Today was my second day in my new role as a Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour, or RTLB as it is most commonly known as. This morning I had the privilege of attending a PD session about phonemic awareness, the ability of language speakers to identify the different sounds that make up a word.
The first part of the session introduced the Whanake programme, or Whanake te Kakano, which is a free support programme run by the RTLB service in Auckland aimed at helping struggling or developing readers to identify the different sounds that are heard in words- a gap which has been identified in many cases of reading difficulty.
The Whanake programme is very similar to another one run for profit in Auckland known as A Best Start, however goes further than this iteration by providing in-class modelling and follow up support for teachers involved in it.
We heard how often schools who have invested in expensive remedial reading programmes dismiss the Whanake model as being just another phonics system, however the Whanake programme is not about linking sounds to letters, which is the basis of many phonics courses. Instead, this system focuses on oral language and the print-free sounds of speech, identifying phonemes, and breaking up blends into their smaller constituents.
A video played to us demonstrated how a boy who could not say “swim”, was able to break down the word and add in the missing sound himself (in this case the “w”). He would use counters in a row to demonstrate the four sounds, in this instance s/w/i/m, and was able to identify that “sim” did not have the right number of sounds to be correct.
The programme, run by Gail Gillon in Christchurch, was supported by data which showed an improvement in literacy across the schools that participated, with one teacher sharing work samples of a student who went from a year behind to achieving at the national expected standard within a year.
Learning Through Teaching 