Evidence-based Literacy Teaching
The Better Start Literacy Approach is a structured approach to literacy instruction for Year 0 to Year 8 classrooms, to support children's reading, writing and oral language success. It has been developed by our team specifically for our New Zealand educational and cultural context and controlled research trials have proven its effectiveness.
It includes the systematic teaching of critical phonics, phonological awareness, morphology and orthographic pattern knowledge through fun, interactive games, explicit spelling and writing instruction, and structured small group reading sessions using a range of readily available texts, including the Ready to Read - Phonics Plus, Junior and School Journals and the Connect Series of readers.
In addition, the approach includes explicit teaching in vocabulary skills and in building children's oral narrative and listening comprehension and reading comprehension skills through quality children's story books. The Better Start Literacy Approach follows a structured scope and sequence that is used in the class and small group reading teaching and aligns to Phases 1, 2 and 3 of the Te Māitaiaho, English Learning Area.
