At Coastal Taranaki School, Structured Literacy is an instructional approach for students in years 0-8 that focuses on the systematic and explicit teaching of foundational literacy skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing, aiming to build confidence in reading and writing. 

Here's a more detailed explanation:

What is Structured Literacy?

• Definition:
  Structured Literacy is an integrated language, reading, and writing instructional approach that supports automaticity, fluency, and proficiency in reading and writing. 

• Focus:
  It emphasizes both word recognition, handwriting, and spelling, as well as comprehension and composition. 

• Key Components:

  • Phonemic Awareness: Understanding the sounds of spoken language. 

  • Phonics: The relationship between letters and sounds. 

  • Decoding: The ability to read words accurately and fluently. 

  • Spelling: Understanding the rules of spelling and how to spell words correctly. 

  • Vocabulary Instruction: Learning new words and their meanings. 

  • Comprehension: Understanding what is read. 

  • Writing: The ability to express thoughts and ideas in writing. 

• Principles:
  It is characterised by its systematic and cumulative, diagnostic, and explicit methodology. 

• Not a Program:
  It's an instructional approach, not a specific program. 

Why is it important?

• Evidence-Based:
  Structured Literacy is rooted in the science of reading and is an effective approach for teaching literacy skills. 

• Supports Struggling Readers:
  It can be particularly helpful for students who struggle with reading, such as those with dyslexia. 

• Builds Confidence:
  By providing explicit and systematic instruction, it helps students develop a strong foundation in literacy skills, leading to greater confidence in reading and writing. 

Examples of Structured Literacy in the Classroom:

• Sound Drills:
  Direct teaching of phonemes, where the teacher models the correct pronunciation of sounds and asks students to repeat them in unison. 

• Phoneme Manipulation Exercises:
  Activities that involve manipulating sounds in words, such as blending sounds to make a word or segmenting a word into its sounds. 

• Multisensory Instruction:
  Using multiple senses (sight, sound, touch) to teach literacy skills. 

• Hands-on learning:
  Using tiles to represent sounds, building words with letter tiles, assembling sentences with words on cards. 

In our kura, we use the Sunshine Decodable Series books to support the structured literacy approach with learners learning to read where appropriate.