Get all children reading…
Give them the five keys to
unlock literacy
WHAT’S NEW?
professional learning
Five from Five has launched a new series of free professional learning seminars.
Seminar 1: Science of Reading: Essential Knowledge for Teachers
Seminar 2: Deep Dive into Systematic Synthetic Phonics
Dates for 2022 have just been scheduled.
To register for the online events or to enquire about a seminar for your school, click here.
WHAT DOES FIVE FROM FIVE MEAN?
Children need explicit instruction in the five essential components
of reading in every classroom, every day.
This should begin in the foundation year of school when most children turn five years old.
HOW TO TEACH READING
Major reviews of reading not only agree on the key components of reading programs – the five ‘keys’ to reading – but also the most effective way of teaching them. They find that explicit or ‘direct’ instruction is the most effective teaching method, especially for the fundamental code-based components ― phonemic awareness and phonics.
The findings of this review argue strongly for the inclusion of a vigorous, programme of phonic work to be securely embedded within a broad and language-rich curriculum.
It is …crucial to teach phonic work systematically, regularly and explicitly, there is ample evidence to support the recommendation of the interim report that, for most children, it is highly worthwhile and appropriate to begin a systematic programme of phonic work by the age of five, if not before for some children, the way having been paved by related activities designed, for example, to build phonological awareness.
In sum, the incontrovertible finding from the extensive body of local and international evidence-based literacy research is that for children during the early years of schooling (and subsequently if needed), to be able to link their knowledge of spoken language to their knowledge of written language, they must first master the alphabetic code – the system of grapheme-phoneme correspondences that link written words to their pronunciations.
Because these are both foundational and essential skills for the development of competence in reading, writing and spelling, they must be taught explicitly, systematically, early and well.