Teaching Inquiry 2023 - Linking BSLA and writing

I can write that!

This year I have chosen to continue my inquiry into literacy and the Better Start Literacy Approach. In 2022 I began using this approach in the classroom. I found it had some real advantages and allowed many of my students to make great progress in decoding. However I noticed that this knowledge of letters and their sounds did not generalise to encoding words when writing. I wondered how I could address this issue for my 2023 class.

This year the baseline BSLA testing showed my students have markedly different entry level letter sound knowledge and phonetic awareness.  Some come with highly attuned listening skills and quickly adapt to the BSLA lessons which require them to blend sounds to make words.  Other students arrive with good letter sound knowledge which help them to visually identify letters within words but are not skilled at hearing the letter sounds within words. Interestingly few scored well on both measures.

So my question became...

How can I structure my writing lessons to support the generalisation of phonetic awareness to spelling during creative writing.

My hunch is that by making explicit links between the BSLA focus letters and writing will allow the students to gain confidence in attempting the spelling of novel words.

I will design writing lessons in which the theme is linked to words spelt with the focus letters. I will insure that some of the words in the BSLA readers and word cards from the whole class lessons are included in the writing as these are words which are used to practise blending and segmenting.