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Support Materials for Students with Special Education Needs
English K–6
R
eading
Procedures and strategies
All students learn best when teachers adopt an integrated approach to reading that explicitly
teaches phonemic awareness,
,
knowledge and
. Teachers should
also provide students with opportunities to read for authentic purposes, interest and pleasure
(Westwood 2006;
English K–6 Syllabus
; National Inquiry 2005).
Students experiencing difficulty with reading require a carefully planned and systematic
program addressing their particular areas of difficulty.
The procedures and strategies for reading provided in the support materials are useful for all
students but are particularly important for students experiencing difficulty in learning to read.
Phonemic awareness
Sound (phonological) awareness provides students with an understanding of how sounds
work in language (the structure of language). This includes an understanding that language
is made up of a string of units of sound including larger units (such as words, syllables,
onsets and rimes) and smaller units (phonemes).
Sound awareness activities should commence as soon as a student starts school and should
include activities such as rhyming, alliteration, blending, segmenting and manipulating sounds.
Research indicates that phonemic awareness is the most useful aspect of sound awareness
for the development of reading and
. Phonemic awareness is a subset
of phonological awareness and involves the ability to deal explicitly with the smallest units
in spoken words, ie the phoneme (National Inquiry 2005). Phonemic awareness activities
are undertaken orally.
IMPLEMENTATION