Kindergarten students in Ontario will be expected to learn phonics this year — and while many experts praise the move, they question whether all teachers are prepared for it.
The new curriculum replaces the one used since 2016. Notably, it includes explicit expectations that students will begin to learn phonics, which means learning the sounds that letters or letter combinations represent.
Students are now required to learn to write upper- and lower-case letters, identify the sounds in words, and use that knowledge to read and spell simple words.
These skills are crucial for learning to read, but the previous curriculum did not require them to be taught explicitly; instead, it emphasized learning through play.
For many, the new curriculum, which has both play and explicit instruction, is a welcome change.
“I think the curriculum document is great,” said Kristy Timmons, associate professor of early childhood education at Queen’s University.
Structured teaching
In 2022, the Ontario Human Rights Commission recommended Ontario change its Kindergarten curriculum to mandate “explicit” teaching about fundamental reading skills.
“Foundational word-reading skills have not been effectively targeted in Ontario’s education system,” the commission wrote in its Right to Read report.
Instead, the education system assumed students could learn to read by using pictures to figure out a word or by listening to people read.
Directly teaching literacy skills to students in early grades better reflects the science of how people learn to read, says Erin Panda, an associate professor at Brock University’s Child and Youth Studies department and co-director of Brock’s Developmental Neuroscience Lab.
Learning to read involves co-ordinating different parts of the brain, she says, and phonics helps those parts of the brain communicate with each other.
“All kids can learn to read if they’re given the right opportunity,” she said. “The earlier intervention happens [for struggling students], the more likely that they’re going to be able to pick it up quickly.”
Ontario’s Kindergarten curriculum is part of a growing trend to teach children to read in a more structured way, says Jeanne Sinclair, an assistant professor at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., who researches literacy development.
“We’re seeing this uptake from school boards across the country as they are embracing some of these new ideas, which are actually, in some cases, old ideas that are being reimagined for today,” she said.
The previous model of teaching literacy was well-intentioned, she says, noting many wanted to ensure that children were being taught in a caring environment that focused on students’ needs.
But that desire may have led to methods that hurt students in the long run, she says.
“You could call it a form of benign neglect,” she said. “It’s like saying, ‘Well, I care about you, but I don’t care enough about you to really believe that you can learn.’”
Teachers ‘left scrambling’
However, the new Kindergarten curriculum has prompted concerns that not all Ontario teachers are prepared to teach it.
Some teacher education programs discourage teaching phonics, says Sinclair, so many teachers have not learned how to teach it.
In a December statement, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, the union representing elementary school teachers, said teachers needed more time and training to understand how to teach the new curriculum.
“Without meaningful training and dedicated implementation supports, educators will be left scrambling,” union president David Mastin said in the statement.
In an email to Canadian Affairs, the union confirmed its position has not changed.
Diane Duff, director of private tutoring company The Reading School, says she has met many teachers who have questions about how to teach these skills.
“You have to understand reading to teach reading,” she said.
Panda, of Brock University, worries about teachers, including special education teachers, being “left to their own devices” and not having resources to help struggling readers.
If students’ reading needs are not addressed in earlier grades, they are more likely to develop learning disabilities later in school, she says.
Panda has researched the experiences of university students with learning disabilities. These students can be at a greater risk for developing mental health problems and struggling with low self-esteem, she says.
“If you’re always feeling like you’re not able to do something that everybody else is able to do … [and] you hear a lot of derogatory comments towards you that you start internalizing yourself …. that is then setting you up for a significant mental health challenge,” she said.
The Ministry of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how it is preparing teachers to teach the new curriculum.
‘Off their screens’
Some educators and parents are also worried the government’s emphasis on a “back-to-basics” approach could remove the emphasis on play from Kindergarten, says Timmons, of Queen’s University.
In her view, the new curriculum does not abandon play in the classroom, she says. Instead, it uses both play and explicit instruction to teach children to read.
“[Literacy education] can be structured, but it also very much can be playful,” she said, adding that the new curriculum is a “lovely integration” of play and instruction.
“Play is where we get to practise and consolidate some of the learning,” she said.
Duff, the reading tutor, says parents can also support their children by reading to them regularly and talking with them throughout the day.
“Teaching reading is not a simple task,” she said. “If parents really want to benefit their children, they’ll talk to them a lot. They’ll get them off their screens.”
