program takes 10 minutes per day and compliments the other elements of our Literacy block. Daily lessons provide a high level of explicit modelling by the teacher and there is a strong component of student engagement through actions, gestures, movement and response. 

Our teachers are doing a fantastic job developing their skills with the Heggerty program. They are a passionate and dedicated group!  The teachers are also so impressed about how well our students are taking to the program, and it has been impressive to see their confidence and skills developing in a short period of time. 

Phonemic awareness -

If you have any questions about the Heggerty program, feel free to ask your child's teacher or contact me (Angela Healy - ahealy@stlouisaspendale.com).

Angela Healy

English Leader