Podcast and Blog
S3 Ep24 - Shifts to move to a structured approach in Years 3 to 6 Part 1
Hi there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm Jocelyn, and it's wonderful to welcome you to this latest episode recorded here in Pataway, Burnie.
Right now in Tasmania, it is almost mid-winter, the Ugg Boots are out, the fire is lit and we are snuggling up against the cold. That doesn't mean that the hard work of supporting teams in their structured literacy journey stops, though.
In the last episode of the podcast, I shared a suggestion of the ord…
Tuesday Tip - Transcription at Student Level
In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss encouraging students to represent their knowledge at their current transcription level, rather than forcing them to write full texts.
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Tip. When we're working with our young writers or writers of any age at all, it can feel like there's a huge amount of pressure to get everybody writing a full text, whether they have the transcription skills for that or not. One of the ways that you can shif…
S3 Ep23 - Supporting Your Year 3-6 Team to Board the Bus
Hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast coming to you from Pataway, Burnie, the lands of the Palawa people.
The road of robust, explicit, structured teaching is not an easy one. It is full of bumps and sharp turns that can take us by surprise. I say the road of and not the road to, because there is no magical destination where everything is effortless. There is no finish line we cross and then all challenges end.
Helping our teams grow their prac…
Tuesday Tip - Be Strict When Assessing Phonics
In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss being careful with assessment in phoneme grapheme correspondence, stressing not to prematurely label students and to ensure they can quickly and confidently connect graphemes to phonemes during evaluations.
Video Transcript
Hello there. Welcome to another Tuesday Tip. My name is Jocelyn. When we're assessing our students, one of the things we need to really be careful of is to make sure that we don't say they have something until they actually…
S3 Ep22 - How to Choose a Phonics Program
Hello, hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn, I'm so very pleased to bring you this episode direct from Pataway Burnie, the home of the Palawa people in gorgeous Tasmania.
In last week's episode of the podcast, I shared some thoughts on ways that you can get ready for changes that are coming in the early years reading space. If your school already has a systematic, structured approach to early reading in place, well you're all …
Tuesday Tip - Continuous Sound Blending
In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss teaching children to blend sounds using continuous phonemes first, before introducing stop sounds.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone, I'm Jocelyn and it's time for another Tuesday Tip. We all know that when we're helping our young children to learn to read, that we are going to have a few who struggle to learn how to blend with graphemes. So if the children are able to blend orally, so you can say, m-a-t, and they can tell you that that's "mat", the…
S3 Ep21 - 5 Ways to Get Ready for the Coming Change
Hi there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast, the place where we dive right into the nitty gritty of bringing structured literacy to life in your school.
I'm recording this episode in mid-June 2024 and there have been some huge announcements recently about how literacy will be taught in two states in particular. Victoria has just announced that all students will learn to read with explicit phonics: that includes 25 minutes of a phonics lesson every day. …
Tuesday Tip - Improve Fluency
In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss helping struggling readers improve fluency by identifying and underlining text, fostering independent thinking and fluency development.
Video Transcript
Welcome to this week's Tuesday Tip. Now you might not know, but I've worked with struggling readers for about 15 years now. Actually they're my favourite students to work with. And one of the things that I see happen with them is they learn the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. They learn their word le…
S3 Ep20 - 8 Reasons that the Same Page is a Great Place to be
Hello there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I'm so pleased to welcome you here to this episode.
Now, this is a bit of a shorty one, because I know it's report writing time for teachers in Australia and you don't have time to listen to a big podcast episode, so I'm going to be sharing with you some thoughts that come from a blog post that I wrote in 2021, called Eight Reasons the Same Place Is A Great Place To Be.
One of the …
S3 Ep19 - How To Make Sure That Your Spelling Instruction Is Explicit
Hello, hello and welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Pataway, Burnie, the lands of the Palawa people. I'm Jocelyn and I'd like to start this episode with some words of encouragement.
So many teachers and leaders are way too hard on themselves. I'm going to bet that includes you. The very fact that you're listening to this podcast means that you want to do a great job for kids.
You're on the bus and you are prepared to …