The Essential Literacy Approach was born out of the need for the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) to have its own core curriculum and product.

The DAS has used the Orton-Gillingham (O-G) Approach and the Language Tool Kit for a long time and through years of experience, listening to the DAS Educational Therapists and feedback and recommendations from other O-G practitioners (e.g. Fellows from the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners & Educators; AOGPE), a trio of lecturers were inspired and assigned to create something that the DAS could call their own and that was better tailored to the needs of Singaporean students in  the multilingual classroom.

After a year of hard work, the team delivered the ELA Kit. Much like a tool box, the Kit contains four useful and important elements – the ELA Manual, ELA DVD, ELA Deck and ELA Picture Deck, comes together to provide for educators a means to conduct remediation students with Specific Learning Differences (SpLD).

The ELA Manual: A guidebook for educators that contains the ELA Scope & Sequence, ELA Phonetic Generalizations, lesson planning guidelines (Rationale, Lesson Planning Template, ELA Phonics Checklist, ELA Programme Plan), sample lesson plan and worksheets (linked to the demo video in the DVD), phonogram word lists, sight word lists, procedure guidelines and more.

The manual is a user-friendly collection of information and instructions that will aid both the greenhorn and experienced educator in planning a holistic lesson for their students.

ELA DVD: A collection of videos that consist of –

(a)  Vocalization of letter names, keyword and sounds, segmented into key concepts of the ELA Scope & Sequence (e.g. basic phonograms or vowel teams),

(b)  Demonstration of an ELA lesson (completed sample lesson plan & worksheets are found in the manual), and

(c)  Correction procedures. This allows for practitioners to have a ‘live’ point of reference if they need to review or reinforce any concept or procedure.

ELA Picture Deck: For younger children or students who are new to phonics, the picture deck has a large, coloured picture on each card that acts as a visual cue (pictorial representation of the keyword) to aid in the retrieval of the sound of the target phonogram (e.g. [u] à umbrella à /u/). These visuals are the same ones that appear on the back of the ELA Deck to ensure structure and consistency.

Some participants who attended the first ever run of the ELA Course in November 2010 had this to say of the ELA Kit when asked how useful the Kit would be in their line of work:

“Literacy decks will be utilised heavily during lessons with children. Each card is a reference tool in itself as teachers are able to ‘brush up’ or recap their knowledge of phonemic rules etc by using them. [The] manual doubles up as an excellent reference source and will act as a ‘bible’, especially during the initial formative periods when carrying out lessons.”
– M.Toh, Primary School Teacher

“I referred to the kit recently to refresh my memory and it did help. I also feel the word lists are extremely useful for us.”
– G. Nair, Allied Educator

“The handbook as reference is fantastic – handy, easy reference and glossary are really helpful; picture and adult card decks too.”
– C. Wong, DAS staff

The team behind the ELA Kit is constantly looking at ways to continuously improve the Kit and its additional resources through research and feedback gathered, so as to ensure that the content is kept relevant and current.

We are proud to announce the recent release of the ELA Morpheme Deck, which consists of over 180 morpheme cards containing Prefixes, Suffixes, Latin Roots (Lower & Upper), and Greek Combining Forms. This new deck is part of the course material for ELA (Advanced) and can be separately purchased as an add on to the ELA Kit.

Works in progress include an additional word list with words extracted from Singapore mainstream school English textbooks, which will be more aligned to our students’ needs.

Interested candidates can register to enroll on the ELA course (now known as the Certificate in Dyslexia and Literacy Teaching).

The ELA Kit is given to all participants who join the course and clear links will be made between the Kit and the lecture content.

If you are only interested to purchase the Kit as a resource for personal use, this is also available at $268. Click here to purchase.