BC ELA Foundational Learning Progressions
A Professional Learning Series for all BC Educators
New Free Course for BC Educators: BC ELA Foundational Learning Progressions
As part of the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care’s K–12 Literacy Supports Initiatives, a free online course for all BC educators is in development. It’s expected to launch in late spring 2027. BC ELA Foundational Learning Progressions: A Professional Learning Series for All BC Educators will help K–12 educators understand and apply the BC English Language Arts Foundational Learning Progressions in a wide range of settings. The series is grounded in high-quality evidence about learning and literacy. It aims to bridge research and practice, and to promote culturally responsive, inclusive approaches that support literacy development for all students.
Who is this course for?
Literacy matters across every subject and grade, so this series is for all educators, in the broadest sense. This includes:
- Classroom and specialist teachers
- Education assistants
- Indigenous support workers
- School and district administrators
- Speech-language pathologists
- School psychologists
- Occupational therapists
- Physical therapists
- Others who work with students in K–12 schools
The series could also be built into pre-service and graduate teacher education courses at BC post-secondary institutions.
What’s included?
The course has seven modules and takes about 10 to 14 hours to complete, depending on your prior knowledge and the pathway you choose.
Modules
- Understanding the Progressions: Key Concepts and Frameworks
- Oral Language as the Foundation of Literacy
- Word-Level Reading and Spelling (Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Morphology)
- Fluency Development
- Comprehension Development
- Writing Development
- Putting It All Together: Integrating the Progressions into Literacy Planning
Each module includes
- Core learning: content and examples tailored to primary, intermediate, and secondary settings
- Collaborative pathway: for school teams, PLCs, or learning groups
- Self-paced pathway: for individual educators
- Application tasks: designed to lead to real changes in practice
- Videos: practice and exemplar videos from schools and classrooms across BC
Meet the Team
Melanie Raymond, MEd, L. Sch. Psych., Project Lead
Melanie is a Senior Instructor in the School of Education at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), where she teaches pre-service elementary teachers in the Regional Teacher Education Program and courses in the Master of Education in Inclusive Education program. Her teaching centres on inclusive, equitable, culturally responsive, evidence-informed, and relationship-focused practice.
Melanie earned her MEd in School and Applied Psychology from the University of Calgary in 2012 and is licensed by the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC. She has since provided school psychology services in public, independent, and First Nations schools across northern and interior BC. Before that, she spent more than ten years as a classroom and inclusive education teacher. She also holds a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Special Education (UBC) and a BA from Simon Fraser University, and has been a certified BC teacher since 1999.
Melanie has provided professional development on literacy, multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and learning science across BC, and has collaborated with POPARD, POPFASD, and Dyslexia Canada.
Dr. Andrea Fraser, PhD, Co-Developer
Andrea is an Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Saskatchewan. She teaches literacy methods courses that prepare pre-service teachers to teach reading, and has led extensive professional development to build teacher and administrator knowledge in this area.
Andrea has worked in K–12 education for more than 20 years as a classroom teacher, interventionist, curriculum consultant, and coordinator of learning supports. She holds a post-degree certificate in Special Education from the University of Saskatchewan and a Reading Specialist Additional Qualification from Queen’s University. She is also a Certified Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher through the International Dyslexia Association’s Center for Effective Reading Instruction, and has Orton-Gillingham (OG) classroom educator training.
A strong advocate for instruction that supports every student’s reading development, Andrea collaborates with Dyslexia Canada on several projects. Her research interests include reading acquisition and development, reader identity, pre-service and in-service teacher knowledge and beliefs, and literacy pedagogy.
