With the success of the Sold A Story podcast, and increased media coverage of reading instruction, there has been a renewed focus on the science of reading in Australia. 

The Australia Education Research Organisation (AERO) defines the science of reading as “a body of evidence that encompasses multi-disciplinary knowledge from education, linguistics, cognitive psychology, special education and neuroscience.”

The science of reading, AERO explains, “looks at the essential cognitive processes for competent reading and describes how reading develops in both typical and atypical readers. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and the instructional strategies that facilitate the cognitive processes required for reading (Castles et al 2018; Ehri 2005, 2014; Moats 2020).”

Many educators are now turning to the ‘Big Six’ – components that support learning to read as identified by Deslea Konza: 
• Oral language development and early literacy experiences
• Phonological awareness, especially phonemic awareness
• Letter-sound knowledge (phonics) and word knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Fluency 
• Comprehension

PETAA has developed a series of resources to support teachers in understanding, and implementing, science of reading principles in their schools and classrooms.

Here are PETAA’s teacher resources supporting the science of reading

Many of these resources are exclusively available for PETAA members. Become a PETAA member to access the tools you need!

On-demand conference presentations
• Understanding the jigsaw of reading (PETAA Conference 2021): Join Dr Bronwyn Parkin for this deep dive into the challenges of decoding and comprehension, and how the two strands work together to produce successful readers.
• Using close reading for decoding and comprehension (PETAA Conference 2022): This presentation, also by Parkin, examines how one close reading passage can become the launching point for moving from comprehension to decoding, from reading to spelling, and towards writing
• Is there one way to teach reading? (PETAA Conference 2022): Explore what teachers need to know to be expert literacy teachers with Dr Martina Tassone, Lecturer at University of Melbourne.
• Why teaching reading fluency is hot! (PETAA Conference 2022): Dr Lorraine Beveridge’s presentation looks at what the latest research tells us about what teachers need to know about reading fluency and what teaching reading fluency looks like throughout the primary years. 

Teacher reference books
• The Alphabetic Principle and Beyond: Surveying the landscape: Edited by Robyn Cox, Susan Feez and Lorraine Beveridge. This book, winner of the 2019 Best Primary Reference Resource at the Educational Publishing Awards Australia, explores the key ‘big ideas’ that support teachers in students’ successful learning of the alphabetic principle. 

Teacher professional learning
• Unpacking the science of reading: This 2-hour course by Timothy Shanahan (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois), fully adapted to the Australian learning context and curriculum, unpacks the origins of the term science of reading, explores models of reading and highlights the difference between science of reading and science of reading instruction.

Book chapters/excerpts
• Systematic and explicit phonics instruction: A scientific, evidence-based approach to teaching the alphabetic principle: This chapter, written by Jennifer Buckingham, Robyn Wheldall and Kevin Wheldall and taken from award-winning text The alphabetic principle and beyond, looks at systematic and explicit phonics instruction in the primary classroom.

Articles and papers
•Teaching and learning with oral language: This practical paper by Bronwyn Parkin examines best instruction and assessment for oral language.
• Reading models: putting the jigsaw together: This paper, also by Parkin, examines some of the most familiar models of reading to view them from the perspective of the broader context of language development, see how they fit with each other, and work out their strengths and limitations.
• Understanding research and evidence: a guide for teachers: This PETAA paper, by Susan Feez and Robyn Cox, explores what is meant by terms such as evidence, data, research and methodology, and considers how teachers might best use research evidence to contribute to the goal of achieving improved language and literacy outcomes for all Australian children

Further resources
• A suggested sequence for teaching phonics • 10 authentic texts to use in effective phonics instruction • Short video guides for teaching etymological, morphological and phonological spelling knowledge.
• An introduction to teaching reading comprehension