At Wellard Village our staff will use Sounds-Write to teach phonics, aligned to the Western Australian Curriculum.
About Sounds-Write
Sounds-Write is a linguistic phonics program that uses an evidence-based and highly effective approach to teach reading and spelling. Sounds-Write is developmentally appropriate for beginning readers in the first three years of schooling (Pre-Primary to Year 2) within a classroom and offers highly effective intervention for children who have fallen behind in their reading and spelling (Year 3 to Year 6). The approach will also be used in upper primary within the context of teaching reading and spelling of subject specific terminology.
Sounds-Write’s instructional method works effectively because it:
- is a sound to print approach that teaches children in simple steps how the sounds of the language are represented by the writing system.
- teaches the three essential skills of segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation necessary for reading and spelling throughout the programme on a daily basis until all children achieve the automaticity that underlies the fluency of every successful reader.
The Sounds-Write program was founded in the U.K, but it has been adopted in Australia, and is endorsed by the Department of Education and the Dyslexia Spled Foundation (DSF).
Our home reading system from Pre-Primary to Year 2, will be underpinned by the Sounds-Write principles. Students will bring home decodable readers aligned to the code knowledge they have acquired and are learning. Students from Pre-Primary to Year 2, will be provided with texts to support their fluency development, this will involve repeated readings of the same text, over a week. Students from Year 3 to Year 6, who have not yet acquired the necessary code knowledge to be fluent readers, will be provided with age-appropriate intervention texts that support their continued development.