Effective Phonics Instruction for Learners with Disabilities: Lessons from Lake Colac School

It was wonderful to welcome Charlotte Peverett to Spellcaster's Implementing The Science of Learning speaker series. Working as an inclusion outreach coach and leading teacher, Charlotte has driven structured literacy adoption at Lake Colac School, a special education school located in south-west Victoria serving around 60 students with disabilities.

Charlotte's message was clear: students with disabilities can learn to read and write when taught using evidence-based practices – we just need to teach them the right way.

Lake Colac School's implementation has driven significant improvements in student outcomes and wellbeing, which is borne out in the data. Before implementing structured literacy at her school, more than 75% of students were working at the lowest Victorian curriculum levels (A-D). By the end of 2023, after implementing structured literacy, this had dropped to less than 25%.

Equally important were the changes in student wellbeing and engagement. Charlotte shared how their structured literacy approach has created the most calm and settled part of their school day, with behavioral incidents reduced and student confidence growing.

Understanding the Reading Journey

Charlotte began by highlighting Linnea Ehri's four phases of word reading and spelling development, emphasizing how important this framework is for understanding literacy development in students with disabilities:

• Pre-alphabetic Phase: Students recognize words by visual features without connecting letters to sounds
• Partial Alphabetic Phase: Students begin connecting some letters to sounds, often focusing on first and last letters
• Full Alphabetic Phase: Students form complete connections between letters and sounds, processing words as individual phonemes
• Consolidated Alphabetic Phase: Students recognize syllable patterns and use this knowledge to decode longer words

A key insight from Charlotte's experience is that movement through these phases takes time for students with disabilities – sometimes years. But this doesn't mean they can't progress. As Charlotte emphasized, "Just because they're in one phase for a while doesn't mean they're not going to get out of it."

Charlotte also stressed the importance of a whole-school phonics program. Unlike some schools that only implement structured phonics from Prep to Grade 2 (roughly 5-8 years old), Lake Colac School recognizes that students with disabilities may need this explicit instruction throughout their schooling – even into their teenage years. As such, Lake Colac's structured literacy program continues until learners are around 15 or 16 years old.

Structuring the Program

Lake Colac School has implemented a highly structured approach to literacy instruction, with clearly defined components:

Pre-Alphabetic Stage

For students not yet ready for formal phonics instruction, the focus is on engagement and building interest. They use:

• Sound boxes with multi-sensory activities (Play-Doh for making letters, rice trays, shaving cream)
• Initial sounds activities with pictures
• Mnemonics to help students attribute sounds to letters

Students remain in this stage until they can write the first eight sounds and demonstrate engagement with the learning. The goal isn't to teach all letter-sound relationships here but to prepare students for the structured literacy program.

Daily Structured Literacy Lessons

Lake Colac School runs phonics across nine classrooms for 45 minutes, four days a week. With approximately 60 students accessing the program, they use a streaming approach to ensure instruction matches student needs. This is the only time students are streamed across the school, as the discrete nature of phonics skills makes mixed-ability teaching challenging.

A typical 45-minute lesson includes:

• Daily review of all sounds
• Phonemic manipulation activities (crucial for orthographic mapping)
• Handwriting practice
• Target sound instruction
• Dictation
• Reading decodable texts
• Games (if time permits)

Charlotte emphasized that this structure provides both consistency and variety, keeping students engaged while building essential skills.

Key Components for Success

Extensive Practice and Repetition

Charlotte repeatedly emphasized the necessity of "practice, repetition, practice, repetition, practice, repetition." For students with disabilities, this consistent practice is essential. As she noted, "Some of our students are still in stage one after two, three years, and we keep them there." The focus is not on pushing students through stages at a predetermined pace but on ensuring they build solid skills.

Phonemic Manipulation

Charlotte highlighted phonemic manipulation as a critical component for orthographic mapping. Charlotte's team makes regular use of word-chaining/sound swapping activities, where students remove one sound at a time to create new words, to support this. This helps students understand how changing individual sounds changes both the word and its meaning.

Students practice this using printed materials and magnetic letters, bringing down each sound as they segment words. This approach enables multiple repetitions per word as students segment, blend, and write.

Visual Supports

For students with low oral language skills or more complex disabilities, visual scaffolds are essential. Charlotte described these as "your saving grace," noting that they use picture cards alongside words to support meaning. This allows students to demonstrate their knowledge even if they struggle with speech.

Handwriting Practice

Lake Colac School incorporates daily handwriting practice to build muscle memory. They use tracing to reduce cognitive load and initially focus on legibility rather than perfection. Charlotte noted that their students' handwriting has become much more legible since implementing this approach.

Assessment Approaches

Charlotte's school takes a different approach to assessment, focusing on:

• Spelling over reading assessment: Spelling assessments provide clearer data on phonics knowledge and are more accessible for students with language difficulties.
• Observation over formal testing: Teachers take photos of whiteboard work and observe reading in authentic contexts rather than relying heavily on formal assessments.
• Writing assessments each term: These track progress in applying literacy skills to composition.
• Delayed introduction of reading age assessments: The school waited 3-4 years into their structured literacy journey before introducing reading age assessments to avoid setting students up for failure.

Results and Impact

The impact of this structured approach extends beyond academic gains. Charlotte shared how students are now attempting to read environmental print, stopping to read signs when out in the community, and showing confidence in their abilities.

Perhaps most striking is Charlotte's observation about student wellbeing: "Our students are so much happier. Our parents have said that even if they aren't reading a lot, the fact that they're reading a little bit is huge."

Charlotte also addressed a common misconception about IQ being a predictor of reading success. Drawing on her school's experience with students with IQs below 70, she emphasized: "There is no pattern to it. There is no rhyme or reason to it. There is nothing that we have been able to identify as a precursor... We just have to teach it."

Practical Implementation Tips

For educators looking to implement similar approaches, Charlotte offered several practical suggestions:

• Start with a whole-school approach to ensure consistency across classes
• Use visual supports extensively, especially for students with low language skills
• Incorporate mnemonics to help students remember letter-sound relationships
• Focus on spelling as an entry point for assessment and instruction
• Be patient and prepared for progress to happen in unpredictable ways
• Maintain high expectations - all students can learn with the right instruction

The message throughout was clear: structured literacy works for students with disabilities when implemented systematically and maintained persistently over time. Progress may not always be linear, but with consistent, explicit instruction, students will learn.

As Charlotte summarized, "We know after doing this for so many years, our students move at their pace. It is not harmful for them. They enjoy the structures and routines of staying in phonics. And so we just keep going with them."