Xanthi Rice retweetledi
In less than 12 months Victoria has achieved:
1. A new English curriculum with a detailed Phonic and Word Knowledge sub-strand and a brand new sub-strand called Building Fluency and Making Meaning, to prioritise fluency, an essential key to reading. There’s also a much bigger emphasis on vocabulary and reading diverse, rich and complex texts.
2. A Reading Position Statement highlighting the importance of teaching The Big 6.
3. A phonics mandate (25 mins per day of SSP in F-2 from 2025).
4. A free foundational literacy curriculum for F-2 (Phonics Plus) including scope and sequence, lesson sequences and 450 lessons, each an hour long, that teach word level reading and spelling (phonics, irregular words, morphology, spelling patterns, multisyllabic words, phonemic and phonological awareness), decoding practice, reading fluency and handwriting at letter, word and sentence level. 450 hours of instruction planned and ready to teach for schools that wish to adopt it.
5. A new teaching and learning model (VTLM2.0) that reflects more of the evidence on how students learn and some good bets for teaching.
And there’s more to come. I’ve had a number of messages, and I’ve seen a number of posts, about the definition of Decode in the Phonics Plus scope and sequence. It is not a typo or a misunderstanding. This definition is set by the curriculum authority. This is not a new definition. This has been the definition in Victoria for a long, long time. The system is required to use curriculum
authority definitions. Definitions, while very important, take time to be updated when curriculum revisions and policy shifts occur. A similar change process occurred with the revised national curriculum. When a new definition is published, the system can use it. The resource itself is jam packed with systematic decoding instruction.
Any change within any education system is agonisingly hard and yet we have achieved so much so quickly here in Victoria. Coordinating change and achieving consistency across multiple agencies is even harder. There are always compromises. Nothing can or will ever be perfect or to everyone’s liking or at everyone’s desired pace. This is the reality of policy/practice change.
While I get the frustration, a glossary definition (that will be resolved in time) is not the salient thing. There is a bigger picture. An optimistic, constructive, pragmatic response to positive change can go a long way. Let’s focus on all the good.
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