Launched by the Y, the ‘School ReadY’ initiative intends to provide the 22 per cent of children who start Prep ‘developmentally vulnerable’ with a helping hand – and well before they hit the classroom.
So says Dr Tim McDonald, CEO of the YMCA WA, who hopes the program will prove ‘an absolute game changer’ for kids in long daycare and Kindergartens across the state.
“I hope that we will shift the trajectory of young people having the capacity to read, which is the key to learning,” McDonald tells EducationHQ..
“And so, I’m hoping that we will level the playing field, irrespective of poverty, postcode, family, education, background, etc.
“If you take part in the School ReadY program, you’ll have just as much opportunity to flourish at school and to learn than any other student from a high [SES] postcode.
“That’s the aim. This is about equity, and it’s about equity and inclusion in learning...”
The expert in engagement and behaviour management believes that there is more we need to be doing to ensure all children are prepared to hit the ground running once they start school.
“School readiness is often perceived as being able to sit on a mat quietly, being able to get your lunchbox ready, use scissors or being able to listen to a story, however evidence shows that the brain is so receptive at this young age and there is so much more we can do to prepare children for success at school and beyond…
“Our focus on the early years is a commitment to prioritising prevention and early intervention.”
Currently, the large slice of Prep students deemed developmentally vulnerable lag behind in one or a number of key markers, McDonald explains.
“That means, depending on what the problem could be, [such as] social skills, it might be relating to others, it could be the capacity to sit and listen – whatever it is, just puts them at a disadvantage to obviously those students who aren’t as vulnerable…”
Also keenly aware that one-third of Australian students are failing to learn to read proficiently – an outcome that comes at an estimated cost to the economy of $40 billion – McDonald says the first phase of School ReadY hones in on building children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness.
He calls these ‘the building blocks to reading’.
“Research shows that if in the two years before school … they can do some phonological awareness around sounds at the starts of words or in words, and they can do some syllables and clap it out, it really helps them once they are taught reading when they get to school,” McDonald says.
Importantly, the program is entirely play-based and uses stories, songs, rhymes and games – alongside mat sessions with vocab flash cards – to usher along children’s language development.
“So, if they’re reading a book, it could be about socks, they’ll have some vocab around pairs. Or they might have the word ‘difficulty’, you know, ‘hard to put on’, or whatever it might be.
“So [the program] just picks out some vocab out of the actual stories that the young people have during the mat sessions and throughout the week,” McDonald adds.
The expert is keen to emphasise that you do need some intentional teaching sessions in the early years, and that this is backed up by the evidence.
“You need moments where you’re actually sitting down showing young people a flash card or a cue card or a book, and getting their attention to intentionally teach them the sound of a word or what the word is, or the syllables that are in their name, ‘Lu-ca’.
“The science is really clear – it needs to be taught explicitly, and then they need to understand, initially in pre-literacy, around the vocabulary, the sounds of words, that there are sounds within letters (grouped together).
“That helps them when they get into more complex reading and decoding, and understanding what words mean,” McDonald explains.
A team of experts have helped to design the program.
Dr Simmone Pogorzelski, a researcher at Edith Cowan University, developed the Literacy and Language component of the program in partnership with The Knowledge Society and The Y WA educators.
Dr Tessa Weadman from La Trobe University’s Science of Language and Reading Lab reviewed the language components, and both played a leading role in facilitating a pilot of the program and evaluating its impact.
Meanwhile, literacy specialist Renee Chakaodza will provide ongoing support and coaching to educators as they implement the program, with numeracy and social and emotional learning components set to be rolled out next.
“In Australia there’s a real paucity of mathematical programs that are linked to the science of learning, and so it’s hard to find a program that has the evidence base behind it,” McDonald says.
“Whereas our pre-literacy program that we’ve got is built on the science of reading, and it has good evidence behind it.”
To those that argue children should be shielded from any kind of formal instruction before school – the ‘let kids be kids’ line – the expert suggests the program is not doing anything unorthodox.
“Parents and grandparents have been doing this for centuries, [think about] the passing on of traditions in other cultures.
“It’s around an oral tradition. It’s around telling stories. We’re doing that, we’re passing on the norms, if you like, of language conventions at an early age.
“But we know now so much about the brain…” McDonald says.
Ultimately, biologically secondary knowledge can’t be picked up by osmosis, he suggests.
“We know that when young children are born, what comes naturally to them is what is called ‘biologically primary knowledge’.
"So, they learn their language, but they also understand facial recognition, and they can [understand] the tone of a voice, and so they can read emotions...
“But what needs to be taught? It’s called ‘biologically secondary knowledge’. They have to be taught how to read, they have to be taught how to write, how to follow road rules, how to follow a recipe…
“You can’t just say ‘go and play’, and all of a sudden you’ll understand how to read. It’s just not possible. And that’s what we know now so much from the research.”
