This year we have begun implementing a Structured Synthetic Phonics Approach to improve our whole-school approach to teaching literacy, and to align with the latest research about how reading and writing develops. The program we are using is called PLD, short for Promoting Literacy Development. The program supports teachers to systematically teach the skills of reading and writing.

Two of the initial skills needed before reading and writing develop are:

• Phonological awareness which is the ability to think about, reflect on and manipulate the sounds of spoken language
• Phonemic awareness the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds within spoken words.

You can watch some videos about these skills here: https://readingwritingcentre.education.qld.gov.au/resources/videos

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been impressed by many of our students who have excitedly shared with me how they can identify the initial sounds they hear in words, how many syllables they can hear in words and identifying the sounds that individual letters make.

This is a great journey for our whole-school, and I am so excited to be apart of it.