Week 4 Term 1: English Department: Structured Literacy Part 2 (Feb 17 - Feb 21)

 In Week 3 Term 1 I posted about how we are starting our Structured Literacy journey with the English, Social Science and Science Department. Led by our Literacy expert, Dr Jannie, we were introduced to a session on catching up on the structured literacy code and understanding what syllabification is. You can read my previous here - Alby's Blog Post Entry (10/02/25). 

We had some reflection questions to recap on our previous PLD session. 

What is a syllable? 

The sound of the word. Vowel and consonant sounds that make up the sound of the word. It gives the beat in the word.

Group of letters

Representing a beat of sound

Containing at least ONE vowel

What is a multisyllabic word? 

More than one syllable - vowels and consonants. Words that have multiple syllables.

Why give multisyllabic word(s) attention? 

Most words are multisyllabic, this helps to increase fluency for students. If our learners have a big mental repertoire and capability with vocabulary it will help enrich their literacy.

Cross curricular team work @ Structured Literacy PLD

In Week 2 Term 1, we spent time going through an activity that we could do with our Year 9 and Year 10 classes. The activity aligns with our Structured Literacy approach and in Week 2 Term 1, the teachers across the English, Social Science and Science Departments had the opportunity to give it a go with Dr Jannie. 

In the activity we had to: 

• Write down words that the were read out. We had to write down what we hear (the words read out were made up words) 
• The teacher then shared the words in a work sheet and we had to see if our words matched the words on the work sheet 
• From here we had to work out the syllables and use/to indicate where we think the syllable is.
• Label each syllable - S = stressed U = Unstressed

Activity for Structured Literacy

Pros of the Do Now

• Get the students to know that ONE sound can be written in various ways - look at the different patterns in words but the same sound is important. One syllable can have different spelling but it is still one syllable and one sound.
• Look up syllables to refresh your memory
• Look for VOWEL sound and consonant as well.
• When helping students to syllabify words - they will look for vowels and consonant sounds.
• Stress helps students to sound out and know the word(s).
• Don’t make assumptions that students can read and unpack words accordingly so doing activities like this is important. 
• Context matters - words in isolation may not be a good idea. Reading words in the full text

I am looking forward to trying this one of my senior classes this term.