Podcast: Professor Maggie Snowling talks about 'What teachers need to know about dyslexia'

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

LISTEN: What teachers need to know about dyslexia

World-renowned expert professor Margaret Snowling explains how teachers can best support learners with dyslexia

https://www.tes.com/news/listen-what-te ... t-dyslexia

“People used to think dyslexia was a clear-cut syndrome with signs and syndromes like a medical disease, but it is actually much more like blood pressure – it can range from very low to very high,” explains professor Margaret Snowling, president of St John’s College, Oxford, and one of the world’s leading dyslexia researchers.

Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, she addresses numerous others myths around the condition and explains that education is still missing opportunities to support students at an earlier stage.

“Children are not getting intervention early enough,” she argues. “It is really important to work on these problems as soon as they arise, not least because of the impact on self-esteem and academic self-concept.”

Dyslexia myths
In a wide-ranging interview, she talks about the best ways schools can identify and then support children with dyslexia and she addresses common misconceptions

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Professor Maggie Snowling's podcast interview is very interesting - and I have links to information that may contribute to issues raised in her comments.

Professor Snowling commented, for example, that she is in favour of using nonsense words for phonics assessment but she expressed the concern that teachers might 'teach' children to read nonsense words as a consequence of the Year One Phonics Check including nonsense words. She is not wrong to have such a concern!

I addressed my own worries about teachers spending too much (unnecessary) time providing activities with nonsense words in the podcast interview below in which I was the interviewee. This may be of interest to anyone worried about this consequence. I suggest solutions within the interview:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... f=2&t=1026

Professor Snowling mentions a study based in York in which they found teachers generally made accurate teacher-assessments of children's phonics levels. She suggests that teachers were well-trained in this particular authority.

I have to question this suggestion, however, on a couple of counts. Firstly, the Phonics Check results were not high when this study was conducted so were the teachers well-trained and strong with regard to phonics teaching? Probably not that strong generally speaking considering the Phonics Check results. Were the teachers good at teacher-assessment? Possibly so if their assessments more or less matched the Year One Phonics Check results.

I refer to the York study mentioned by Professor Snowling in my article below published in SEN Magazine in which I raise my own worries that so many people who are academic or in professional organisations, in effect, have attempted to undermine the advent of the Year One Phonics Check. Whilst teachers may be accurate at phonics assessment, they need to know how effective their phonics provision is compared to other teachers - especially teachers in similar contexts - and we have had improvement in results since the introduction of the check in 2012 to show this has sharpened teachers' phonics provision at least to some extent:

https://senmagazine.co.uk/articles/arti ... or-phonics

What dismayed me quite recently when I attended a seminar in which Professor Snowling was a key speaker describing the findings of her current language intervention (mentioned at the end of her podcast interview) was her throwaway comment about phonics during her talk. She stated that, 'there is too much emphasis on phonics' during her talk.

Really?

I was shocked to hear her say this and found her comment mystifying. Indeed, Professor Snowling even mentions that phonics is introduced in the later stages of her pre-school language intervention.

Without doubt, quality phonics provision is invaluable for children with dyslexic tendencies and some schools getting year-on-year exceptionally high results in the Year One Phonics Check - as shown by the national phonics check - will say, rightly, that they are addressing all children's needs including those who are more likely to have difficulties in learning to read than others. It is unlikely to be the case that these highly successful schools have very different intakes from others - they are looking more likely to be strong in their phonics provision - at least for reading purposes (we don't know how strong they are at teaching phonics for spelling purposes).

So, what is Professor Snowling's understanding of the picture of phonics provision and reading/spelling instruction in England? I am very disappointed that someone who has studied the field of 'dyslexia' for 40 years has, at least to some extent, diminished phonics provision and the importance for professional development and raising standards of reading instruction that have been brought about by a national phonics check.

Further, when I raised my concern in the seminar about Professor Snowling's comment - and stated that good phonics programmes include rich vocabulary and develop language comprehension, she replied that was, 'Phonics with other components'.

This difference in 'understanding' of what phonics provision can look like in our pre-schools and infant schools, and for intervention, is a significant part of the debate for England. I do indeed see that phonics provision can be very impoverished, and mixed with multi-cueing word-guessing, but it is these differences in provision which need to be fully understood by officials - and organisations in positions of influence such as the Education Endowment Foundation mentioned by Professor Snowling in her conversation. They should arguably contribute to taking this closer look at the differences in provision and what can be done about this to improve professional development in reading instruction.

I devised a graphic some time ago to illustrate the differences in provision in some schools in England that I myself have observed (and predicted when 'Letters and Sounds' was first published):

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/Sim ... chools.pdf

There is a very big need for more clarity and shared understanding about reading instruction even in England where systematic synthetic phonics is statutory. Raised professional understanding and improved practice will undoubtedly support those children with dyslexic tendencies.

Meanwhile, I am contacted by individual teachers and parents who are very concerned by prevailing, dominant Reading Recovery training and influences in various local authorities. It is high time that there was a proper investigation into this as Reading Recovery is underpinned by the very strategies that have been discredited and warned about in England for over a decade.

Whilst Professor Snowling refers to the need for early intervention, what if that intervention takes the form of Reading Recovery for children with dyslexic tendencies?

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Coincidentally, I just received this comment below from a retired Educational Psychologist in response to another thread on the recent 'push' of the Government in England for more emphasis on alerting and training parents to read to their pre-schoolers to develop their language knowledge and skills. See the link at the bottom of this post for the topic of 'efforts to close the vocabulary gap of pre-schoolers'.

This ties in with this thread featuring 'dyslexia' and ways in which we can reduce or irradicate reading difficulties. Whereas I was so disappointed in Professor Snowling's comment suggesting there is 'too much emphasis on phonics', I am going to suggest that the increase and improvement of phonics provision is exactly what was, and is, required to support children with dyslexic tendencies - and, of course, you can see the thrust of IFERI that a universal phonics check is important to inform teachers that the teaching of phonics can be improved when more attention is placed on it (teachers need to know how effectively they are teaching phonics).

My work as an Educational Psychologist in the 1980’s and 90’s was largely with middle class children whose parents were professional and highly literate. Very often the children were articulate too – but they were still struggling to read and write. These children were referred to as ‘dyslexic’ and within-child factors were thought to account for their difficulties. They had to attend extra lessons privately in the Dyslexia Clinics as schools were not addressing the difficulties. Usually their reading, spelling and writing difficulties were not identified by schools until the children were in KS2 – this gave rise to huge distress and pain in the families. During this time in the local authority, we had a whole language approach to the teaching of literacy with the apprenticeship model, paired reading and real books.

We are lucky in England because we have firmly shifted phonics provision away from just the 'Dyslexic Clinics' to early years and infants mainstream provision (and more intensive phonics for children who are slower-to-learn or showing difficulties in learning). Meanwhile, however, the worry now is that intervention provision is either not in line with the mainstream provision (such as Reading Recovery) - or the intervention provision is a different programme from mainstream and not as high-quality as is necessary. Or, as you can see from various IFERI threads, phonics provision is still mixed with multi-cueing word-guessing for beginners.

This topic features efforts to close the 'vocabulary gap' of pre-schoolers in England to support them in reading acquisition:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... 2146#p2146