Structured literacy approaches: What schools need to know 

What practices are changing?  

What’s changed?  

Teaching three-cueing to solve unknown words when reading  

Teaching students to use letter-sound patterns as the primary technique for decoding unknown words. Teach techniques such as looking for contextual information as "comprehension/meaning-making" strategies only, after students have decoded the unfamiliar word, if necessary.  

Using essential spelling lists to ‘teach’ and assess spelling   

Teach students groups of words that share the same grapheme-phoneme correspondences or morphological elements  

Teaching large lists of sight or high frequency words   

Some high-frequency words have one or more phonemes that don’t match usual spelling patterns that have already been taught. These words are spelt correctly by mapping and remembering the unknown or unusual parts.  

Teaching one letter sound relationship per week   

Using a scope and sequence for a faster introduction of letter-sound correspondences, that can be reinforced cumulatively. Research supports students being introduced to three-to-four English grapheme-phoneme correspondences a week. This brisk pace of instruction has been shown to contribute to better reading and writing outcomes   

Ready to Read Phonics Plus - Series Introduction  

Having students go away and independently practice handwriting   

Teachers model handwriting at the beginning of the daily writing lesson and when showing learners the spellings of new words during phonics. Learners need clear, focused opportunities to learn and practice proper letter formation.   

When you see an error or confusion developing, re-model for the learner and support them to practise correctly. For more information see the updated Teaching Handwriting guidance  

Using the Observational Survey, running records and BURT to assess reading skills   

Real and non-word reading assessments and oral reading fluency assessments to assess reading skills  

Phonics checks – Guidance for schools   

DIBELS assessment - Supporting videos   

Oral Reading Fluency Phonics checks – Guidance for schools  

Using Effective Literacy Practice, Exploring Language, Learning Through Talk, Literacy Learning Progressions, Sound Sense (0–3), and Sounds and Words Phase 2   

Replace with Teaching Considerations from the English learning area in the refreshed New Zealand Curriculum, and the structured literacy approaches resources on Tāhurangi Teaching resources to support structured literacy approaches  

Using levelled readers for instruction when students haven’t learned enough of the alphabetic code to be able to decode them.   

Provide decodable (phonically controlled) texts for students to practise recently taught grapheme–phoneme correspondences such as the Ready to Read Phonics Plus series Ready to Read Phonics Plus - Series Introduction.   

As soon as students can accurately decode texts with words that contain consonant digraphs and adjacent consonants and have learnt long-vowel patterns from early in the phonics scope and sequence, they will be reading a wide range of carefully selected texts with teacher support in ways that align with structured literacy approaches.    

More guidance is provided on using structured literacy approaches with Reading to Read Colour Wheel series here Using structured literacy approaches with RTR Colour Wheel