SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 83 (NORTH OKANAGAN-SHUSWAP)
Early Learning Phonics Program Showing Great Results

Kindergarten students at Carlin Elementary Middle School are proudly making trips around the school to show off their early writing skills!

What makes this particularly noteworthy is that this class has been part of an early learning project where a school team of educators are implementing an early learning phonics program developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI), and it is showing great results.

Teacher Margaret Paterson, Literacy Support Teacher Morgen MacDonald, and Early Childhood Educator Pauline Hartley, have been working all year with the students using the UFLI program. UFLI teaches students the foundational phonics skills necessary for proficient reading. It follows a carefully developed scope and sequence designed to ensure that students systematically acquire each skill needed and learn to apply each skill with automaticity and confidence. The program is designed to be used for core instruction in the primary grades or for intervention with struggling students in any grade.

At Carlin, the first step was to build the students' stamina and focus, including classroom routines, to use this program and to learn the letter sounds of the alphabet. This then allows students to read and write texts with increasing degrees of difficulty.