SALLEY has a number of unique characteristics that will enable Early Years Practitioners to:

• meet the requirements of the Foundation Stage Curriculum in a practical, effective and enjoyable way
• offer children the “menu” of opportunities identified by Professor Rose (2006)
• provide training in “core” skills, which are essential for any kind of learning

SALLEY ticks all the boxes.

Its is for these reasons, as well as the comprehensive research behind SALLEY  that SALLEY programme  has been adopted by so many LEAs, schools and nurseries.  Now with the statutory demands in the Early Years Foundation framework it is even more important that children and practitioners have a programme like SALLEY which is structured and has direction, but which is fun and is in no way onerous or oppressive.
 

SALLEY has a unique role to play in facilitating the development of phonological awareness. When SALLEY was first developed, we believed that phonological awareness had a key role to play in the acquisition of literacy. Over the last few years there has been a large body of research that indeed shows that children need to be able to understand that “spoken language is made up of discrete sounds” and that this is “a crucial factor in children learning to read” (Sensenbaugh 1996).
 

In fact, phonological awareness is now acknowledged as “an important variable in reading and spelling acquisition” (Moriarty and Gillon 2006).  Children who “approach literacy acquisition with poor phonological awareness are likely to struggle in early word recognition and decoding tasks” (Moriarty and Gillon 2006).  Furthermore, children who begin literacy learning without being able to use phonological information for decoding, are likely to have persistent, long term reading difficulties.
 

 Indeed, in 2007, the Department for Education and skills launched “Letters and sounds” which forms part of the new Primary Strategy. Here the development of phonic skills is placed centrally in the Simple model of reading. However in order to develop “principled” (Edwards and Mercer 1998) phonic knowledge, children must have a strong understanding of phonological awareness. SALLEY ensures that most children have this before they begin a phonics programme in their reception year.
 

Within the Early Years Foundation Stage, children have to be able to discriminate sounds, develop their auditory memory and sequencing skills and be able to talk about sounds. Salley develops these skills, and more, through its systematic, highly structured and multi-sensory learning programme. It ensures that all the key areas of knowledge, understanding and skills are covered and frequently revisited to enable practitioners to be confident that children have the skills they need to move forward.
 

SALLEY also covers, in depth, the primary sounds needed to decode CV, CVC, VC, CCVC and CVCC words – whether real or nonsense - ensuring that children have a strong focus on the structure of words and that they can decode speedily.
 

Within “Letters and sounds” this is typically introduced during the reception year. However our research has shown that children are more than ready to learn these skills during their time in nursery, as part of the 100 day SALLEY programme. This then means that when they go on to Primary school they have all the skills and much more, which will ensure that learning is successful. We have found this to be particularly critical for the child who needs more repetition and for whom, devoting only six weeks to developing these core skills is not enough.
 

Children who have experienced SALLEY can already achieve most of the outcomes for phase two. Therefore, time can be used more effectively by the practitioner, in differentiating learning. Differentiation is a central to SALLEY and this begins right at the beginning of the programme. Thus children can progress at their own pace within a group teaching situation because of this unique approach.
 

Ballem and Plunkett (2005) found that children as young as 14 months could engage in some phonological awareness tasks. SALLEY is finely graded to follow the normal developmental sequence, thereby allowing children of three to be more than ready to benefit from  the programme and, in fact, we have had some staggering success with children 2;6 – 3;0, which is discussed further n the handbook.
 

SALLEY ensures that children have achieved all the “core learning” (Primary Framework 2007) skills for the development of phonics by the end of the programme. This allows the teacher to focus on revision and consolidation of these areas and enables the focus to be placed more on comprehension. Thus reading outcomes have the potential to be significantly greater for SALLEY children by the end of the Early Years Foundation stage( 2007).  SALLEY enables the teacher to focus more on writing the sounds and learning the high frequency words.
 

Using SALLEY during the Reception year.

When the teacher is faced with children from diverse backgrounds and mixed learning experiences and skill sets, SALLEY can be used very effectively during the reception year. In our experience, many schools have chosen to do this to ensure that children go into year one with a solid foundation of phonological awareness skills.
 

If SALLEY is used during the reception year, all the phonic aspects are covered via  the structured.  Teachers’ time is freed-up as the lesson plans are very detailed, leaving more staff  time to focus on writing and non-phonically decodable high frequency words.
 

Phonological awareness
This is much more than just phonics.
There are a number of definitions but phonological awareness comprises a complex set of skills, which SALLEY teaches step by step.
 

How does SALLEY meets the criteria for teaching high quality phonics as defined by the Department for Education and Skills (2007).
 

• SALLEY enables children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills systematically before the end of nursery – raising expectations of learning progress within the primary reception year.
• Designed for the teaching of discrete, daily sessions progressing from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills and covering the major grapheme phoneme correspondences. SALLEY is delivered in 20 minute sessions on a daily basis.
• Progress is monitored on a daily basis and teaching is highly differentiated, ensuring that all children make progress and fulfil their potential.
• SALLEY uses a multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills – SALLEY also uses the proprioceptive sense which opens the programme up to meet the learning style of more children.
• Demonstrate that phonemes should be blended, in order, from left to right, 'all through the word' for reading  - SALLEY also does a lot of work on auditory memory and sequencing which has been shown to influence later reading success greatly. This is also a skill that has cross curricular benefits.
• SALLEY demonstrates how words can be segmented into their constituent phonemes for spelling and that this is the reverse of blending phonemes to read words.
• SALLEY ensures children apply phonic knowledge and skills as their first approach to reading and spelling even if a word is not completely phonically regular – SALLEY even works on nonsense words so that children are totally reliant on their phonological awareness skills. Research has shown this to be a key differentiating factor between poor and confident readers and in fact is a persistent problem with older poor readers. SALLEY ensures that young children have these skill before they move on, ensuring that subsequent teaching is building on a sound foundation
• We can say with confidence that SALLEY meets the learning outcomes that children need to achieve (Letters and sounds 2007)
• Grapheme/phoneme (letter/ sound) correspondences ( the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence
• To apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes, in order, all through a word to read it
• To apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell;
• Blending and segmenting are reversible processes
   

It also teaches children broader phonological awareness skills, which they need further on in the phased approach, including the underlying concepts to allow them to understand what they are doing when they are reading, to talk about their own strategies when looking at a word and to become reflective and insightful learners at a very young age. 

Angela Hurd & Diana McQueen
2008