Better Start Literacy Approach extends nationwide and to Year 2 students

The Better Start Literacy

Approach (BSLA) – which has already helped more than 33,000 Year 0 and 1 students significantly improve their reading, writing and oral language skills – is expanding to include Year 2 children and their teachers.

University of Canterbury researchers developed the BSLA to ensure all children can develop the foundational skills critical for literacy success. They conducted tightly-controlled research studies of the approach in schools in Canterbury and Auckland, then from 2021 the Ministry of Education funded it for adoption in schools nationwide. Since then more than 700 schools and 33,000 students have become involved.

In February 2023 a further 1,100 teachers will begin training in the structured, well-researched, home-grown literacy approach.

Professor Gail Gillon is director of the University of Canterbury’s Child Well-being Research Institute and co-led the development of the BSLA programme with Professor Brigid McNeill.

Professor Gillon says the team is thrilled that teachers are reporting amazing results in children’s foundational literacy learning after just one term of teaching BSLA. Ongoing research supports teachers’ feedback.

One example is data from 6,000 five-year-olds who were taught with the BSLA for 10 weeks. It found those students scored significantly higher on phoneme identity; letter sound knowledge; and phoneme blending than children not taught that way. For students who scored below the mean at their initial assessment and were identified as requiring extra BSLA teaching, the approach further improved their literacy skills after 20 weeks, including listening comprehension, length of sentences used in an oral narrative task, and letter sound knowledge.

Professor Gillon says the national data we are collecting confirms findings from previous controlled research trials showing the BSLA significantly improves children’s foundational literacy skills including those who enter school with lower levels of oral language.

Professor Gillon says our data from BSLA suggest that the approach is reducing inequity in literacy.

“Children of Māori ethnicity, Pasifika ethnicity, greater socioeconomic deprivation, and males scored lower across measures of phonological awareness and oral language at school entry. However, variability in scores was much reduced after just 10 weeks of BSLA teaching.”

Professor Gillon says results the team are seeing in ‘the real world’, through ongoing research of the approach, are actually better than the initial controlled research studies – something rarely seen previously . This is ‘very exciting as it essentially means Kiwi children’s reading, writing and oral language skills are improving across the country in response to our talented teachers implementing the approach.’

The BSLA team has also developed an innovative online assessment platform where students complete interactive activities in oral narrative, phonological awareness, reading and spelling tasks.

Dr Amy Scott supports teachers and literacy specialists around the country to implement BSLA teaching and assessments tasks and interpret the data for their teaching. She says teachers are enthusiastic about the usefulness of the assessment tasks to monitor children’s growth over time, identify each student’s next literacy learning steps, and help identify those at risk for persistent learning and literacy difficulties such as dyslexia.