As well as starving the NHS, Education has been starved by this government too.

FannyCornforth

Glorianny that’s exactly what I was up against as a Reading Teacher.
I was expected to deliver the Read Write Inc scheme to Y7 and 8 children who had been taught phonics since they were 4.
It drove me potty.
I pretty much refused to do it

I used RWI Fresh Start with Y7 & 8 children who breathed a big sigh of relief that reading suddenly made sense to them and made excellent progress.

Hard to eliminate the guessing habits, though.

Maizie hadn’t they been taught phonics prior to that?
All the children that I have taught have been taught phonics pretty much on a daily basis

FannyCornforth

Maizie hadn’t they been taught phonics prior to that?
All the children that I have taught have been taught phonics pretty much on a daily basis

They'd been taught by the NLS programmes, a smattering of phonics and emphasis on the dreadful Searchlights.

You can't mix rigorous systematic synthetic phonics with whole word methods.
Interesting that the director of the NLS was Reading Recovery trained...

I'm talking about the first decade of this century. What time period are you talking about?

Had you actually had any training in the RWI programme? Or any structured synthetic phonics programme?

Yes. I’m a qualified primary teacher.
I was a Specialist Reading Teacher working with children with SEN in a mainstream secondary school.
Prior to that I was a HLTA in an inner city primary school.
2000- 2016. 10 years KS1 and 6 years in 5 and 6

I’ve had all the training you can shake a stick at

I left my job in the secondary school two years ago due to ill health

I saw so many different repetitive reading interventions delivered to dyslexics with varying degrees of success. It was a dyslexic friend who said to me about my DS that his reading would only really improve when he found something he was really interested in. And so it proved. I still found it difficult to understand the difficulties reading presents to him and how much of it depends upon how tired he is. The great thing now is he has the technology to have things read to him. One of the great contrasts is how much knowledge he assimilates from listening, whereas I tend to only gather information by reading and re reading, he will grasp something at the first listening. I do wish dyslexic children were permitted to use technology and reach their full potential.

Glorianny that’s exactly what I did, base it all in interest, and also friendship groups.

Prior to me, the reading groups were grouped by reading age.

But I grouped them into friendship groups, and boy groups and girl groups.
That way I could provide better resources.
We talked about what they wanted and then I provided it.

The boy / girl thing also minimised any embarrassment (of which there was plenty).

I also made my lessons a bit of a treat, before the kids hated Reading Intervention (with the falling apart RWI).
They saw it as a punishment for being unable to read.

I think that I’d quite like to do a PhD on it…

FannyCornforth

Yes. I’m a qualified primary teacher.
I was a Specialist Reading Teacher working with children with SEN in a mainstream secondary school.
Prior to that I was a HLTA in an inner city primary school.
2000- 2016. 10 years KS1 and 6 years in 5 and 6

So, about the same period that I was working as an HLTA with Y7 & Y8 (and a few Y9s).

None of them had had good phonics instruction. They'd had the dreadful NLS programmes. In fact, systematic phonics instruction wasn't mandated until 2012 and it is still taking time to be universally implemented.

Were you working in a school that implemented RWI from YR?

FannyCornforth

VioletSky why was the term ‘children in your care’ offensive?
I don’t understand.

As an aside, I found Precision Teaching for reading a very good tool.
It’s quick, effective and free!
An Ed psych taught me how to do it when I was a Y2 TA about 15 years ago.
I told my secondary school team about it, and they adapted it for various different things.

Are you in Y1 or EYFS?

Some people think they are clever with theor insults and how they quote others without context but it's actually very predictable

I might be able to get back to you later, my lunch break is almost over

FannyCornforth

Glorianny that’s exactly what I did, base it all in interest, and also friendship groups.

Prior to me, the reading groups were grouped by reading age.

But I grouped them into friendship groups, and boy groups and girl groups.
That way I could provide better resources.
We talked about what they wanted and then I provided it.

The boy / girl thing also minimised any embarrassment (of which there was plenty).

I also made my lessons a bit of a treat, before the kids hated Reading Intervention (with the falling apart RWI).
They saw it as a punishment for being unable to read.

I think that I’d quite like to do a PhD on it…

I wonder how much of the behaviour associated with dyslexia would change if there was real assistance at an appropriate level early on? So many dyslexics drop out of education or rebel against a system which insists they can do it if they just put in a bit more effort. And so many teachers seem to think if they just keep hammering phonics there will be miracle cure. I'm so pleased my DS has the equipment he needs now. I just wish he'd had it earlier and I'd realised earlier how stressful reading was for him.

Maizie so it sounds as if you were working with children who weren’t taught phonics properly in the first place.
A totally different cohort to mine - I was in KS1, you were in KS3.
No. My primary didn’t do RWI (I don’t think that it had been written when I was in KS1, I could be wrong)
Jolly Phonics was taught in EYFS.
And in KS1 we followed the Letters & Sounds guidance and progression.

Thank you for your answers everyone btw

Maizie so it sounds as if you were working with children who weren’t taught phonics properly in the first place.

I certainly was, FannyC.

They'd mostly (I might be slightly exaggerating here😁 ) seemed to have spent 6 years having the first 45 high frequency words dinned into them and being taught to guess their way though text.

IIRC RWI started as Ruth Miskin Literacy, which she devised when a headteacher at a London school. In the late '80s, early '90s I think.

I'm interested. Was it word reading or comprehension difficulties that your older children had? Or both? Or boredom...

I've always wondered if there was a correlation between literacy and the Celts. They of course had no written language and were rubbished by the Romans because of that. I also suspect that we are becoming a much more visual culture.

Oh Maizie, I don’t know where to start!
They were such a mixed bag.
For instance-
One had disabilities because their mum was a heroin addict when she was pregnant. They were unbelievably neglected and couldn’t even toilet properly.
One had undiagnosed birth related brain damage (a new arrival to the UK)
One pupil with dyslexia was the child of the Assistant Head
I was certainly kept on my toes

Fanny

If I told you I spent a large part of my day with at least 5 little hands patting me and saying "Mrs Sky" over and over would that give you a clue?

Interesting bunch these pandemic legacy children but their progress has been amazing

I've had a look, it looks interesting and I will ask about it in our next meeting, thank you