Structured Literacy in New Zealand Schools: Support for Teachers

New Zealand's reading performance has been stuck in neutral, with fewer high achievers now than two decades ago – and it's time for a change.

The refreshed Te Mātaiaho | The New Zealand English Curriculum Years 0–6 is stepping up to the challenge, bringing evidence-based literacy practices, such as structured literacy, into classrooms nationwide.  

In Phase 1, the reading curriculum prioritises systematic, explicit instruction to equip students with foundational skills while nurturing a passion for reading. 

Curriculum updates naturally mean new challenges for educators, from adjusting teaching practices to meeting updated standards. But these changes are more than just another item on teachers’ to-do list – they're a chance to breathe new life into literacy instruction and better support student learning.  

In this article, we’ll break down what’s ahead and offer actionable strategies to help New Zealand teachers navigate this shift with confidence.

The power of Explicit Teaching in Te Mātaiaho | The New Zealand English Curriculum

Te Mātaiaho | The New Zealand English Curriculum Years 0–6 emphasises the current research and evidence on how students learn and which teaching strategies are the most effective. At the centre of the model is explicit teaching, where new concepts, skills or knowledge are explained clearly and directly.  

Skills are taught in a logical sequence, with each lesson building on prior knowledge and reinforcing concepts through repeated practice. Opportunities to review learning are woven throughout each lesson, using interleaved practice and end-of-lesson quizzes. 

Research shows that this kind of explicit teaching is highly effective in helping all students, especially struggling readers, achieve reading success. 

Systematic Synthetic Phonics: a deep dive into effective reading instruction  

With the new curriculum, the Ministry of Education is focused on evidence-based practice and recommends explicit and systematic instruction. In teaching reading, the research supports systematic synthetic phonics programs based on decades of research in Australia, Great Britain and the United States.  

To help students become strong and independent readers, a systematic synthetic phonics program must have a carefully mapped scope and sequence.  

The systematic sequence must be explicit and logical, starting with simple and progressing to more complex phonics knowledge and skills.  

The synthetic part means children are taught to "synthesise", or blend, individual sounds (phonemes) to form words.  

In practice, systematic synthetic phonics means that students start with learning letter sounds and blending them into words. They are also taught to break down words and spell them, linking reading and writing. Decodable texts reinforce the letter-sound combinations, helping practise these skills. This approach builds fluency and confidence, enabling students to read words quickly and accurately. 

How Reading Eggs' Fast Phonics empowers New Zealand teachers in implementing Structured Literacy

Fast Phonics is a systematic synthetic phonics program included in the comprehensive Reading Eggs subscription. Like all Reading Eggs programs, it is aligned with the principles of the science of learning and anchored in the five pillars of reading success: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. 

Fast Phonics contains 20 peaks and supports a structured literacy approach to build foundational reading skills. Each Lesson Peak also includes practice in extended reading of decodable texts.  

The program focuses on phonemic awareness and phonics, enabling students to master the essential skills of blending and segmenting sounds through:  

• Explicit instruction followed by scaffolded activities, independent practice and instant feedback to consolidate learning and build automaticity.  

• A systematic scope and sequence designed to be cumulative, providing spaced practice and effectively enabling skill building.  

• Phonological awareness and phonics to teach students to spell. The process begins with splitting words into syllables and phonemes, followed by matching those sounds to letters. These spelling elements focus on phonology. By teaching words that follow the same rules taught for reading (the letter can make a /k/ sound), students are strengthening their cognitive pathways to understand these letter-sound correspondences. 

• Oral language, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension integrated into the peaks. 

• Teacher-developed ready-to-use resources with weekly teaching guides, sound maps, sound cards, tricky words instruction and hundreds of phonetically decodable books. 

BONUS: Unlock Fast Phonics' time-saving weekly planners 

Speaking of resources, Fast Phonics’ weekly planners offer step-by-step guides that take the stress out of lesson planning and help keep students on track. 

Divided into individual days, the weekly teaching guides set out:  

✓ week-by-week, day-by-day teaching and learning following the Fast Phonics program 

✓ learning objectives 

✓ revised and taught letter-sounds (Grapheme-Phoneme-Correspondences, GPCs) 

✓ high frequency words and decodable words 

✓ tricky words (and how to teach them)  

✓ online videos and activities 

✓ additional instructional support 

✓ alternative spellings and pronunciations relevant decodable books and fluency reading recording sheets 

✓ worksheets and assessments.