Phonics Instruction at CSPS

Many of you would have seen the Department of Education’s announcement last term regarding mandated phonics instruction from 2025. But did you know that our school made the move to a synthetic phonics instruction approach at the beginning of 2023?

While we have used elements of the Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL) program in our Prep classes for a number of years, at the beginning of last year our Prep and Year 1 staff undertook comprehensive professional development in the LLLL program to strengthen and deepen our understanding and skills. In 2024, we expanded this to include our Year 2 teachers. We have also invested significantly in the resources required to support this evidence-based instruction, including decodable books for use in the classroom and at home.

Our students from Prep to Year 2 are benefiting greatly from this comprehensive, structured, explicit approach to teaching reading, spelling and writing. Regular formal and informal assessment allows us to target specific goals for our students and target students for intervention support. It is very exciting to see our children applying their phonics knowledge to read increasingly complex texts. Of course, phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds) and phonics (the teaching of sounds and the corresponding alphabetic code) are only part of the picture in developing strong reading skills. Vocabulary, fluency and comprehension are also essential components of our structured literacy program.

For an explanation of phonemic awareness and phonics, please see the Little Learners Love Literacy website here.

Bronwyn Fensham

Literacy Learning Specialist & Prep Co-ordinator