Most adults can picture it vividly. You’re in an elementary school classroom. A circle of kids is sitting on a carpet. Everyone has their books opened to a page. Then, it is your turn to read out loud to the class.

From Whole Language to Science of Reading

Many of today’s parents learned to read using what is known as the “whole-language approach.” This method emphasizes reading at the word level. Because it minimizes the decoding process, students are focused on learning to say the word by recognizing its written form rather than sounding out words. Context is important, and images are often used to assist with decoding.

Like many aspects of education, the way we teach emerging literacy has begun to change rapidly in recent years. As always, Collingwood continues to innovate, blending different pedagogical approaches to create a unique literacy program that is designed to open young minds to rich literature and big ideas.

The Five Pillars of Early Literacy

Increasingly, research in cognitive psychology, linguistics and neuroscience is suggesting there is a benefit to the explicit and direct teaching of skills (both phonics and otherwise) for learning how to read that emphasizes building words from their parts.

Often referred to as the “science of reading,” the phonics approach to teaching reading is broken out into what educators refer to as the five pillars of early literacy.

1. The first pillar is phonemic awareness, which is the ability to identify, manipulate and distinguish individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. To develop phonemic awareness, early readers need to learn that words are made from separate sounds so they can hear, blend, segment and manipulate these sounds.
2. The second pillar is phonics, which describes the relationship between letters and sounds in language. Phonics involves learning how letters represent sounds and using that knowledge to decode written words during reading and encode words during writing.
3. The third pillar is fluency, which is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with proper expression. It involves the development of automaticity in word recognition, comprehension and intonation.
4. The fourth pillar is vocabulary, or the collection of words students use to communicate effectively through reading and writing. Vocabulary includes understanding the meaning of words and how their meaning transforms in various contexts.
5. The fifth pillar is comprehension, which is the ability to understand and make meaning from what is being read. Comprehension requires background knowledge, decoding skills, vocabulary, and critical thinking strategies to construct meaning from text.

Along with the five pillars, Collingwood also values the nurturing of both cognitive and self-efficacy skills. This is the social and emotional side of literacy learning that involves well-being and motivation.

A New Role: Literacy Growth Coach

With so much evolving in this area of literacy learning, Wentworth leadership identified language arts as an area that would benefit from additional support, which led them to a transformational question:

What if there was someone whose role would be to focus on literacy growth across multiple grade levels and lead the way with their unique expertise, helping to guide and coach teachers?

The ideal candidate for the newly created role of Literacy Growth Coach was soon identified in Laura Scobie, a longtime Collingwood kindergarten teacher specializing in early literacy. Laura’s starting point for her new role was the belief that teacher differences are a tremendous strength to be leveraged in peer-to-peer learning and support. She focused on further developing relationships in order to provide coaching and support curriculum, resources, assistance and anything else teachers thought might help teach reading.

While coordination between same-grade teachers occurs naturally at Collingwood, Laura believes there is a benefit to coordinating literacy learning between teachers vertically through the grades.

“With literacy learning, we need to be so careful about mapping out the student’s learning journey,” said Laura. “Along the way, we really need to know if something doesn’t land for some reason. The curriculum is essentially a spiral, with concepts building and being reinforced.”

“The Literacy Growth Coach position is an exciting and pivotal new role that will drive the advancement of our literacy program. Laura Scobie is an exceptional mentor and experienced classroom teacher who brings the ideal combination of expertise, leadership and warmth to support our educators and elevate our already strong program.”

Lisa Bombini, Gr. 5 Homeroom Teacher and English Language Arts Learning Leader

Collaboration With the ELA Learning Leader

One of the unique aspects of the role is coordinating and working closely with the ELA learning leader at Wentworth.

“In the past, we sort of learned it by doing — not with explicit instruction about how to teach phonics or vocabulary,” said Lisa Bombini, ELA Learning for Gr. 4–7 at Wentworth. “Now we share our thoughts and ideas with Laura, who can build on them, take them into classrooms, team teach, model and help teachers learn how to evolve the way they teach literacy.”

Professional Development: Bringing in a Reading Expert

One exciting professional development opportunity Laura identified was the potential to bring in a reading instruction specialist. Enter Heather Willms. Heather is a “reading teacher expert” and author who often works as a reading consultant and coach for schools and teachers who are moving toward reading instruction that is aligned with the Science of Reading.

She is a proponent of explicit and direct teaching of early phonetic skills, the five pillars of reading, and a great source for practical ways to introduce these concepts into the classroom. She first visited Wentworth in August to host a workshop for teachers that focused on how to bring the Science of Reading to life in elementary classrooms.

Heather once again visited Wentworth in February to teach “demo lessons” in Gr. 1, 2, 4 and 6 for educators to observe. Also included were teacher learning sessions at lunch and after school.

“We’re not just talking about decoding in these sessions,” said Laura. “We’re really digging into the science of reading to understand how we can improve the way our students are developing their phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.”

Heather is a BC-based reading intervention teacher, author and university instructor. Her work includes mentoring, modelling and building resources and intervention programming that support elementary teachers and students. She is a sought-after presenter who also works as a reading consultant and coach for districts, schools and teachers who are developing instructional approaches that are aligned with the Science of Reading.

This story is featured in the Spring 2025 edition of Bridge Magazine.

See the full issue here.