In this Episode, Dan interviews Camilla Occhipinti from The Literacy Collective to establish the most important foundations for lifelong literacy. Camilla explores some of the current issues with many current practices and gives easy to apply strategies you can utilise in your classroom to put smiles on your students faces when it comes to literacy. Early Years Literacy with Camilla Occhipinti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Join the Facebook CommunityAbout Camilla19 years as an early years educatorClassroom teacherPedagogy coachDeputyHead of PrimaryPassionate about empowering early years teachers Co-Founder of the Literacy CollectiveCo-Creator of the Literacy Collective ProgramLearn more about Camilla's Workshop in SydneyEpisode NotesWhat strategy do you see as most important for students in the early years of developing literacy?2 key componentsOral language - receptive and expressive languagePhonological awareness - skills, rhyme, alliteration, parts of wordsTalk is crucial in the process of developing literacyPhonemic awareness including the ability to manipulate, blend and segment sounds in words.Moving from sound to print, NOT print to sound!Linguistic phonics26 letters but 46 speech soundsWhy is this such a key strategy? How does it lead to lifelong learners?We often see a Year 3 backwards slide in reading because images are removed and prediction no longer worksSpeech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers by Louisa Moats is a fantastic resourcesSynthetic phonics is key to success. Students need to be able to take the parts of a word and put them back together.What can you do now in your classroom?SMILES - click the image for a copy of the SMILES pdfSystematic and synthetic phonics to create words earlier (teach it explicitly)Multi-sensory learning (3 or more senses at a time) proprioception, vestibular, tactile, auditory, visual, gustatory, and olfactory) Kinesthetic learning = whole body.Inclusion of oral language - explicit teaching of how to produce sentences, grammatical forms and syntaxLiteracy big 5 - Australian Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy by Ken Rowe  (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocab, comprehension and fluency)Explicit teachingSound to print rather than print to soundLearn more about Camilla's Workshop in SydneyClick here to download your SMILES fact sheet