Simple Steps for Big Change

First Step

Next Step

Sight Words

Make the switch from teaching them as whole words to pointing out the tricky parts and the regular parts. Include reading and writing of the words in the same lesson. Expect that students sound out all words they have the code knowledge for.

Ditch the ‘lists’ of words taught in isolation and switch to only the words that are irregular and needed for reading decodable texts or students are consistent needing for writing.  

Phonics

Choose a scope and sequence and stick to it (hopefully across all classes). Instead of using songs and stories to teach the phoneme/grapheme correspondence (sounds) switch to teaching children to recognise the graphemes in a simple lesson where you show them the grapheme and they both read and write them (from memory) every lesson.

Include word level reading and spelling in every phonics lesson using a cumulative list of words that matches to the scope and sequence. 

Review

Instead of showing the whole alphabet, even when they haven’t learned the graphemes yet, just focus on the sounds they know.

Differentiate the review to match the needs of your students and do it every day in a fast paced lesson to consolidate knowledge and skills. Include word level reading and spelling in the review.

Group work

Instead of grouping based on benchmarking levels, group based on learning needs, phonics knowledge and phonemic awareness skills. You can find a set of lesson plans for this work here. Instead of having students do 'activities', have them do partner reading or word level work. 

Aim to cut down the number of groups you have so that you have the majority of the class learning the same content with a group for students who have additional needs and a group for your highflyers who can already read Harry Potter.

Instructional Routines

Instead of trying to have a different way to teach the Big 6 every lesson or every week, stick to one instructional routine for each area that you adjust in response to student needs.

Have all classes in the early years using the same instructional routines and maybe even look at streamlining by grouping students with additional needs and the high flyers across classes so that every teacher isn’t trying to do everything.

Spelling

Instead of sending home a spelling list that doesn’t link to any learning each week, align the words children practice to your phonics approach. So if you are teaching vowel digraphs such as ‘ai’ in your phonics lesson, the words that go home contain that sound.

Don’t send home spelling lists at all and ditch the Friday spelling test. Instead, conduct a weekly assessment using dictated sentences and use these sentences to decide if students are ready to move on to new graphemes.

Home Reading

Instead of sending home books that contain lots of sounds and high frequency words children don’t know, send home sentence strips, printed passages or decodable texts if you have them.  (or if you are forced to send the predictable text, send the decodable stuff too and have a ‘quiet word’ with parents about what to focus on)

Fully align home reading to classroom instruction. Students take home the book they have been reading in decoding lessons to read to their families.  When children can read 90 words per minute and know the full alphabetic code ,send home passages that link to classroom content such as HASS or Science rather than predictable texts.

Supporting Struggling Students

Instead of giving these students more instruction in 3 cueing and reading strategies, focus on developing phoneme grapheme correspondence and providing decodable texts. 

Fully align your tier 2 intervention with your evidence informed Tier 1 instruction.