In this episode, Jay talks to Camilla Ochipinti (OKA-PINTI) who is Director of Education at Decodable Readers Australia. Camilla trains teachers from around the world on the Science of Reading and her company, Decodable Readers Australia, bridges the gap between evidence based research and quality teaching practices.

The focus of this episode is “the reading wars” - an ongoing debate about how best to teach children to read.

Fighting the “reading wars” are two opposing camps, one called 'whole word or balanced literacy' and the other called 'phonics'. The battle between these two reading approaches has been raging in our schools for decades. In Australia, the national curriculum has finally given precedence to phonics; the phonics approach to reading has won the battle of the teaching strategies.

Jay and Camilla also discuss some of the history of the reading wars, define balanced literacy and the whole word approach, discuss why they are ineffective, and then deep dive into the science of phonics in an interesting and approachable way.

This is a great discussion if you are a primary school teacher, an English language teacher or a parent who wants to know how best to teach reading - one of the most essential life skills you can develop.

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