Science of Reading (SoR)

What is the Science of Reading?

The Science of Reading (SoR) is a comprehensive and broad range of research areas that include linguistics, cognitive psychology, education and neuroscience. This empirically supported body of research provides us with the understanding of how people learn to read and the factors that contribute to reading success. 

St Augustine’s College Kyabram is proud to be a leading school in the area, beginning to implement changes towards Structured Literacy in line with the SoR as early as 2019, then working alongside La Trobe Bendigo Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab in 2020/2021. Since then we have continued our journey in consultation with Emina McLean, a leading Australian Language and Literacy expert in this space, to continue to develop our Literacy teaching practice to support all students to learn to read at our College.

Throughout this journey, we have been changing our Literacy block lessons from a whole language approach with guided reading lessons to a SoR approach. Using the SoR research, we have been transitioning to an evidence-based best practice approach to teaching foundational literacy skills called Structured Literacy (SL). The SL approach emphasises highly explicit and systematic teaching of all important components of literacy. 

The SoR identifies five essential components that make up the Simple View of Reading. SL at St Augustine’s includes each of these components:

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension

We will continue to provide information throughout the year on our SoR journey. We look forward to walking alongside our community in ensuring that every child learns to read. 

If a child memorises ten words, the child can only read ten words, but if the child learns the sounds of ten letters, the child will be able to read 350 three sound words, 4,320 four sound words and 21,650 five sound words (Kozloff, 2002).