MiniLit stands for ‘Meeting Initial Needs In Literacy’ and is an early literacy intervention program. It is designed to be delivered daily to small groups of up to four students who have struggled to make adequate progress in learning to read during their first year of schooling.
Who created MiniLit?
Led by Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall AM – MiniLit is the product of an ongoing program of research and development carried out by a specialist team of academic researchers and special educators.
How will it be implemented?
MiniLit will be delivered 4 times per week, for approximately 45 minutes per lesson by our Education Assistants.
What is included in the program?
MiniLit consists of 80 carefully structured lessons, divided into two levels with 40 lessons each:
- Level 1: Teaching the basics of letter/sound knowledge and decoding skills
- Level 2: Extending word attack knowledge
A placement test is used to identify the recommended starting point for each student, with criteria provided for grouping students.
Each lesson comprises three main components:
- Sounds and Words Activities
- Text Reading
- Story Book Reading
The program includes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. The main activities in phonemic awareness relate to learning to blend and segment once students are familiar with some letter-sound relationships.