Here is a heartwarming, and heartbreaking, piece in the New Statesman: How a sugar company taught me to read The New Statesman's special correspondent tells us how it was luck, as much as effort, that allowed him to overcome his dyslexia. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2016/04/how-su...

Further criticism for Reading Recovery in Australia: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/author-and-2015-senior-australian-of-the-year-jackie-french-calls-for-schools-to-scrap-outdated-literacy-programs/news-story/43bba48fe905afd3d45778af8b25f798 Author and 2015 Senior Australian of t...

IFERI committee member, Gordon Askew, has written a very helpful blog posting about the well-known notion of 'Guided Reading'. Guided Reading is a method of hearing children read which was heavily promoted in England with the roll-out in 1998 of the, then, National Literacy Strategy which was based ...

I think we are at the beginning of some schools in Australia being prepared to use England's Year One Phonics Screening Check. Interestingly, quite recently I have learnt about a school in America and a few schools in Australia where teachers from England have been shocked about the poor level, or l...

Alison Clarke writes about the Victorian screening proposal via her Spelfabet blog: http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2016/04/is-the-new-victorian-learning-difficulties-screening-assessment-any-good./ Is the new Victorian learning difficulties screening assessment any good? From the end of this year, all ...

IFERI committee member, Molly de Lemos, gave me permission to copy her thoughts (expressed to the DDOLL network) about the proposed screening in Victoria (I've highlighted one paragraph in particular in red because using England's Year One Phonics Screening Check internationally might be a 'wake-up ...

Here's another development linked to reading in Australia via 'The Age': Every prep child to be screened for dyslexia under new program April 2, 2016 Henrietta Cook http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/every-prep-to-be-screened-for-dyslexia-20160402-gnwnxs.html#ixzz44zpf2bX7 Every Victorian child will ...

Further excerpts by Doug Lemov in the TES: https://www.tes.com/us/news/breaking-views/doug-lemov-three-fresh-approaches-teaching-reading In an excerpt from his latest book, Doug Lemov provides some practical tips on how teachers can alter the way they approach reading with their students Consider, f...

John Walker writes about this topic via his 'Literacy Blogspot': http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/should-key-words-be-taught-as-sight.html Should key words be taught as 'sight' words? I’ve just been asked a question that comes up with unfailing regularity: what should the advice to parents...

Dr Louisa Moats, a member of IFERI's Advisory Group, draws attention to the need for the issue of 'sight words' to be addressed fully in teacher-training commenting thus: Our solution for this problem is first, teaching the teachers about Ehri’s phases of word reading development, coupled with the “...