Minister ill-informed, Literacy Strategy hollow
Sunday 27 March, 2022. View pdf here.
MINISTER ILL-INFORMED, LITERACY STRATEGY HOLLOW, SAY LITERACY ADVOCATES
The Ministry of Education’s new Literacy Strategy was announced on Friday. Lifting Literacy Aotearoa says it rings hollow when it comes to teaching every child to read and write.
The advocacy group condemns the new Strategy as lacking the necessary direction that would ensure all New Zealand children are provided with the highest quality literacy instruction.
The Strategy omits a vast body of research evidence that is the basis for international best practice in teaching literacy.
This research evidence, termed ‘the Science of Reading’, is informed by thousands of studies across psychology, linguistics, speech language pathology, education, and neuroscience.
Findings are consistently and abundantly clear that the brain learns to read by connecting the sounds in spoken words to the letters in written words.
In a media appearance on Friday, the Minister for Education Hon Chris Hipkins stated “Sounding out the words, looking at the pictures, that’s how kids learn to read. The idea that you have to pick one or the other is just such a red herring.”
Lifting Literacy Aotearoa Chair Alice Wilson says “The Minister’s statement is concerning because it seems he is relying on a disproven philosophy of reading.”
Methods of teaching that stem from the outdated Whole Language approach include ‘three cueing’ – teaching kids to look at pictures and 'solve' the word from contextual information rather than by sounding out the word. This interrupts the process of orthographic mapping, which is how the brain stores words in long term memory.
“There has been a fundamental shift in our knowledge of how the brain learns to read in the last 15 years. However, in New Zealand, teaching practices have not changed to reflect that new knowledge”, says Alice Wilson. "We challenge the Ministry to take the lead in removing the ‘three cueing’ rotten apple from New Zealand's approach to teaching reading, once and for all."
The research cited by the Strategy fails to include the findings of neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2003), which revealed for the first time through neuro-imaging the way the human brain learns to read. This knowledge is the foundation of the shift in teaching practice from Whole Language and Balanced Literacy to Structured Literacy.
Reference to major international research reviews such as America’s National Reading Panel, the UK’s Rose Report, and New Zealand’s Massey Early Literacy Research Project are also absent.
“Jurisdictions around the world are mandating best practice Structured Literacy for all learners but New Zealand seems determined to let teachers flounder and kids fail” says Alice Wilson.
Every child benefits from being taught explicitly about sounds, letters, vocabulary, sentence structure, and text structures through Structured Literacy to give them all the tools they need to read, write and learn.
Structured Literacy is the evidence based approach that will have the greatest impact for all learners, enabling them to access the broad range of literacy the Strategy refers to.
“We cannot keep ignoring the science here in New Zealand. Around 15% of schools have already implemented a Structured Literacy approach to teaching because it works for more children.”
Teachers and school leaders are upskilling and adopting Structured Literacy themselves, at their own expense.
Educators are hungry for the solution to our poor literacy results and families are desperate to see struggling readers taught to read at school, not by costly independent tutors.
“It is unthinkable that in 2022 our schools in Aotearoa would not be guided by international best practice. We cannot afford to wait another five years for the Ministry of Education to provide schools and children with the knowledge and tools they need.
“The research has already been done, the consensus is clear. Structured Literacy is the best way to teach all brains, and crucial for some.”
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