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Learning and development areas

Literacy and phonics in kindergarten

The purpose of these resources is to provide teachers with information and strategies to support literacy and phonics learning in kindergarten.

Suggested time: 30 minutes

The resources include:

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Interview

Stacey Campbell
Macquarie University

When we’re looking at research at phonics in the kindergarten years, we look at it from, I guess, a more holistic approach. That is, not phonics as a standalone, we look at it as phonics embedded through a whole literacy program, because to learn literacy it’s not just one skill that they have to develop. They'll — there’s a whole range of literacy knowledge and skills that children need to have. Research in kindergartens specifically in the area of literacy, tells us that children learn best through play-based interactions with other adults and other children. More specifically, the development of oral language, the development of phonemic awareness — which is the awareness of sounds — and shared interactions. And by early childhood educators scaffolding children’s conversations through shared turn-taking.

Teaching scenario

Adult

Okay, so if you’re going to bring the robots over, you’ll need to ask the controllers to read the signs. Do you know what the signs are saying?

Child

No.

Child

Yes.

Adult

The signs are telling the people to stay behind the fence, while the treasure is going up and down.

Interview

Stacey Campbell

We use the guidelines, both the Early Years Learning Framework and the Queensland kindergarten learning guidelines, to introduce letters and sounds, but again in a play-based way or through what we call intentional teaching. In the kindergarten years, children are often motivated to explore and experiment with letters, but these are specifically letters in their own name. A lot of research says that in the kindergarten years, starting off and introducing letters and sounds around the child’s name or their peer's name or their family’s name, is probably the best way to introduce phonics with children aged three to five.

I think it’s really important that educators actually select materials to teach phonics that actually can be used in multiple ways. They don’t have to be expensive, you can use things like magnetic alphabet Literacy and phonics in kindergarten Literacy and phonics in kindergarten Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority July 2014 Page 2 of 2 letters and you can actually use this in a variety of ways. You can actually include it into some of the other activities in the learning environments, into block corner, you can use it in a writing area, you can use it in a small group time individually with children to explore letters and sounds, in a play-based way.

The one message that I think is really important for early childhood educators in the kindergarten year i that it is okay to teach about the alphabet, is it okay to talk about sounds, it is okay to talk about letters, but it needs to be really meaningful to the children.

See also

Last updated:
30 November 2023

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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