Deliberate, systematic and explicit of Teaching Phonetics

Are we being deliberate and explicit enough?

Jill Ritchie Literacy Consultant from Impact Learning Consulting presented an information session on Supporting Students with Dyslexia.

Many of the students I  have been out to observe or test in my Across schools role seems to have a deficit in their Phonetics knowledge.   This impacts their progress in Reading and writing.

Once again my research leads me to the knowledge that we must be deliberate, explicit teaching of Phonics and Phonemic awareness.

I am wondering is there needs to be a greater emphasis on Phonetics in our Junior classes and a programme designed for our older students that meets their needs and interests.

I am working on a programme with a fellow COL teacher. Stay tuned for further updates.

Change to learning support by MOE

The Ministry of Education is using the following model when working with schools to support learners with additional needs.

The new Learning Support  Delivery model process.

Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin will be making an announcement about the learning support Co-ordinators role sometime over the next month.
There will be 600 Learning Support Co-ordinators across the country - MOE is saying one Learning support co-ordinator per 500 students - this is a paid position in addition to normal staffing allocation.

Developing Vocabulary

I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Jill Ritchie Literacy Consultant from Impact Learning Consulting.

Jill had some fabulous ideas about embedding vocabulary into our teaching programmes.

The teaching of vocabulary is a vital part of our Literacy programmes but must be all taught in all curriculum areas.

We need to review, reteach and checking in regularly that our Learners have the required vocabulary and the correct definition.

Explicit acts of teaching vocabulary is vital for our learners.
We need to reference this new vocabulary in multi contexts through out the week to ensure our learners understand this new vocabulary especially specialised specific vocabulary.

I saw a fabulous example of this when working with Robyn Anderson from Panmure Bridge when we discussed her maths lesson introducing new maths language to her learners.