"We need a uniform approach and understanding."
Literacy Hub Persona 1: Literacy Leader Racheal
Age: 52.
Work: Head of Early Years' Literacy at a large culturally diverse government Primary School.
Family: Married with two teenage boys.
Location: City fringe.
Personality
Racheal is a tireless champion of Early Years literacy. An exemplar of lifelong learning, her professional development has enabled her to transcend the 'whole language' training she received at university, and become a self-appointed advocate of contemporary synthetic phonics knowledge and practice.
Racheal discovered the universal effectiveness of phonics in her previous role as a Learning Specialist at a regional school, where she witnessed its success with both fluent and struggling readers as well as students from disadvantaged and CALD and EALD backgrounds.
Today her main driver is to implement a consistent, whole-school approach to Early Years Literacy at her current school. This is a demanding task that requires money, time, networking, diplomacy skills, and stakeholder management. Having trialed multiple commercial programs over the years, Racheal intends to work with a range of consultants to develop a solution that is tailor-made for her school.
Goals
- To establish a strong foundation of literacy in Early Years students, knowing this is the keystone of their lifelong wellbeing.
- To upskill and retain literacy teachers and support staff.
- To embed a consistent and whole-school approach to literacy, through an evidence-based program.
- The lack of phonics in teacher training.
- The patchy, fragmented, contextually inappropriate and commercial nature of phonics programs.
- The ad hoc application of phonics (and other) literacy programs and assessment models in schools.
- The rise in entry-level students who present with poor oral language skills.
- The decreasing role of family in supporting a child's literacy, due to linguistic/cultural diversity, digital device use, and the pressured homelife of dual-working parents.
- Provide a clear framework, scope and sequence, and assessment model for a whole-school approach to phonics instruction.
- Include ongoing professional development for teachers and support staff in a mix of formats: readings, podcasts, videos.
- Offer free contextually relevant resources for all student cohorts.
- Provide simple information kits for parents.
- Content-map existing phonics frameworks, to build a metalanguage across school sectors, and States and Territories.