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Eight years of early years success: Tregeagle Public School’s journey with Sound Waves
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Eight years of early years success: Tregeagle Public School’s journey with Sound Waves
Sound Waves Literacy 10/12/25
Nestled in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Tregeagle Public School is a vibrant learning community committed to delivering strong literacy outcomes from the first years of schooling. For almost a decade, Tregeagle Public School has been using Sound Waves, and Kindergarten teacher Natasha Guthrie says the program continues to make a clear difference in how students learn to read, spell and write. With more than 20 years’ experience in early years education, Natasha has seen many teaching approaches come and go — but Sound Waves has proven to be a lasting success.
Embracing the new Sound Waves Foundation program
Having successfully used Sound Waves Foundation resources for many years, Natasha has fully embraced the recent updates to the Foundation program, noting that its greatest strength lies in its clear and logical structure.
This new yearly plan ensures students are up and running with reading and spelling as soon as possible and allows more room for assessment, catch-up and remediation.
‘I’ve really appreciated the change in scope … I had been modifying the program to follow this structure for several years, so it’s fantastic to see it now embedded and much easier to use.’ Natasha also highlights the addition of sentence writing and the inclusion of Special Words, now conveniently located in the Student Book, as another valuable improvement.
While students were already experiencing success with the previous Sound Waves Foundation program, Natasha has noticed that the new structure has further helped both teaching and learning. ‘Planning has become much more streamlined and efficient.’
Authentic reading experiences
When it comes to engaging students, the Sound Waves Decodable Readers have proven to be a standout success.
‘The decodable readers have been a real game changer,’ she says. ‘They read much more like authentic texts, rather than the tongue-twister style stories often found in other programs. I also love the inclusion of support, core and extended levels, which make differentiation seamless and effective.’
That sense of authenticity, she believes, is key to student engagement. ‘I really appreciate the authentic ‘real book, real story’ feel of the content — it’s meaningful and makes sense to the students.’
Classroom engagement
Natasha notes that students are particularly engaged during the phoneme–grapheme relationship and reading lessons, which offer rich, hands-on learning experiences. She values how the Sound Waves resources give her everything she needs while allowing the flexibility to adapt lessons to suit her teaching style.
‘I prefer not to teach directly from the interactive whiteboard, so students use their own whiteboards to segment and write words that I present orally, using the word lists for each focus sound,’ she explains.
Overall, Tregeagle’s Kindergarten students are thriving with the Sound Waves approach. ‘It’s fantastic to see the refinements I’d been making for years now built into the program itself. It’s made teaching literacy simpler, more effective and more enjoyable for both teachers and students.’
If you’re interested to learn how Sound Waves can work for your school, head to our website to sign up for a free trial, book a free professional learning workshop for your school or contact your local Education Consultant.