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Sound Waves early years just got even better: Explore the latest updates

Sound Waves Literacy 2/10/24

After announcing a range of new and improved features earlier this year, we’ve added even more enhancements to ensure your Sound Waves early years lessons are engaging and pedagogically robust.

These improvements to Sound Waves Literacy will be ready for use in classrooms in 2025 and include printable activities for every Decodable Reader and an updated Foundation program. Let’s unpack these exciting updates in more detail.

Printable activities for every Foundation and Year 1 Decodable Reader

We’ve created a follow-on activity for every Decodable Reader in the program – that’s right, every Support, Core and Extended book has a printable activity.

These activities contain text and illustrations directly from the matching Decodable Reader. They’re an ideal post-reading activity, providing additional practice of the focus phoneme–grapheme relationship and any Special Words featured in the book. Teachers and students will enjoy the variety of activity types, including labelling, sequencing, match-ups, comprehension and writing, just to name a few!

See examples of the printable activities:
Sound Waves Foundation – focus graphemes ou, ow, as in cloud.
Support, Core, Extended

Sound Waves Year 1 – focus graphemes z, zz, s, as in zebra.
Support, Core, Extended

The printable activities that match the Term 4 Decodable Readers are available now, so you can log in and start using them in your lessons today. The activities for Terms 1–3 are underway and will be released in time for their use during 2025.

How to access the printable activities for each Decodable Reader:

1. Log in to your account and open Sound Waves Literacy Online.
2. Navigate to either Foundation or Year 1.
3. Select the relevant unit.
4. Open the Reading Practice & Activities module and select the relevant printable activity to print and distribute to students.

Updated Foundation program

Ready for use in classrooms in 2025, the Sound Waves Foundation program has undergone some important updates that will ensure students have a strong start to their literacy journey.

Students are introduced to graphemes sooner

We’ve reduced the time dedicated to oral-only phonemic awareness lessons and brought the teaching of graphemes forward to Term 1. This means students are ‘up and running’ with reading and spelling sooner.

Term 1, Weeks 1–5

The first five weeks of Foundation contain new phonemic awareness lessons* that introduce students to the 43 phonemes of Australian English and teach basic phonemic awareness skills (identifying initial, final and medial sounds, blending and segmenting). Research suggests that phonemic awareness is the most relevant area of phonological awareness for reading and spelling development. These lessons and activities involve oral-only phonemic awareness skills, which allows students to practise these skills before working with graphemes and adding the load of letter identification, naming and formation.

Term 1, Week 6 onwards

Phonics teaching begins in Week 6 of Term 1 and continues for the remainder of the year. Each week you teach two Phoneme–Grapheme Relationship lessons and two Focus Concept lessons (such as Special Words, morphology or sentence writing). Lessons include either modelled and shared reading or independent reading practice using the Decodable Readers. The weekly plan also includes time to review and consolidate learning.

View the updated Foundation Yearly Plan.

* Phonemic awareness continues to be taught alongside graphemes for the remainder of the year. Phonemic awareness games and activities, such as Focus Sound Searches and small-group games, are available at Sound Waves Literacy Online.

Updated Student Book

In addition to the consolidation activities for the Phoneme–Grapheme Relationship lessons, the Student Book now contains the activities for every Focus Concept lesson in the Foundation program.

Student activities for the Phoneme–Grapheme Relationship lessons are on the left-hand page and activities for the Focus Concept lessons (such as Special Words, morphology and sentence writing) are on the right-hand page.

This conveniently keeps all student work in one place and reduces the need to print activities (previously all Focus Concept lesson activities were only available as a printable worksheet).

We also took the opportunity to update some of the Focus Concept activities by adding more content, updating illustrations and converting the activities to colour to enhance student engagement.

View the updated Foundation Student Book sample pages.

More room for revision and assessment

The updated Foundation Yearly Plan gives more wriggle room for revision and assessment – a welcome bonus for every teacher! So whether you need to spend more time with students on remediation and support, fit in a school sports day or slot in time for other curriculum areas, there’s a little more breathing room in the Foundation program.

Want to learn more about the Sound Waves Literacy program as a whole? Explore the website and sign up for a free trial today.

If you’re already using Sound Waves Literacy Online, the updated Foundation program will be accessible from November when your school renews its access for 2025. In the meantime, you can also sign up for a free trial to explore a selection of units from the updated Foundation program.

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