Reading at Nashville State School
Some children seem to learn to read by osmosis; they just “get it” without having to learn the phonics code that makes sense of reading. But learning to read isn’t always that simple. When a child is expected to read books that are not decodable, they often become frustrated and start to guess words, thereby developing poor reading strategies. In the process, the child loses the direct connection between the phonics and word analysis skills the child is learning and the actual text the child is expected to read.
On the other hand, when a child reads a fully decodable book, the child can use their knowledge of phonics and their word analysis skills to decode unfamiliar words. Because the child can figure out every word in the book, they feel successful, which in turn helps them build fluency and develop good reading strategies.
At Nashville State School we understand the overwhelming evidence that children need to being their reading journey with a decodable text. We have invested in the Australian Decodable Readers for our reading at home and school.
These books support the phonics program taught daily in classrooms. Once teachers feel confident students know their phonemes (sounds), a book will go home that contains these phonemes, so they can practice and put their knowledge into context. Along with learning sounds, children also need to learn high frequency words (which are words that cannot be decodable due to the irregular spelling pattern). These high frequency words are used within the decodable books.
The presentation explains the new reading framework that Nashville State School will be following and it also explains what home readers will look like.