Teaching and Learning Update

Introducing PhOrMeS

Over the last few weeks we have provided some information in our newsletter about some of the changes taking place in your child's classroom at SKiPPS. Our move towards a teaching and learning model that is based around explicit instruction is informed by what is known as 'The Science of Learning'.

In practical terms, this has led to the introduction of some new materials, programs and curricula that follow an explicit instruction approach. One of these is our new whole-school Literacy curriculum is called PhOrMeS. 

All students at SKiPPS will be participating in a daily PhOrMeS lesson which is designed with cognitive load theory in mind. 

The delivery of each carefully planned session follows evidence aligned practise, engaging ALL students with maximum participation, systematic delivery of skills and plenty of opportunity to retrieve previously taught information through Daily Reviews.

What is PhOrMeS? PhOrMeS has been created in Melbourne by a Speech Pathologist, Shane Pearson alongside a leading Melbourne Educator, Nathaniel Swain. Together they developed PhOrMeS in order to provide schools with high-quality literacy curriculum. It is informed by both the Science of Reading and the Science of Learning and it is a systematic, synthetic phonics curriculum. 

• Ph - Phonology (the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across languages)
• Or - Orthography (spelling rules and patterns)
• M - Morphology (study of the smallest parts within words. e.g. the suffix,prefix, base word and root word)
• e- Etymology (the study of the origin of words)
• S - Semantics (the meaning of a word / sense)

It has been exciting to visit the Year 5 and 6 classrooms and listen to their etymology and morphology learning. They have been learning about the morpheme 'bi' meaning life and the 'o' is a connecting vowel.

 In the photo below it shows the lesson broken up into 3 main parts.

1. Spelling & morphology
2. Jeopardy -  a game where students are given the answer and they have to find the question.
3. A challenge where the students are required to break the word up into morphemes and give a definition. The students received an extra point if they used the word ' microbiologist' in their sentence. 

As well as the above, PhOrMeS also provides early explicit handwriting and paired reading fluency practice.

As we get into our PhOrMeS sessions, I will update you with more information and some photos of some sessions in action.

If you would like to talk to me further about PhOrMeS, please catch me in the yard, I love talking Literacy!

Jac Morphy

Assistant Principal - Curriculum and Instruction