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

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

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

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.

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...

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.
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.

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.

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

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?

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 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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

Glorianny

MaizieD

www.dyslexia.com/research/articles/alternative-brain-pathways/
www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/causes-of-dyslexia.html
Both of these explain why phonetic teaching which relies on left brain development is not always suitable for dyslexics who benefit from teaching that encompasses and develops right brain neural pathways.

Unfortunately the first paper is a study of adults who were already reading. As the neural pathways created by phonics instruction are different from those created by whole word, look & say instruction, and the research subjects were US adults who were more likely to have received that instruction (because 'phonics' is still in minority use in the US, the research paper tells us nothing useful about phonics instruction. A long term RCT on children being taught by different methods would have been more helpful.

The second website seems to rely heavily on this 'research'.

The thing I find most ironic is that Dr Orton, working on dyslexia in the 1920 (when whole word was the predominant instructional method) concluded that the best way to help dyslexics was a solid grounding in phonics instruction. The Orton Gillingham programme from the 1930s was the gold standard remedial programme in the English speaking world for decades.

What it tells us about phonics instruction (which I note some people in education are still reluctant to listen to) is that although phonics education and training may be an integral part of the basic skills for most children, for dyslexics more progress is made when other methods are used, and that brain imaging gives us real evidence of that.
Which would make most people at least question the validity of continuing to apply phonics. But proves once again that there are still people in education who fail to look at anything which questions their preconceptions.

It's entirely spurious research, Glorianny. There's no 'gene' for reading, reading is not a 'natural' process, there are no neural networks established before learning to read, it is the act of learning and practising which establishes the networks. If you are teaching the wrong technique the brain will use the area which seems most suitable for processing that technique. Teach words as wholes and the brain will use a picture processing area, teach phonics and the brain will use a sequential processing area.

The brain imaging research was done on adults who had been taught by whole word methods. Of course their brains responded that way.

It tells us nothing at all about phonics instruction. Twenty years ago the Orton Gillingham phonics programme was the absolute gold standard for remediation of dyslexia. Phonics was absolutely Key. (albeit OG was a tortuous and long winded programme that put massive loads on memory).

Now show me a peer reviewed RCT that proves that phonics taught children develop dyslexia.

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

Mollygo

Reading Recovery is a course designated for first year children in the USA.
No
Your version might be. The one we use was from New Zealand. It was highly successful with the children she worked with and we continued it after she left.
If the activity you refer to didn’t work-I hope you didn’t continue with it.

Reading Recovery is exactly the same the world over. It is very tightly controlled and has an intensive indoctrination programme for its certified teachers.

And, despite its claim to be able to successfully teach the 'hardest to teach' students it actually has a failure rate of about 20% of pupils 'disapplied' from the programme. This from looking at their 'research'...

MaizieD

www.dyslexia.com/research/articles/alternative-brain-pathways/
www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/causes-of-dyslexia.html
Both of these explain why phonetic teaching which relies on left brain development is not always suitable for dyslexics who benefit from teaching that encompasses and develops right brain neural pathways.

Unfortunately the first paper is a study of adults who were already reading. As the neural pathways created by phonics instruction are different from those created by whole word, look & say instruction, and the research subjects were US adults who were more likely to have received that instruction (because 'phonics' is still in minority use in the US, the research paper tells us nothing useful about phonics instruction. A long term RCT on children being taught by different methods would have been more helpful.

The second website seems to rely heavily on this 'research'.

The thing I find most ironic is that Dr Orton, working on dyslexia in the 1920 (when whole word was the predominant instructional method) concluded that the best way to help dyslexics was a solid grounding in phonics instruction. The Orton Gillingham programme from the 1930s was the gold standard remedial programme in the English speaking world for decades.

What it tells us about phonics instruction (which I note some people in education are still reluctant to listen to) is that although phonics education and training may be an integral part of the basic skills for most children, for dyslexics more progress is made when other methods are used, and that brain imaging gives us real evidence of that.
Which would make most people at least question the validity of continuing to apply phonics. But proves once again that there are still people in education who fail to look at anything which questions their preconceptions.

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?

Mollygo

Reading Recovery is a course designated for first year children in the USA.
No
Your version might be. The one we use was from New Zealand. It was highly successful with the children she worked with and we continued it after she left.
If the activity you refer to didn’t work-I hope you didn’t continue with it.

Reading Recovery originated in New Zealand but was extensively used in the US and part of a nationwide program which research showed was not an efficient method for teaching dyslexics.
www.ldonline.org/ld-topics/reading-dyslexia/researchers-urge-officials-reject-reading-recovery

VioletSky

Mollygo

I have no idea what you mean

But you know absolutely nothing about how I do my job so your opinion is invalid

🥱

Mollygo

I have no idea what you mean

But you know absolutely nothing about how I do my job so your opinion is invalid