BSLA Tier 2 Workshops - Supporting students with additional literacy learning needs.

Today teachers from all over Tamaki Makaurau gathered for a BSLA Tier 2 Workshop.  We were lucky to have Professor Gillon and many of the designers of Better Start Literacy Approach in the room.

Tier 2 Teaching is part of the Better Start Literacy Approach's multi tiered system of support for young literacy learners.  The key  principal of tier 2 support is 20 hours of supplementary small group instruction to develop children's foundational skills of phoneme awareness and morphological awareness.  It is proven to be most effective when provided subsequent to the 10 week testing of Tier 1 BSLA, thus children are receiving targeted support very early in their learning to read journey. Students are supported with practise at phoneme manipulation to increase the speed of their phonological processing.  And the principal that resonated the most for me ... Effective scaffolding and explicit teaching are the cornerstones of the Tier 2 approach as they allow the child to feel successful throughout the learning process.  

Children are identified for Tier 2 support from the results of standardised BSLA testing.  Dr Gillon highlighted the importance of taking a detailed approach to the analysis of student data.  We were told to look for evidence of the specific needs of each child,  e.g initial sounds identified but not end sounds, vowel confusion etc., and to choose scaffolding strategies to meet these needs.   The choice of scaffolding strategy such as modelling, forced choice, prompting and explicit feedback, and the amount of scaffolding needed will change as students skills grow and the Teacher must adapt to these changes to ensure the student is always working in their zone of proximal development. 

It was very useful to learn the PRRR method for correcting errors made by the student during phoneme manipulation.

Praise the attempt.

Return to original format

Repeat with additional prompts

Read the new word and praise.

The workshop also served to launch the new BSLA Tier 2 Resource Kete which gives detailed lesson plans and resources to use whilst delivering Tier 2 support.  I believe this will greatly improve my delivery of this teaching.

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