The Junior area of Point England School has been implementing the BSLA structured literacy for more than two years and has seen impressive gains in lifting children's reading and writing skills. BSLA ( Better Start Literacy Approach) is a structured approach to literacy instruction for Year 0 to 3/4. It supports children's early reading, writing and oral language and it has been specifically designed for teaching in the New Zealand educational and cultural context.
Letter sound knowledge skills and phonological awareness skills are systematically taught through activities that explicitly link to reading and writing, games based activities and small group reading using the Ready to Read phonics plus books. Quality children's story books are used to explicitly teach vocabulary and build children's oral narrative and listening comprehension skills.
Assessments monitor children's growth of critical early skills known to influence reading success. These skills include letter sound knowledge, phonological awareness, writing and oral language. The data provides specific direction for teaching at both the individual level and whole class level. Whanau engagement also helps maximise the opportunities children have to succeed in early literacy reading and writing.
I have begun teaching BSLA and found my class has responded well to the very explicit and systematic teaching routine. Children begin school with a wide range of literacy skills. Some have good letter sound knowledge while others have yet to crack the "code" for using letters in a meaningful way. Some have good oral language skills while others find it hard communicate their wants and needs. Although letters are introduced at two, three or more a week they are revisited during the games and activities. The children help each other by giving wait time for others to think, play games in pairs or give clues as to where words can be found - "Look for the word that begins like this...
A positive note so far has been how some reluctant writers are getting very excited about transferring their knowledge of sounds into spelling words. They find a joy in using words to enhance their writing. They see how words "work" for them - if they can sound out "rumble" they can also write "grumble", or "squish" and "squash". This is helping move children from being satisfied at writing a simple sentence using the basic high frequency words to wanting to write "big words".
Hearing the vocabulary from the reading aloud session being used in the class discussions and appearing in stories is also another plus from the programme. Reading the same book for a week was at first commented on as "We've read this book already!". But the unpacking and retell are now enjoyed as they find new parts of the book to explore.
I am looking forward to seeing the progress and development of skills confirmed in the 10 week testing data. For some it might not be as impressive as for others but the positive outcomes so far and the "I can do it" attitudes that are developing are great to see.
