Notes from a Four Corners Program ABC 11/11/19

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Prof. Anne Castles, Cognitive Science, Macquarie University says:
“Some of those really important aspects of teaching – not just in reading but also in language, grammar, syntax, all of those things, were thrown out as part of this movement and a generation of children really suffered because of that.”

Prof. Pamela Snow Cognitive Psychologist and Speech pathologist says:
“We have a situation now where schools basically get to choose their own adventure with respect to how they go about the important business of teaching children how to read. There’s a curriculum but it’s really left to the discretion of individual schools and individual teachers as to how they go about approaching that curriculum. There’s now a push for more consistency and a push to use phonics as a foundation for teaching all children how to read.”

Prof. Rauno Parrila, Education Studies, Macquarie University says:
“It’s true to say that phonics is the best way to take a non grader and turn them into a reader. We cannot expect children to learn by themselves. They have to be taught. And direct instruction that is often associated with phonics can be engaging, can be fun.”

Dan Tehan (Federal Education Minister) says:
“The Government has been in discussion with the Deans of Education to make sure that phonics is 		absolutely fundamental to teacher education. We want to ensure that our teachers know how to teach phonics. At the moment we are very concerned that teachers don’t know how to teach phonics in the classroom. And we want to make sure that they get these skills before they go into the classroom.”

(Milligan) Salisbury Primary School, Adelaide North have already decided that a very structured phonics program is the best approach.

Carol Scott Principal Salisbury Primary School says: “There are some children, no matter how you teach phonics, they’ll get them. But there are lots of children who won’t. And what I would say is this approach is beneficial to everyone and it’s not going to hurt anyone. We trialled this approach with just a small group of students. Those students expressed significant growth in two terms. So then we started to use the approach across the school. After two years, the school’s Naplan scores in reading and writing are rising. Last year 75% of our students met the standard for reading and this year it would be around 96% of the students who met the standard for reading.”

(Milligan) The South Australian Government has recently introduced a compulsory seven minutes phonics check at all levels.

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