Kia ora,

We are excited to be helping your little one with our fun, engaging and evidence-based literacy program this year.

 What can you expect?

We teach with Little Learners Love Literacy® – a structured and explicit program with engaging multisensory activities. It is carefully sequenced in seven stages to teach children the 44 sounds of the English language and the principles of the alphabetic code (that each speech sound can be represented by different groups of letters, such as the sound /ī/ as in I, sky, pie, ice, cycle, and that a letter (or group of letters) can represent different sounds, such as the letter ‘y’ in yes, gym, funny, sky.

Did you know that learning the alphabetic code gives children the knowledge to read and spell 84% of ALL words? (Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, and Rudorf, 1966)

We start with teaching the simple code in Stages 1–4. We will focus on phonics and phonemic awareness to build the strongest foundations for reading and spelling success. We will also focus on building vocabulary and oral language skills to develop equally strong foundations for comprehension and writing.

Meet Milo and friends

In the first few weeks of term, we will be learning our Stage 1 letters and sounds. We will be enjoying the Milo’s Birthday Surprise storybook, meeting a new character and sound regularly. We will also learn to blend sounds to say words with the Ally alligator puppet and segment them for spelling, as well as learning handwriting.

Decodable books

Once we finish teaching Stage 1 at the end of Term 1, we will start to send home Pip and Tim decodable books.

These are our secret to success – our ‘no tricks’ books. Each story practises the sounds and letters that we have taught, so children will be able to read the books themselves by sounding out and blending (and no guessing!).

How can you support your child at home?

Reading to your child

Read many books to your child and talk about what you just read. This is crucial for vocabulary and linguistic comprehension. Choosing a quiet time, such as bedtime, can help build an easy and fun reading routine.

Play with sounds

Read the Little Learners letter that we will send home each week. Ask your child the questions that are included with the letter. This will support the development of phonemic awareness (helping in the ability to identify, blend, segment and manipulate speech sounds within words).

Say the sounds

Say the ‘pure’ sounds without an ‘uh’ sound on the end; for example, ‘lllll’ rather than ‘luh’. You can listen to the sounds on the Little Learners Love Literacy® YouTube channel.

Practise decoding

When our decodable storybooks start to come home later in the term, encourage your child to sound out to read unknown words. Remember that this is the beginning of your child’s learning to read journey and, just as when they were learning to walk, your child will need support to build confidence reading.

If you would like to find out more about the program, you can visit the website littlelearnersloveliteracy.com.au, or ask your child’s teacher when the next ASP structured literacy 'open morning' is. 

Ngā mihi,

Nicky, Angela, Lesley, Tash and Pam

ASP Junior teachers.

Little Learners Love Literacy®

Teaching ALL children to read, write and spell with confidence.