Planning Little Learners Love Literacy®
The Little Learners Love Literacy® resources and teaching approach are sequential, structured and explicit. Weekly plans will follow our cumulative scope and sequence, and each daily session follows our explicit teaching approach of revise - teach - practise - apply - assess.
Planning Little Learners Love Literacy® sessions is simple – using these weekly planning prinicples
• Use effective instruction- be explicit!
• Revise, teach, practise, apply -every day
• Follow the cumulative teaching sequence
• Utilise the instructional routines
• Whole class teaching of phonemic awareness, reading and writing - together - every day
• Ensure complexity of the target content increases throughout the week
• Have Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention established
On this page you will find information and tips to help you get started with your Little Learners Love Literacy planning. If the terminology and references are not familiar to you, we highly recommend you join us for a two-day professional learning workshop. We run workshops in- person and online via Zoom, facilitated by teachers who use the program in their school. And please contact the Little Learners team if you need any further support.
Use effective instruction - be explicit!
What is explicit teaching? By this we mean: Never asking students a question or to do something that you have not taught and modelled and guided them through first, no matter how small the task or question. As educators we make no assumptions when we teach explicitly.
You teach some new content by modelling and demonstrating to students -I DO.
You then work with the class to practice what you have taught. This is scaffolded and active -WE DO.
Children independently practise and apply what you taught and practised together -YOU DO.
Revise, teach, practise, apply - every day
At Little Learners Love Literacy® we know that children learn faster if they are taught systematically and explicitly using synthetic phonics and a structured literacy approach - it really does work!
Our well-tested systematic teaching sequence is taught through our explicit teaching model every day:
Revise using Speed Sounds and Chants and speed words.
Identify from the Little Learners Love Literacy® sequence and Teacher Activity Resources what to teach next.
Plan how the children will practise this skill to reach mastery using the Little Learners Love Literacy® resources and games.
Apply this knowledge to reading decodable texts.
Assess children to monitor their progress.
Follow the cumulative teaching sequence
Each weekly literacy planner should follow the Little Learners Love Literacy® teaching sequence. Learning is cumulative and all activities have been designed to provide children with practice and application opportunities using their skills and knowledge. Changing the sequence risks children being asked to read and spell using phonemes, graphemes or morphemes that they have not been explicitly taught yet. We want to set them up for success and sticking to the sequence will help you to do this.
Utilise Instructional Routines
LLLL uses Instructional routines to help reduce cognitive load, boost motivation and are crucial for making learning ‘stick’ for students. Additionally, the instructional routines also reduce teacher planning time as well as teacher’s cognitive load!
| Whole Class | Small Group | Independent |
|---|---|---|
| Milo’s birthday surprise storybook and music
Sound box Phonemic fun Super spelling Speed sounds & chitter chatter chants Speed words Handwriting instruction Encoding & decoding guided practice Ally talk activities | Sound Swap Word Game Let’s Spell Let’s write – dictation Small group reading with decodables Read and Grab Word Game Read and match Bingo games Milo's making words placemats, flipbook and alphabet games | Read, write and draw Handwriting Sound and write My word detective Reading in pairs or independently |
Whole class teaching of phonemic awareness, reading and writing - together - every day
When creating your own weekly planning, these are the everyday essentials that need to be included
Revision: Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence and word reading
Explicit instruction: phonemic awareness & phonics, decoding, spelling, handwriting
Practice & Application: reading and spelling.
Below are some example planners from our Teacher Activity Resource books.
Ensure complexity of the the target content increases throughout the week
Ensure that the complexity of the target content increases throughout the week for students to apply their new knowledge/skills to increasingly demanding tasks.
Start at the phoneme/grapheme level- this includes speed sounds and chants, handwriting of graphemes, Sound and Write
Move to decoding and encoding at the word level- both single and multisyllabic words. Routines like Read and Grab, Super Spelling, Mini whiteboards, Let’s Spell, Sound Swap will support children to develop mastery
Continue with phrase and sentence level- Read, Write Draw, Tim’s Quiz and the Wiz Kids Quiz, Let’s Write using the phrases provides lots of opportunities for practise and application
It is important to provide lots of opportunities for practice and application in order to develop mastery by reading and re-reading connected text with a partner, small group or choral reading to develop accuracy, automaticity and prosody.
Have Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention established
Little Learners Love Literacy® does not advocate streaming of students. By streaming, we mean assessing students using the Little Learners Assessment suite and flexibly arranging classes, such as Year 1 students working with the Foundation program and vice versa. Instead, we strongly recommend a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to identify struggling students early and intervene quickly. MTSS is designed to help schools identify struggling students early and intervene quickly through tier 2, targeted small group intervention and tier 3, intensive individual instruction.
Assessments
Use Little Learners Assessments to inform and adjust your tier 1 (classroom) teaching and Tier 2 interventions. There are three formal assessments in the Little Learners Love Literacy® program – one for reading, one for spelling and one for phonological awareness. Together, these tools identify the progress and skill level of each child. They show exactly what a child can do so that teachers can plan what needs to be taught next, as well as track crucial progress data for reporting. Read more about the data you will get from the LLARS, LLASS and ToPALL here.
Planning tips
- Use the TAR weekly planning notes - everything you need to inform your plan is here.
- Master the LLLL routines - watch our YouTube videos and read guidance in the TARs
- Stick to the teaching sequence: the LLLL phonics sequence and also the explicit teaching sequence of revise, teach, practice, apply, assess.
Frequently asked questions ....