Pupils at many Victorian schools are expected to guess words by looking at a picture.
Few parents would expect their child to be encouraged toguess words from a picture,but that is the reality in all but a few Victorian schools. Outdated practices,which conflict with the science,are actually the status quo,and are sometimes referred to as “balanced literacy”,an approach involving a mix of other “strategies” alongside a touch of phonics (sound-letter patterns). Such strategies include teaching children to predict what wordsmight be (not decoding them),as well as exposing students to reading and books,hoping a love of literacy will do the rest.
NSW has recently brought forward significant changes in its curriculum that emphasise understandings of literacy aligned to the science. This includes a systematic and explicit focus on phonics,spelling,vocabulary and comprehension. They have also invested in curriculum resources and leadership positions to help schools make the changes to their instruction.
Some Victorian schools have embarked on a“Science of Reading” journey off their own bat. Incredible results are being achieved. This is not just for students who currently struggle,for whom these methodologies make or break whether they become independent readers or not. The changes are also benefitting typical and advanced learners,who enrich their knowledge of language and literature,and learn how best to wield their literacy skills for increasingly complex tasks.
NSW’s curriculum emphasises literacy as aligned to science by focussing on phonics,spelling,vocabulary and comprehension.Credit:Shutterstock
If Victoria considered similar changes in curriculum and resourcing for literacy teaching as NSW has done,many more schools would get the nudge they need to start their own Science of Reading journey. These kinds of changes are not favoured,however,by some education faculties and teaching associations,who see such attempts as simply a swing back to a phonics “drill-and-kill” approach.
This debate is old. The so-called “reading wars” comprise a history of over-simplifications and straw man arguments on both sides. Teaching reading according to the science is not just about systematic phonics. What the scientific research tells us is that students should be explicitly taught how their language and spelling system works. They need to be taught systematically,and in a way which gets children to practise breaking words into sounds and then blending them back together again;then using these skills to read,understand,and write increasingly sophisticated texts.
This starkly contrasts with the all-too-common mix provided to students in our schools:consisting of predicting strategies that “good” readers use,and the incidental mention of phonics in the middle of a book. Far too many students begin to think reading is more of a guessing game than a set of skills they can be taught. Just like novice musicians do not start their training by impersonating concertos,novice readers need guidance and practice in the basics of literacy,in a sequence that builds cumulatively and logically,with increasingly difficult compositions.