Yukon's First Nation School Board introducing new learn-to-read curriculum

The Yukon First Nation School Board is promising a shake-up in how students are taught to read at its 11 schools, starting this coming year.

"I think it's really important that everyone understands that our students deserve change now, that we don't have time to wait any longer to meet the needs of our students," said Melissa Flynn, the board's executive director.

"I think kids are very adaptable, and I think they're going to enjoy the change and the fun new methods and the new lessons that the teachers will be trained in."

Flynn has been an educator in the Yukon since 2008. She became a vice principal in 2017, and last year was appointed to her new role overseeing the new school board. She said she was very familiar with how literacy was being taught in classrooms and in one-on-one instruction and that it "really worried me, and worried many of us in the Yukon."

She points to two reports from the auditor general, in 2009 and 2019, that found Yukon's schools were not meeting the needs of many students, particularly First Nations and rural students, and that the Education department was not making much progress in addressing the issues.

The new school board made literacy a focus. Trustees were presented with the data about literacy rates in the Yukon, Flynn says, and an action plan.

"From all that information put together, it was a very easy decision to start looking at; how can we change the literacy programs in our schools to better meet the needs of our students?" Flynn said.

Science of reading

Megan Norris, the board's lead literacy coach, says the new approach is about "aligning with the science of reading."

That means a move away from so-called "balanced literacy" — the approach long favoured in most traditional classrooms — toward what's referred to as a "structured literacy" approach.

Introduced in the 1990s, balanced literacy uses what is known as the cueing system, where students are taught to look at the pictures in a book, look at the first letter of a word, or think about what word might make sense, before guessing what the word might be.

It is also centred on the idea that students who are surrounded by books, and who are read to, will become readers.

A structured approach to teaching literacy, by contrast, "means that we're directly teaching skills, that these skills build on each other, and that we work from simple to complex," Norris said.

"The structured literacy approach really emphasizes students sounding out words, and it emphasizes that we directly teach multiple skills — phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension."

Other jurisdictions are also making similar changes to how they teach reading to elementary school students, including New Brunswick this fall, and Ontario, where a landmark Right to Read Report from the Ontario Human Rights Commission recommended a dramatic overhaul of its literacy curriculum.

According to Norris, it's about using an approach that's been proven to work for more students. 

"Research is telling us that 95 percent of children can learn to read. When we use a structured literacy approach, this is casting the widest net. We are meeting the needs of those students. Balanced literacy approaches work for some, but statistically, not as much," she said.

"I feel very confident that we're going to see positive change with this."

The board says it will be training teachers this month, ahead of the start of the school year. Literacy coaches will later be travelling from school to school to offer support, and there will also be regular check-ins with the Centre for Literacy in Edmonton.

Approach 'helps nearly every single child in a classroom'

Kelsey Kerr, a speech-language pathologist in Whitehorse and president of the Yukon Speech Language Pathology and Audiology Association, supports the board's new approach.

She says her association has been petitioning Yukon's political leaders and advocating for changes to how reading is taught in all Yukon schools.

Yukon's Department of Education — which oversees all schools in the territory that aren't part of either the First Nation or francophone school boards — currently uses the B.C. school curriculum and says educators use a variety of instruction techniques in its schools.

It's also formed a working group of representatives from different groups and organizations, including Kerr, to look into literacy approaches and deliver recommendations. 

"What we have been noticing both in the private sector and in the public sector, [is] that a lot of our caseload is now starting to increase with the kind of kids that by the time they're in Grade 3, still aren't able to read," Kerr said.

"The research has shown that a structured approach actually helps nearly every single child in a classroom to be able to become a proficient reader." 

The balanced approach, by emphasizing things like contextual cues and guesswork, means "you're actually teaching them skills of poor readers, not strong readers," Kerr said.

She argues that the human brain is hardwired to learn language — but not necessarily to read.

"So that's why you need kind of these really like explicit instructions," she said.

Stephanie Hammond, executive director of the LDAY Centre for Learning, says that for some students, such as those with dyslexia, structured literacy instruction is not just a better option, but an essential one.

"It's really empowering for kids who are learning to read, especially for kids who need that really explicit road map into the really, you know, quirky world that can be the written English language," she said.

She said she's excited that the First Nation School Board is making the change in its schools. She says more and more educators seem to be looking for training and resources for a different approach to literacy.

Hammond also says it's not just about kids being able to learn to read. The way students experience reading instruction can affect their lives for years to come.

"Kids that are in Grade 4 and older and they're not able to read, they don't just see themselves as poor readers, they see themselves often more holistically, as you know, as bad learners, as people who aren't going to be successful in school — and then extrapolate that to life," she said.

"When you have kids who write a narrative of themselves that is someone who can't learn, it's heartbreaking."