Professional Learning
Want to join our BSLA whānau? Find out about our Ministry of Education funded professional learning for teachers and literacy leaders.
About the Better Start Literacy Approach
The Better Start Literacy Approach is an integrated classroom literacy approach for fostering oral language, reading and writing success in young children.
The BSLA programme includes:
Structured classroom instruction and small group reading teaching for children’s first eight years at school.
Class or large group lessons conducted 4-5 times per week (minimum total of 40 lessons per term), focused on target vocabulary, oral language, listening comprehension and phonological awareness skill building activities. This extends to morphology and orthographic patterns and reading comprehension as children progress through the teaching. An explicit focus on writing and spelling is also integrated throughout the lessons.
Small group reading, differentiated by skill and using aligned readers that follow the BSLA scope and sequence.
Online monitoring assessments with integrated reporting, to track children’s progress in response to the quality classroom instruction.
Detailed lesson plans, teaching resources and small group reading books are provided as part of the approach.
Coaching and mentoring support for teachers.
Resources and workshop templates to engage with whānau and support literacy and language learning in the home.
Response to Intervention framework, ensuring all learners are receiving literacy instruction catered to their individual learning needs.
To purchase a set of the early readers aligned to the Better Start Literacy Approach, visit our shop.
View the aligned early readers online.
