PhOrMeS Lead Author
Shane Pearson
Shane is a speech language pathologist who leads Brandon Park Primary School’s whole-school literacy program and literacy intervention team. His specialty within speech language pathology is in the field of language and literacy difficulties including dyslexia and oral and written language difficulties. Having worked at two schools at a curriculum level, Shane has a keen interest in evidence-based teaching and remediation of decoding, spelling, reading comprehension and written expression difficulties.
Shane has a passion for assisting all children to become highly literate members of society. It is his strong belief that schools must be equipped to successfully teach all children to learn to read and write proficiently regardless of their background, aptitude or circumstance. This belief, along with the struggles he observed many children facing in learning to become literate, drove him to begin making free, evidence-informed resources for intervention and classroom practice. Many years later, with endless refinement, feedback and real-world, classroom experience, this has culminated in PhOrMeS.
Why has PhOrMeS been created?
PhOrMeS has been created in order to provide schools with high-quality literacy curriculum materials that cover decoding, spelling and vocabulary. It also provides early explicit handwriting, phonemic awareness and morphology materials. PhOrMeS has been constructed so that teachers and schools can implement evidence-aligned literacy instruction with a minimum of preparation for free.
Standing for PHonology, ORthography, Morphology, etymology and Semantics, PhOrMeS is not, simply, a phonics program. While it utilises systematic, synthetic phonics to teach early decoding and spelling, it aims to teach children proficiency in many areas of our deep, challenging and beautiful English language. The ability to comprehend, evaluate and analyse what we read, and write an array of genres for a plethora of audiences is part of the end goal of literacy learning. PhOrMeS is designed to give children the building blocks they need to achieve these critical skills.
Literacy is for all.
PhOrMeS will always be free to download & use!