Dr Nathaniel Swain and Shane Pearson - From the big five to a coherent curriculum

From the big five to a coherent curriculum:

Literacy in every subject, for every subject.

Many schools are incorporating the five major elements of reading in their literacy approach. The foundations of Science of Reading are increasingly reflected in classrooms around the country, and overseas. However, the work of embedding the effective teaching of reading, spelling, and writing across the learning areas is a much bigger task. 

At Brandon Park Primary School, we are building upon our low variance spelling and word reading curriculum, to make direct connections between spelling, reading, and writing instruction within English lessons and in every learning area. Our vision is that our students simultaneously utilise and further develop their literacy skills in every subject. Students learning to decode and spell is vital, but what really matters is WHAT you use those literacy skills for.

By using a knowledge-rich, coherent and cohesive curriculum approach, and best practices in writing instruction, we are supporting our students to become informed, insightful, critical and independent readers, writers, and learners. 

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About Dr Nathaniel Swain

Dr Nathaniel Swain is a teacher, instructional coach and researcher. He has worked as a lecturer and research fellow in, and in recent years, Nathaniel been supporting schools and teachers to embed research-informed practices. With expertise in language, literacy, instructional practices and cognitive science, Dr Swain is dedicated to empowering teachers to develop “life-changing” language and literacy skills in every student, through effective and engaging teaching. To this end, he founded the national community of teachers: Think Forward Educators. Nathaniel is passionate about language, knowledge-rich curricula and social justice.

Shane Pearson

Shane Pearson is a speech pathologist who specialises in literacy difficulties. He is passionate about effective evidence-based literacy instruction including classroom practice and intensive intervention. He is now part of the leadership team at Brandon Park Primary School and leads its whole-school literacy teaching and intervention team.

While working in schools and private practice in an intervention capacity, Shane became aware of the many instructional casualties being caused by non-evidence-based literacy teaching. This drove him to begin developing a freely available spelling and decoding curriculum. He was employed by Brandon Park Primary School in Melbourne in late 2018 primarily to improve spelling results. Although implementing evidence-based spelling instruction was just the beginning of this school’s Science of Reading and Learning journey, the spelling approach introduced at Brandon Park has continued to be refined. In 2022, spelling, decoding, phonemic awareness, handwriting and vocabulary were placed into one daily core literacy skills lesson called PhOrMeS.