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Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 Australian Educational Publishing Awards were held online in September. Celebrating its 27th year, the awards evening brought together publishers to acknowledge excellence and award businesses going above and beyond for the advancement of students. Organised by the Australian Publishers Association, the prestigious annual Educational Publishing Awards reward excellence and […]

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AUSPELD is a national body comprised of representatives from various state SPELD associations and a recognised Global Partner of the International Dyslexia Association. Each SPELD organisation is extremely busy catering for large numbers of students and families. While the SPELD’s deliver assessments and diagnose dyslexia, they also advocate best practice. The SPELD’s act to encourage […]

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While all children develop at different times, there is an expected sequence of developmental milestones your child should be reaching. PLD have provided handy downloadable milestone guides for children aged 6 months through to 12 years.  Designed by speech pathologists, occupational therapists and educators, the comprehensive guides give an overview of the Oral Language, Literacy […]

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Sight words are a special high frequency category of words that students are instructed to recognise automatically. The term ‘sight word’ can mean several different things: high frequency words; phonetically irregular words; or familiar words that require no effort to recall (orthographic lexicon or sight vocabulary). When educators refer to sight words they are usually […]

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Parent education sessions are a key way for educators to share tips on how parents can prepare their children for school and what they will learn. Typically conducted on an annual basis, parent sessions give the school the chance to equip their community with the tools that will reinforce their school based learning.  PLD has developed […]

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In general phonological awareness develops from an awareness of larger units (such as syllables and onset-rime) to an awareness of smaller units (phonemes). Teaching a child to blend and segment words is an important step in building phonological and phonemic awareness which in turn lead to strong literacy and reading skills. Phonological awareness (and more […]

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The beginning of the school year is an incredibly busy time of the year. Despite the workload ahead of all of you, it is imperative that schools start their year well. With this in mind, we’ve developed the following Term 1 essential checklist for teachers, school leaders and those new to PLD which should greatly […]

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Recently, Diana Rigg was featured in her old high school’s alumni magazine. Read a full transcript of the article below. “Past Principal of Santa Maria College, Sr Sheila Sawle used to constantly tell Santa Maria girls, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Thousands of girls took that inspirational advise with them […]

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Term 4 is an ideal time to trial implementing PLD either within a classroom or across the school. By trialing PLD now, any issues can be addressed and resolved prior to the new school year. Whether seeking to refine the current implementation or make a start in Term 4, the information outlined below should be of interest.  Jump […]

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Five From Five, AUSPELD and Learning Difficulties Australia have collaborated to create an evidence-based framework for schools which aims to dramatically reduce the number of children who finish primary school unable to read.  The pledge aims to ‘reduce to near zero the number of children who finish primary school unable to read by providing primary […]

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It is common practice for daycare centres, kindergartens, and other early childhood services to introduce formal literacy concepts. The intention is an admirable one; to provide children with some early literacy skills. However, the negative side of presenting formal literacy concepts without attention to their pre-requisite skills is that it will often produce complications for […]

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What are Elkonin boxes? Elkonin boxes (or sound boxes) are a useful teaching resource in which each box represents a single sound (or phoneme) contained in a word. They are named after a Russian psychologist D. B. El’konin who first used them in the 1960’s to help students segment spoken words into sounds. Today, the […]

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Oral language instruction should be an essential component of writing programs. Prior to and once students are able to write, effective oral language instruction helps to increase the sophistication of written vocabulary, sentence structure and the elaboration of ideas. To encourage the explicit instruction of oral language across classrooms, PLD has made our oral language […]

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Decodable reading books are specifically designed for early readers. They provide reading material which enables students to apply their alphabet sound skills, their early phonic knowledge, phonemic blending and decoding skills. The decodable reading material gradually increases in length and complexity and also gradually introduces high frequency words. Decodable texts are an integral part of […]

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Students often write words correctly in spelling tests but struggle when applying their new knowledge to written work. Why? As a general rule, when transferring spelling into writing, students require the activation of many more skills. Explained simply, single word spelling is quite a simple cognitive task in comparison to extended writing tasks. Dictation tasks […]

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PLD’s decodable reading books have been specifically chosen by Diana Rigg as they align with PLD’s structured synthetic phonics approach (SSP). What does this mean? Let’s look at the first set, Home Reading Books Set 1. The initial readers start with VC and CVC words and no sight words. Gradually and progressively sight words, phonic […]

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The beginning of the school year is an incredibly busy time of the year. Despite the workload ahead of all of you, it is imperative that schools start their year well. With this in mind, we’ve developed the following Term 1 essential checklist for teachers, school leaders and those new to PLD which should greatly […]

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It is quite common for children to arrive into Foundation without a dominant hand. Research suggests that while a majority of children show a preference by 3 years of age, and others by school age, some students actually establish dominance as late as 8 or 9 years old. As teachers are not Occupational Therapists, how […]