Canberra preschoolers benefit from new literacy development program 

Children in Canberra’s nine Catholic early learning centres will benefit from a new program designed to develop oral language and early literacy skills, with Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn (CECG) electing to use the School ReadY program developed by Y WA.

The decision to use the School ReadY program, CECG Executive Director Pam Betts explained, is based on the number of children who are coming into preschool settings needing help and support to develop the knowledge of vocabulary and phonological awareness they need to be successful when transitioning to school. 

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words.

This includes being able to identify words that rhyme, recognising alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and being aware of the smallest units of sounds that make up words.

“Phonological awareness is the foundation for reading and writing English,” Ms Betts said. “It’s a set of skills developed in sequence that is central to learning to decode and spell printed words. It’s critical for all students’ literacy development and a predictor of later reading and spelling success.”

Recent research suggests that many children do not enter school skilled in phonological awareness, and that if there is no instruction in phonological awareness, many will fail to acquire it.

“School ReadY has already produced positive results in Y WA early learning centres and it complements what we are already achieving with our play-based intentional learning,” Ms Betts said.

“We hope to build on the strong results from Western Australia and set our children up for greater success when they enter school.”

Evidence based approach

Upon hearing of the success of School ReadY, a team of six CECG delegates visited Y WA early learning centres in Perth, observing the skilled and passionate team in action and talking with educators delivering the Literacy and Language component. 

Delegates also had the opportunity to spend some time with the Y WA Literacy Specialist and Social Impact Lead team to learn more about the research and development of the program and the assessment tool used across the Y WA ELCs.

Leah Taylor, General Manager of the CECG early learning centres, said she was drawn to the program because it was comprehensive but still had a focus on play-based curriculum.

“We saw the value of the program as an evidence-based approach to laying the strong foundations for early literacy and language needed to support children in their pre-school years,” Mrs Taylor said.

“Through intentional teaching combined with play-based experiences, the program provides learning opportunities for the development of key skills that children need when formal instruction of reading begins.”

“This is an important collaboration because we hope that it will generate data that we can share throughout Australia about what works best for pre-school children.”

Future evaluation 

CECG has 688 children enrolled in early learning centres in Calwell, Curtin, Gowrie, Harrison, Holder, Nicholls, O’Connor, Wanniassa and West Belconnen, and  La Trobe University will monitor the program and evaluate its impact on children’s learning.

“This collaboration will enable early years educators and teachers across the country to share resources and strategies to further enhance children’s early literacy outcomes and provide comparative data to ensure these outcomes are on-going,”  Y WA’s CEO Dr Tim McDonald said. 

“School ReadY is already producing positive results in Western Australia in key areas targeted by the program, such as letter name and sound identification, semantic knowledge and comprehension. We’ve engaged the support of La Trobe University to monitor the program and evaluate its impact on children’s learning, so being able to measure results across the country is promising for the future of our young children.”