The term structured literacy has been trademarked by the International Dyslexia Association. The IDA defines structured literacy as the “highly explicit, systematic teaching of foundation skills such as decoding and spelling skills, as well as explicit teaching of other important components of literacy such as vocabulary, comprehension, and writing”. Structured literacy is an approach to teaching oral and written language. It’s based on the science of how children learn to read. A structured literacy approach prepares students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner. 

There is a carefully planned sequence of teaching that is constructed in a logical sequence from simple to complex objectives. Students are taught the content and skills to be learned using clear, unambiguous language. Teacher modelling and teacher guidance is followed by scheduled opportunities for practice.

A Scope and Sequence is a summary of what is to be taught, the sequence in which it will be taught and the curriculum outcomes that may be addressed in the intended learning.

A Scope and Sequence is important because it provides an outline for a logical, sequential and cumulative program. It builds on grapheme-phoneme knowledge from simple to complex.

You can download the Sunshine Phonics Scope and Sequence here.

Decodable books are designed to support a Synthetic Phonics method of teaching reading. In Synthetic Phonics, letter sounds (phonemes) and the letters that represent them (graphemes) are taught explicitly and systematically. In decodable books, the text is controlled by and limited to the phonemes that have been taught to that point. For example, the first set of books may be based on children only needing to know the sounds for
s a t p i n m d.

Only words using these sounds would be used in this set of books. In this way, children are able to practise their growing phonic knowledge by reading books and decoding words that they will easily be able to. The only exception to this would be the use of some high-frequency words that may not be easily decodable at that point. These words are referred to as common exception words or tricky words because they include a letter or combinations of letters that represent irregular sound patterns. Some examples of these words are: the, he, no, is, to.

The vocabulary used in the first set of books, based on a Whole Language approach, is not controlled in this way. All 44 sounds of English and the letters that represent them can be used to a large extent. So, for example, the word ‘sky’ could be used. A simple word with only three letters, but not easily decodable unless you know that the letter y also makes the long /i/ sound. For beginning readers, the need to look for a picture clue, or to predict what the word may be from the context of the sentence, or from the letters at the start of the word (or all combinations) may be required. This is a challenge that all children may not be up to in the early stages of reading. READ MORE

What is a Common Exception Word or Tricky Word? This is any word that has a sound or sounds in it that the children have not been taught at that point and/or are irregular. These words are hard to sound out with the existing letter-sound correspondence knowledge that the children have. A tricky word at one point is usually not tricky after certain phonemes and their varying graphemes have been taught. Sometimes only parts of the word represent a challenge, with the other parts representing common sounds.

Let’s look at some examples. The word the is usually introduced very early in beginning reading texts because it is a high-frequency word that appears a lot in English texts. It is one of the glue words that helps to bind a sentence and story together. It is just a small word of only three letters, but from a decoding point of view, it offers some challenges that make it tricky at the early stages of reading. All sounds in the word the will not have been taught to children yet. These sounds are the digraph /th/ (two letters, one sound), which makes a voiced and unvoiced sound, but in this case it is the voiced, and the letter e, which is this case represents an unstressed vowel, the schwa sound /ə/. Later in a synthetic phonics program, these sounds will be taught and then the word is no longer tricky.

Another example is the word is. Initially, children will learn the short /i/ sound as in pin. So this part of the word is not tricky. But the first sound learnt for /s/ will be as in sit. In the word is, the s is represented by the /z/ sound. So this part of the word is tricky until the sound /z/ is taught and children learn that one of the graphemes for this sound is s. Other words such as his, as and has are tricky too at the early stages.

In a decodable reading series, the initial tricky words are usually from the first 100 high-frequency words list. Some words from this list are decodable, e.g. at, in, but many are not. These are high-frequency words that are also tricky. But being high-frequency words, children are likely to meet them in the books they read and so will need to know them.

How do you Teach a Tricky Word?

Traditionally, tricky words have been taught to children as a whole by sight, using flash cards and repetition. The reality is that most tricky words only have tricky parts and other parts that the children know. This means that these words can be analysed and decoded with children to better help them understand and remember them. This also reflects the teaching approach used for synthetic phonics. So let’s say the word being introduced is go and at that stage the children know the common sound for g as in get and o as in got, then the only tricky part is the o, which in this case represents the long o. For this word, start by reading the word to children and getting them to repeat it. Then read the word phoneme by phoneme (sound buttons can help), pointing to the letters as you say the sounds. Then point to the parts of the word that children know and ask them to give you the sounds. Lastly, point out the tricky part and tell children the sound this letter or letters make. This way, children can draw on and apply the phonic knowledge they have while also learning about the tricky part of the word so that they can read it. READ MORE

Our Glossary of Key Structured Literacy Terms helps to explain the language used when discussing structured literacy. Download the Glossary here

The Sunshine Phonics Decodable Series aligns very closely with the F-10 Australian Curriculum: English. The program meets the content descriptors across all three strands of Language, Literature and Literacy for Foundation and Year 1 and most of the sub-strands at these year levels.

Decodable texts are mentioned specifically in the Literacy strand:

F-10 Australian Curriculum: English (V.9)

AC9EFLY04

Read decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic knowledge, and monitor meaning using context and emerging grammatical knowledge

AC9E1LY04

Read decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic knowledge, phrasing and fluency, and monitoring meaning using context and grammatical knowledge

The Sunshine Phonics Decodable Series is complemented by a free downloadable Assessment Kit.  Assessment can take many forms and our Kit has a range of tools that assess five different areas.

Screening Tests – quickly screen students to place them at the correct stage of the Sunshine Decodables series.

Phonics Assessment – comprehensive tests to assess students’ understanding of new phonemes and graphemes, ability to segment and blend decodable words and to read tricky words.

Assessment of Reading Accuracy – unseen texts to assess students’ reading accuracy (this is packaged together with Comprehension below).

Comprehension Assessment – questions on the unseen texts (packaged with Reading Accuracy above).

Encoding Assessment – assesses students’ writing and spelling of dictated words and sentences.

The Kit also contains two optional Tracker Spreadsheets (Excel format). The Trackers can be used to record assessment results from either Series 1 or Series 2, and to monitor students’ progress.

Click here to access the Assessment Kit

The Phonics Overview for Series 1 and Series 2 are virtually identical. By the end of the program, students will have learned all 44 sounds of English along with many alternative spellings for the sounds. However, Series 2 takes a slightly slower pace to the teaching of the alternative spellings. The Phonics Overviews are available here for Series 1 and Series 2.  The Sunshine Online Decodable Library is our digital program which includes the books from both Series 1 and Series 2, along with digital phonics activities. It follows the same Phonics Overview as the printed program.

Sunshine Phonics is an evidence-based, structured, synthetic phonics program which is aligned with the latest Science of Reading and Science of Learning research. Through systematic, explicit phonics instruction, students learn the foundational alphabetic code-breaking skills that are essential for success in reading, writing and spelling.

Research from around the world, over several decades and from various disciplines has informed us more about how the human brain functions and what the best high-impact practices are for effective teaching and learning – in particular, teaching reading.

The evidence tells us that to be effective, the teaching of reading should be explicit, systematic and cumulative with a strong focus on phonemic awareness and phonics in the early stages. Teaching needs to follow a scope and sequence (a summary of what is taught and when) that provides a clear progression for students to develop their knowledge of the relationship between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes), so that they can then apply this developing knowledge to reading (decoding) suitably matched decodable texts.

There are six essential elements to being a successful reader known as the ’Big 6’ (Konza 2014): Oral Language, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. In the early years, students need to be explicitly taught phonics and phonemic awareness so that they learn the 44 speech sounds of English (phonemes) and the letter/s that represent those sounds (graphemes). Using this knowledge students are taught how to segment and blend these sounds to read words (decode). Decodable books provide the perfect tools for students to practise and apply their developing phonic knowledge.

In the back of all the Sunshine Phonics Decodable Series books there is a teaching overview addressing these key areas and explicit lesson plans are available in the printed Teachers’ Books.