Teachers turn to SOLAR power to boost literacy lesson skills

Frustrated teachers and schools are putting time and money into upskilling staff on how to properly teach reading to students after ­realising universities have left them ill-prepared.

Brisbane Independent Primary students Felix Vazey, Mia Corness and Tilly O’Brien hone their skills. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Frustrated teachers and schools are putting time and money into upskilling staff on how to properly teach reading to students after ­realising universities have left them ill-prepared.

La Trobe University’s Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) short courses have reported success in educating teachers, with teachers joining to learn how to teach reading systematically and explicitly.

The course aims to correct teaching methods such as multi-cueing where students guess or predict words and intuiting which encourages guesses using pictures and context clues, which are now commonplace in classrooms across Australia. Some teachers are rebelling against what they see as ineffective techniques.

SOLAR co-director Pamela Snow, who established the course with Tanya Serry, said universities were enabling teaching graduates to “choose their own adventure” instead of teaching evidence-based approaches like phonetics.

“Children can’t consent to social experiments … Inviting teachers to choose whatever way they prefer to teach reading is basically saying it’s OK to experiment on the children in your class,” Professor Snow told The Weekend Australian.

“(Universities) should be starting with the strongest current evidence, which is around the systematic and explicit teaching of reading. The strongest scientific evidence does not support balanced literacy and yet that’s what continues to be favoured in faculties of education,” she said.

Tylden Primary School teacher James Dobson, who completed SOLAR last year, told The Weekend Australian of his guilt over not being taught properly, which prompted him to ask his school to fund all teachers to complete the course.

“My frustration at initial teacher education more comes from a sense of guilt because I look back at the students in my first years of teaching who I could have served better … unfortunately after my training coming out of university I didn’t really know how to teach an absolute novice how to read,” he said.

“I learned in four weeks and I wondered why I hadn’t learned it in four years of university … It’s very time-consuming having to relearn as a teacher.”

Mr Dobson said the SOLAR short course provided him with skills he could immediately put into practice in the classroom and that teaching has improved across the school. “Not only has my teaching improved but because all the teachers on our staff have now done it, collectively our teaching’s improved.”

Jennifer Buckingham, founder of Five from Five, which provides evidence-based reading instructions, said universities that failed to meet initial teacher education (ITE) standards should be penalised by having funding stripped.

A love of books is improving literacy results at Brisbane Independent School, which is taking a unique approach to lessons by shunning formal homework and giving children more freedom to read books they choose.

BIS principal Lachlyn Bowie encourages parents to take children to a library, to instil an interest in reading outside the classroom.

“Find what your child’s passionate about and buy them books, buy them lots of books,’’ she said. “If they like Pokemon then buy them Pokemon books.’’

BIS focuses on “rote learning of phonics’’ in the early years of primary school, giving students the skills and confidence to read independently.