Better Start Literacy Approach- Structured literacy in Rm 13

This week marks the third week of my teaching journey into the Better Start Literacy Approach.  We have introduced a structured approach to teaching reading.  I have enrolled in the University of Canterbury Micro-credentials course.  Within this course teachers are supported to understand the research behind the
approach and scaffolded to implement changes to their teaching practise.  

Phonological, blending and segmenting skills are taught though games, which my learners are really enjoying.  By limiting the amount of carefully selected letters taught in a week, it gives tamariki a chance to gain a real understanding of the relationships between graphemes and phonemes.  This letter knowledge is then able to be used to decode text when reading.

So far I can see that many of the children have grasped the nature of the games and are starting to understand how to apply letter knowledge to reading.  I am positive about the future possibilities this approach has for setting my learners off on their literacy journey.