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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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In the recent WA Education Department report, which highlighted the success of PLD literacy programs, Professor Louden asked the question ‘What do high-performing primary schools have in common?’. Louden’s research reported that seven of the nine high-performing schools had adopted what the researcher referred to as ‘lower variation teaching’. Lower variation teaching is defined as, […]

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During April and May 2015, Emeritus Professor Bill Louden investigated and prepared a case study report on the school operations and pedagogical practices in place in nine high-performing primary schools as measured by NAPLAN to establish the top literacy programs in Australia. The intention of the investigation was to inform the Department of Education’s understanding […]

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Look-Cover-Say-Write-Check is a great strategy for children learning to spell. In this PLD insight, Diana Rigg discusses how to gain the maximum benefit from this technique and other PLD spelling activities. The video demonstrates how to slow down and focus children on the process of learning to spell. You can download the “Look-Cover-Say-Write-Check” poster here. […]

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Welcome to another PLD literacy and learning insight. Following the popular blog on Teaching Spelling in the Junior Primary, this blog outlines teaching spelling concepts in the Middle and Upper Primary and how to use the PLD spelling lists. The short 5-minute video below is designed to assist the teaching of literacy development to improve spelling. […]

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Welcome to another literacy and learning insight. Today’s blog is about teaching PLD spelling programs in the Junior Primary which are designed to assist with teaching spelling and literacy development principles. The use of PLD spelling resources is discussed in the short video below. How to slow children down to ‘sound-out’ as they spell and write. […]

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Today’s literacy and learning insight is about students in Year 2 and 3 with low literacy skills who are missing some of the basics in early literacy and may have gaps in their Year 1 skill level. My stance when dealing with young children is always “when in doubt always do check things out”. Small […]

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The Junior Primary Spelling Activities resource is intended to provide a definition of synthetic phonics and related skills, an understanding of the importance of synthetic phonics, and practical suggestions for how to teach synthetic phonics within the classroom.

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As children reach middle primary school, developed language skills are critical for gaining academic understanding of content and information as well as communicating socially.In this era, many daily activities do not require children to have to use language. For example: watching tv, playing computer games, using a playstation, sitting quietly on their DS, watching DVDs whilst driving…

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At what age should children be able to aurally discriminate between “th” and “f”? This is a great question which we are often asked. The aim of this post is to help provide strategies which you can adopt when working with children who struggle with the differences between these sounds.

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PLD’s decodable readers align with PLD’s Structured Synthetic Phonics (SSP) sequence. The type of words, word count, and amount of HFWs gradually become more complex as more phonic concepts are introduced. It is important to include decodable readers as part of your SSP program. This article explains why. Set 1 of the Home and Targeted […]

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We anticipate at PLD that all schools will have reduced attendance at the beginning and possibly throughout Term 2. As each week in the school year is precious, the following general suggestions are outlined below to get the most out of your screening and teaching during this uncertain time.  Jump to: Early Years Refer to […]

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We love getting such great feedback on the PLD literacy development program and its materials. The following testimonial demonstrates how even with poor student entry levels a quality program with quality instruction and delivery can still produce positive outcomes.

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What are Elkonin Boxes: Elkonin boxes or sound boxes are a teaching tool used to represent each sound or phoneme contained in a word (Elkonin, 1963). A series of connected boxes are used to represent each sound (not the letters) in a word. For example, three boxes are placed under the word ‘fish’ to represent […]