Tag Archives: literacy

‘War and Peace in Reading – Time for a Truce?’ by Sir Jim Rose

Some children we teach imprint indelible memories. One such was Raymond. He was a ‘blitz of a boy’ fashioned in the mould of Charles Causley’s, ‘Timothy Winters’. For him, school was not always a pretty sight. During a story writing lesson, he asked: ‘‘Sir, how do you spell peace?’’ I said, ‘’Do you mean as in a piece of pie, Raymond?’’ He said, ‘’No. I mean like when ‘me’ dad says: turn that bloody telly off and let’s have a bit of peace.’’ This was almost 60 years ago when I was a ‘rookie’ primary teacher and Raymond was one of 40 children in my class of nine-year-olds.

While much has changed markedly for the better in primary education over the years it seems that peace has yet to break out over how best to teach young children to read and write. In the never-ending ‘Reading Wars’, the noise of battle is sometimes akin to those repetitious adverts on the ‘telly’ that numb the brain: once described by a teacher colleague as ‘stereophonic porridge — cold grey and coming at you from all directions’. For hardworking, dedicated primary teachers much of this debate must come over as a Tower of Babel, especially when they look to research for help only to find that it, too, often points in opposite directions.

On the face of it, two recent papers by Greg Brooks, seem to be another attempt to stir the porridge in Australia and in England. The first argues forcibly that Australia should resist the temptation to introduce a version of the Phonics Screening Check (PSC). The second is one of a brigade of papers in a recent book edited by Margaret Clark, a long-standing critic of the Reading Review (Rose 2006), who seems to be stuck fast in an unreconstructed, Plowdenesque view of primary education.

Australia is debating the value of a Phonic Screening Check for their schools and is wisely drawing upon rich seams of national and international academic expertise and professional practice to inform their decisions. This paper therefore focuses upon the papers by Brooks and Clark in the case of England. In passing, however, it is perhaps worth saying the PSC is turning out to be an exceptional initiative, not least, by providing a very strong incentive for schools and teachers to verify their judgements and keep children’s progress in phonics under review.
Since it was published, I have spent much time reminding critics, first, about the remit of our 2006 Review and, secondly, on explaining what it did not say to those inclined to believe everything they read in the press, as well as those with vested interests be they ideological, or commercial.

I agree with Greg Brooks in that many who take issue with the 2006 Review have either not read it or have chosen to ignore its key recommendations which, for example, set phonics in the context of a powerfully enriched primary school curriculum that prioritises literacy, with serious attention given to developing spoken language and attentive listening alongside reading and writing. ‘If they can’t say it they can’t write it’ has always seemed to me to be one of several obvious reasons for fostering ‘oracy’ from birth, as a precursor for literacy and much else. How many times and ways does the message that: ‘high quality phonic work is essential but not sufficient for teaching children to read’, need to be parroted before it sinks in?
I part company with Greg Brooks when he takes issue with the Reading Review on the grounds that it overstates the case for synthetic phonics and conflates it with systematic phonics. So, what does the Review actually say on that score? It says:

‘‘Research, inspection and leading-edge work of settings and schools may inform best practice. However, findings from different research programmes are sometimes contradictory or inconclusive, and often call for further studies to test tentative findings. While robust research findings must not be ignored, developers of national strategies, much less schools and settings, cannot always wait for the results of long-term research studies. They must take decisions, based on as much firm evidence as is available from a range of sources at the time, especially from replicable and sustainable best practice”

Greg Brooks applies a sleight of hand by ignoring the first, specific remit for the Review, notably, to make a judgement about: ‘What best practice should be expected of early reading and synthetic phonics?’

Even though the research in 2006 may have been inconclusive the requirement was to make a judgement, not to sit on the fence. Ten years on, I would argue that the research is now far from inconclusive, rather it amounts to an even stronger case for synthetic phonics.

By any reasonable definition ‘synthetic phonics’ is systematic, that is to say, it must be taught directly, regularly and incrementally according to a planned progression that takes full account of children’s different but developing abilities.

Moreover, ‘inconclusive’ seems to be an outcome to which educational research is particularly prone. What are teachers expected to do when research accrued over years at considerable expense comes to no conclusion and they have to teach something as crucially important as reading? One obvious response to that question is to take ‘proven practice’ (R. Slavin 2016) into account and that, too, was written into my remit as ‘best practice’.

Greg Brooks and one of his colleagues, Carole Torgerson had a different answer. If memory serves, having themselves already conducted a review of research on phonics, they wanted to spend another four years at considerable expense on a randomised control trial designed to settle the matter on synthetic phonics. This was because their review had found in favour of systematic phonics but was ambivalent about the primacy of synthetic phonics over ‘analytic phonics’. In my view and that of other members of our Advisory Group so doing risked kicking the can down the road for another four years thus paralysing action in schools and teacher training.

Contrary to Greg’s reflections on the run up to my Review, we spent a great deal of time, especially in schools, observing the teaching of reading, including a very helpful visit to the famous Clackmannanshire Project. We saw most, if not all of the leading-edge, published reading programmes in action and attended teacher training events. We also had the benefit of an HMI survey designed to inform the Review, plus numerous meetings of stakeholders, such as, parents. Though unacknowledged by Clark and Brooks, all of this is set out in the Review.

Prior to the Review I had also taken part in HMI exercises reporting on what turned out to be a flawed ‘Searchlights’ model of reading in England’s National Literacy Strategy, as well as directly observing the teaching of reading in projects overseas, including the USA and Europe.
In consequence, we reported that:

‘Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a synthetic approach the key features of which are to teach beginner readers:

  • grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence
  • to apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes in order all-through a word to read it
  • to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell
  • that blending and segmenting are reversible processes.’

In the case of phonic work, it is very clear that for any programme to be successful, first and foremost, it must be systematic. That is ‘square one’. This much at least seems to be common ground with Greg Brooks but less so it seems with Margaret Clark.

Judgements about synthetic phonics therefore covered one, albeit hugely important, aspect of the remit.

Greg Brooks admits that he is theoretically disposed to accept synthetic phonics as the front runner when compared to ‘analytic phonics’. He writes:

‘I was convinced then, and still am, that theory suggests that synthetic phonics is more coherent than analytic phonics as a strategy for young learners working out unfamiliar words.’

So, the question seems to be: ‘Synthetic phonics works in practice but does it work in theory?’ Fair dues – Greg is working on it.

He will no doubt take on board the spectacular success of England shown in the latest PIRLS data as reported by the BBC: ‘Northern Ireland and England are in the top 10 of the world’s best primary school readers in global rankings.’

And, reflect on the comments about the Phonics Check in the DFE report – Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) National Report for England December 2016:

‘The present PIRLS findings provide additional support for the efficacy of phonics approaches, and in particular, the utility of the phonics check for flagging pupils’ potential for lower reading performance in their future schooling. Additionally, the correlation between the phonics check and PIRLS performance also potentially bodes well for England’s pupils’ average performance in future PIRLS cycles, as 58% of pupils met the phonics check expected standard in 2012, whereas this has increased to 81% in 2017. Pupils who met this standard in 2012 had an average PIRLS 2016 performance of 587, compared to the overall average of 559.’

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that wars have winners and losers and in this phoney battle over phonics; the risk is that the real losers will be children, especially those who struggle to learn to read and of whom much more needs to be said than can be covered in this paper.
Today, as I write, the BBC is commenting on this year’s imminent OFSTED Annual Report, as follows:

  • More than 100 schools have not improved in the last 10 years, education watchdog Ofsted is expected to say.
  • The annual report by the Chief Inspector of Schools being released on Wednesday is expected to show that 130 schools have failed to record a “good” inspection since 2005.
  • It is reported that of the 20,000 schools in the country, 500 of those for children of primary age and 200 for over-11s have failed to make the grade.
  • However, 90% of all primary schools and nearly 80% of all secondary schools are rated good or outstanding, the report will say.

Clearly the rising tide of reading success in England is a cause for rejoicing but it is not lifting a worrying minority of boats that are firmly stuck in the mud. We need to keep working at it. Given that we know so much about ‘what works’ to secure high standards of reading in schools – perhaps we should now pay more attention to that other crucial piece of the territory and ask: what works to best effect in teacher training?

Jim Rose
13.12.17

For further information and discussion, please visit the forum here.

Reading Failure? Not On My Watch! by Jocelyn Seamer

Books have always been a part of my life. Growing up, our house contained bookshelves bursting at the seams with volumes. A wide range of topics were represented; the classics, light romance novels, encyclopaedias, books about Buddhism, Christianity, philosophy, pottery, home improvement, self-improvement, the complete works of William Shakespeare and of course, the Readers Digest condensed books that arrived regularly in the mail. My Mother was an enlightened woman who, acutely aware of her own lack of education (despite being Dux of the School she was not permitted to stay at school because she was a girl) was determined that her children would be able to converse on a variety of topics. We watched documentaries, talked about world affairs, had deep and meaningful conversations about the meaning of life and throughout my childhood, a word of the week had to be used in a meaningful sentence a couple of times a week. Little did she know then that she was ahead of her time. It was my mother who taught me about ‘sounds’ and sounding out, expanded my vocabulary, ensured that I understood what I was reading and made me a voracious reader.  I am so very grateful.

My first encounter with teaching phonics was in 2005 where I volunteered at an independent school in the NSW Hunter Valley. The school had 27 students and was staffed by a principal and teachers whose conviction in the difference we can make the kids was palpable. I recall one teacher angrily declaring, “You never write kids off!” after hearing about their experiences at a previous school. There was a common purpose and passion and enrolments quickly grew.  This school was using a grapheme to phoneme program called LEM which taught students ‘phonograms’ where several phonemes were attached to a grapheme, digraph or trigraph. Children would learn the grapheme ‘a’ and say “fat baby in the bath all washed” learning the associated phonemes.  This school was where I first became aware of spelling rules and the logic of words. I realised at this point that reading and spelling was something that I had always just ‘done’, but not understood.  At about the same time I was seeking a more meaningful base for my study. I was appalled at how soulless and mechanical the teaching felt in my mainstream university.

I felt a call to action and began to tutor struggling students. I reasoned that even with my limited knowledge I couldn’t do any worse for these children than the school system had already done. My first student was a little boy in year 2 who had been diagnosed with Dyslexia. His previous teacher saw no reason to give him a spelling book, so he played during spelling lessons instead. The psychologist who diagnosed him told his parents that they would need to think carefully about the jobs that their son would be able to do when he grew up.  He was withdrawn, sad and disengaged. It made me furious. I tutored this little boy for free for the whole Christmas holidays. With encouragement, a focus on phonics and the effort to make reading fun he went from a little boy throwing his book across the room to one hounding his mother to read another book with him. Once back in the classroom however, this all reversed and he was back in a world of struggle.

In 2006 I found myself at an Independent faith-based tertiary college in New South Wales and the lecturers there helped to fan the flames of my passion for teaching. They were connected with schools, still taught, mentored teachers and above all, were highly dedicated and passionate about their profession. I remember one lecturer talking to us about her time teaching in the 80’s and how she had been instructed not to teach phonics. She told us that she wrote a whole language program and then taught phonics anyway.  She talked to us about the very real responsibility that we had as teachers to set our students up for success. Part of her regular lecturing program was to bring in the parent of an ex struggling student to address the preservice teachers. She made her students see their responsibility through the eyes of a parent whose child had been so very let down by the school system. From this woman I learned a defiance and steadfastness that stays with me to this day.

I continued to tutor throughout my teaching study and, other than that one year (I had a second baby and had to move to a distance program), I recall no teaching about phonics or the evidence around reading instruction.  At my busiest, I worked with 30 students each week from home. Places were tight and I had to start a waiting list. I worked with students ranging from 6 to 14 years old. For those who I saw for reading there was a common theme. They knew ‘single sounds’, a few consonant digraphs and many were very good at ‘sight words’. Without fail these students had no clue what to do when presented with unfamiliar words, particularly those containing vowel digraphs. We worked through these unknown representations systematically and explicitly and children’s reading and spelling improved. I asked parents to sit in on the sessions to build a ‘learning relationship’ with their children. I felt that building the knowledge and skills of parents was a key part of improvement. I was right. Parents would sit and take notes.  They joined in the games and met other parents who helped them see that their child’s difficulties were not because they didn’t read them enough books when they were three. When we left to come to the NT in 2012, parents cried and I felt awful, but I knew there were children even more in need than my tutoring students.

In July 2012 I started my first teaching role in a remote Aboriginal school in the NT. I had a class of children aged between 4 and 7 who were all at the same achievement level in literacy. That is, there was virtually no achievement in literacy. Of the 50 or so students at our school only 3 or 4 could read anything approaching appropriate levels for their age.  It was the status quo and, I was to discover, very normal.  Our kids lived in overcrowded, rundown houses, had English as a third or fourth language and very often experienced extreme dysfunction at home. A term into this role I was introduced to ‘Miss O’. Miss O was a veteran teacher, a passionate advocate for children and had taken up the role of literacy and ESL advisor in our region. We were part of a ‘group school’. A cluster of 13 small remote schools managed under the umbrella of a central office in ‘town’.  Miss O was determined that evidence based practice was going to be put in place in our schools. She started with phonological and phonemic awareness which we began to teach explicitly. She then went in search of a systematic synthetic phonics program that could be rolled out to our schools with a minimum of training. With high teacher turnover and hours and hours of driving between each school this was really important. Miss O found Jo-Anne Dooner and the Get Reading Right program. It completely changed the way we approached reading instruction. The whole language movement was very much entrenched in the NT (and in many places still is). Large amounts of money had been spent on Accelerated Literacy and other whole language programs. It was not going away without a fight. In our school we were a group of young, fairly new teachers eager to help kids get results lead by a Principal who wanted the best for his kids. We took Get Reading Right on board for phonics (along with vocabulary teaching and comprehension strategies) and saw results very quickly. Kids who had been stumbling along on the same Level 2 PM reader for four years were suddenly reading level 10, and then 12 and then 15, despite no change in their home lives or overall English skills.  But, at the end of 2013 our Group School was disbanded in favour of school autonomy. Schools were on their own and the momentum of rigorous phonics existed only in small pockets of dedicated classrooms.  We hadn’t had the time to prove that the approach worked. We saw the modest gains made on paper and knew that the potential was there for even more.  Our story is now largely forgotten in the region.

In 2014 we moved to town. I taught in a mainstream school for a term and then accepted the role as Teaching Principal for term 3 and 4. The school is a very small, remote (but otherwise mainstream) school on a cattle station. I took over from Miss Jasmine and was delighted to walk into a school where phonics and explicit teaching were well established. Though my approach differed a little from Jasmine’s the fundamentals were the same and the children there were doing well. We had 3 preschool students. We developed their phonological and phonemic awareness and by the end of their preschool year they were blending and segmenting orally and had begun to do so with graphemes as well. I felt good that they were set up for success. Of course, I had stuck with Miss O’s rule of ‘reading five times every day’ and the school was in a good position.

We were ready for a change and headed interstate in 2015. I selected my next school (and that of our children) based mostly on its approach to teaching literacy. Our eldest was in year 6, our middle child in year 3 and our youngest in her first year of full time school. We wanted only the best for our kids. So, we headed off to another small, somewhat remote school. There I was content knowing that phonological and phonemic skills were taught first, then followed explicitly and systematically by synthetic phonics. A focus on vocabulary and building up all the required skills for reading helped me be confident in the education that my children and the other students. How did I find this school? Well, I followed Miss O!  I knew that I wasn’t going to get all of that anywhere else.

At the end of last year the NT beckoned and we are here once again. I did a stint as acting Teaching Principal at another remote Aboriginal school teaching Direction Instruction (Big D, big I). I won’t go into it here but it’s not my first choice of program. It was, at least, structured and didn’t have sight words.

I am now Teaching Principal at another remote mainstream school. I have 21 students in my care (including my own two youngest) and am delighted at being able to ‘run my own show’ again. I have banished PM readers and sight word programs, introduced a rather eclectic program of explicit systematic synthetic phonics based on a few different programs and my own experience. I am thankful to Debbie Hepplewhite for support when I’ve been ‘standing out on the limb’ with regional leadership. It seems that ‘the limb’ is where I need to learn to be comfortable. We now have rich, decodable cumulative readers in place as well as daily supported reading and writing experiences.  We explicitly teach phonology, morphology, etymology and comprehension strategies and seek to base all that we do on best practice, evidence and what is best for our kids.

Coming in, I have found the same patterns as when I was tutoring. Those struggling with their reading know ‘single sounds’, some consonant digraphs and many are good with ‘sight words’.   In our first term together confidence has grown. Kids are feeling empowered to use effective strategies and parents are positive about the changes.  I feel that we are on the way. It is early days yet but I am hopeful that together we are going to see great growth in our kids. I am lucky to be part of a new project here in the NT that focuses on ‘the good stuff’. There is a common purpose, strong dialogue and a sense of hope that our efforts will result in measureable outcomes.

Despite the extra work load brought about by the loss of group schools, the autonomy we now have means that I can follow the path that I feel is best for the school and respond to the needs of the students in front of me. We still have to PM benchmark as a system requirement but I am not using this to measure our growth. I want to see 8 months growth for 6 months of work. I want to see eyes shining as kids read books. I want parents to give a sigh of relief as they realise that their children can and will succeed. For me, teaching is not about lessons and pay. It’s about social justice. We know that low literacy is one of the biggest risk factors for all of the awful stuff of life. Knowing that, how can we NOT respond to the evidence? How can we NOT fight for change? How CAN we condemn so many kids to a life that is less than they deserve? Reading failure? Not on my watch!

I am still a voracious reader. Admittedly I now read in snippets and half pages in between managing budgets and programs and family time. But I still have at least one book on the go. I am eternally thankful to my Mother who ignited my fire for reading and social justice and to the wonderful teachers and colleagues who have taught and encouraged me. I am so looking forward to learning more and doing better and continuing to make a difference.  Wish me luck!

Jocelyn Seamer

Tackling Inequality Through Teaching: A Letter to the Prime Minister by Dr Marlynne Grant

We are delighted to be able to post this letter from Dr Marlynne Grant, to the Prime Minister, on the subject of tackling inequality through education.

 

rrf-logoThe Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

Dear Prime Minister

Tackling Inequality Through Teaching

While the debate about grammar schools hits the headlines, I would urge the government not to take its eye off beginning learners and the primary schools, which are key to ensuring that EVERY child learns to read and write well enough to take advantage of their future secondary schooling.  The real priority is to ensure that all children (including the socially disadvantaged) become properly literate in the early stages, because that opens the way for them to become decently educated, regardless of the type of secondary school they go to.

In our experience some clever children are still struggling to learn to read and write well.  They will never fulfil their potential.  Even excellent secondary schools will not be able to compensate.

We in the RRF (Reading Reform Foundation UK) aim to promote synthetic phonics, now statutory in primary schools, but this teaching is often diluted in schools which do not teach it systematically nor rigorously.  Instead they mix it with other methods of teaching reading (e.g. whole word memorising, guessing from context, Reading Recovery).  Now in Scotland a play-based approach for beginning learners is being promoted (Upstart programme – Sue Palmer).

Of course play is important but cutting out direct teaching will not help those from a disadvantaged background – it will fail them.  Children love to learn from adults and teachers love to teach children.  Not only is it important and good for all children but it is natural.  It is adults avoiding teaching which is unnatural.

I saw evidence of this ‘child-centred’ approach with High Scope and whole language teaching in the 1980’s both as an educational psychologist and as a mother and I know it failed countless children who did not pick up reading naturally.  Please, we must not go back to this position.  It sounds lovely and caring but it failed and frustrated so many children.  It was at this time that reading failure was thought to be attributable to within-child learning difficulties called dyslexia.  Dyslexia centres blossomed and tried to undo the damage that mainstreams schools were doing by their lack of direct teaching.

I attach a paper I wrote and delivered to the ResearchEd conference in London in 2014 of longitudinal research showing how rigorous synthetic phonics teaching from the very beginning delivers effective teaching for ALL children, even and especially for vulnerable groups like Free Schools Meals, Pupil Premium, summer birthdays, boys, English as a Second Language, slow learners etc.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Marlynne Grant

The Reading Reform Foundation

www.rrf.org.uk

@ReadingReform

Click below to download Dr Marlynne Grant’s Longitudinal Research on Synthetic Phonics

The Dyslexia Debate and a Response by Sir Jim Rose

IFERI is pleased to present a new paper by Sir Jim Rose, which was written as a response to Professor Julian Elliott’s recent presentation at Macquarie University, Australia.

Please click here to watch the presentation: The Dyslexia Debate

Sir Jim Rose

The Dyslexia Debate: A Response by Sir Jim Rose

The range and depth of enlightened thinking that DDOLL (Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy Network) colleagues have brought to this discussion is riveting. It transcends historic wrangles over the term dyslexia that have done little to take us forward. Belatedly, I should like to add a couple of wild cards to this captivating exchange of views. The purpose in so doing is to explore further what might done to make sure far more of the children within the frame of so-called ‘instructional casualties’ receive consistently high quality teaching of reading and related aspects of literacy. Arguably, if schools could achieve this the benefits to children would be enormous and the need for costly intervention programmes reduced.

First, given that the education profession has access to a vastly greater knowledge of reading development than ever before, why is it that we continue to see confusion, not to say dissent, in schools and teacher training, about the teaching of reading, particularly in respect of phonics and dyslexia?

In the UK, although there has been considerable progress over the last decade, we still suffer from outbreaks of phonic phobia and tiresome tensions between fake opposites, such as, phonics v ‘reading for meaning’. Despite the enactment of a National Curriculum which makes such teaching mandatory, we have not yet achieved universal agreement in schools that teaching children how the alphabet works for reading and writing is crucially important.

The mantra ‘one size does not fit all’ is often chanted against phonics. This suggests that some continue to regard phonics as one of several ‘methods’ from which to select and match to discredited notions of ‘learning styles’, rather than a body of core knowledge and skills that has to be taught and practised. In the case of phonic work, if teachers are not convinced of the value of a regularly applied systematic approach it is hardly surprising that mediocre and poor practice persist. What more might be done to make plain what high quality teaching looks like in this domain?

As Alison Wolf (Review of Vocational Education 2011) said, ‘If assessing learning is hard, assessing the quality of teaching is harder’. Because the latter assessment brings with it concerns about ‘blaming teachers’ for children’s failures in reading it leads to reluctance to tackle what are often straightforward, improvable aspects of practice within the control of the teacher and the school.

England may not top the international league tables of pupil performance but we must be among world leaders in the amount of inspection and testing that takes place in our schools, starting in the primary years. Many years spent as a school inspector observing teaching in England and elsewhere convinced me that there is far more variation in the quality of teaching literacy, including reading, between and within schools than there ought to be. Further, we know the distance between leading and trailing edge teaching is associated with unacceptable variations in pupil performance, and that the impact of poor teaching on children who enter school already behind their peers amplifies their difficulties.

Is it beyond our capabilities to assess the quality teaching without blaming teachers?

My second wild card is to ask what we might learn from other professions. Anecdotes are sometimes useful so here goes…

Last year an unfriendly tree wrote off my car. I survived the crash due to the incredible expertise of the medical profession. This unwelcome event had an upside, however, in that it gave me an opportunity to compare the performance of two life changing professions: medicine and education. I had lots of time to catch up on reading about reading while experiencing our National Health Service at its best. Further, I was able to listen to the 2014 Reith lectures by the acclaimed surgeon Atul Gawande. He declared that he was in ‘the disturbance business’ and explored thorny issues, such as, ‘Why doctors fail’. I then read his book: ‘The Checklist Manifesto – How to get things right’ and watched with his TED talk: ‘How do we heal medicine?checklist-6-319x479Many of Gawande’s insights apply to getting things right in education. As a frontline surgeon, he drew upon keenly observed and detailed analyses of medical practice. His concept of our ‘necessary infallibility’ has much to commend it should we dare to explore more forensically why teaching fails while making sure teachers know that the purpose of so doing is to work with them to improve the quality of teaching and achieve better outcomes for children.

Medicine and education are ‘person-to–person’ services subject to human fallibility and to human ingenuity for solving problems: success is won by learning from our mistakes. Both professions look to research for solutions. They also rely on knowledgeable and skilled practitioners to make sure that as far as possible decisions are ‘evidence-based’ and ‘proven’ in practice. Equally important, they must be capable of making sound judgements when faced with the hard question: ‘what should we do when research is inconclusive, evidence is lacking and doing nothing is not an option?’

Among other things, Gawande suggests that doctors fail through lack of knowledge and, or, ineptitude, that is to say, insufficient skill in applying knowledge. He counts himself among them in these respects. He sees mistakes as opportunities: ’we have an opportunity before us, not just in medicine but in virtually any endeavour. Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place. But will we do it? Are we ready to grab onto the idea? It is far from clear’.

The notion that we should actively build a school and classroom culture that enables teachers and, equally important, enables children as learners, to learn from patterns of mistakes is an idea worth grabbing. Moreover, his ‘Manifesto’ embraces a set of ethical principles and expectations worth taking on board:

“First is an expectation of selflessness: that we who accept responsibility for others – whether we are doctors, lawyers, teachers, public authorities, soldiers or pilots – will place the needs and concerns of those who depend on us above our own. Second is an expectation of skill: that we will aim for excellence in our knowledge and expertise. Third is an expectation of trust-worthiness: that we will be responsible in our personal behaviour toward our charges.

Aviators, however, add a fourth dimension, discipline: discipline in following prudent procedure and in functioning with others.”

For Gawande professional ‘discipline’ is aided by a ‘checklist’ which transforms ‘cowboys into pit crews’. That is indeed a powerful idea – but you must Google his short TED talk to understand it. (Or click at the end of this post to watch it.)

I have rambled on long enough save to ask: is there anything to be said for embracing some of these ideas, including, perhaps, developing a ‘checklist’ for teaching systematic, synthetic phonics?

With special thanks to Macquarie University for allowing us to distribute and use the link to Professor Julian Elliott’s presentation.

Please Help: Get Ghana Reading with Phonics by Phone

Created by the charity Educators International, Phonics by Phone is an ambitious and innovative project which aims to train teachers in remote parts of Ghana. Using the basic mobile that is already in their pocket, teachers will be trained how to teach reading from the beginning, with a specially written phonics course and resources.Ghana Movement

This ingenious solution works by providing 100 Phonics Lessons, specially written by IFERI’s Debbie Hepplewhite and recorded by Sheena Campbell, which are available to download as audio files that teachers can easily access and listen to on their phone. To access or listen to these modules simply click here.project_1273_body_50629_chart_pic_00263

In addition, there is also a very clever assessment project to support and sustain the Phonics by Phone network.  It works from an android phone app which then prints to a tiny micro-printer! Each time the app is used a new assessment is generated – watch the video below to see it in action. Amazing!

A crowd-funding initiative has been established to support this innovative, low-cost project which is already having a huge impact. On an ‘all-or-nothing’ basis the charity has until 7th August to raise the £15k target. They are already more than halfway there – but with only days to go – every donation counts. And if they don’t hit their target – the project will receive no financial help at all.

If you feel that you could support this worthwhile initiative please visit: https://www.launchgood.com/project/help_get_ghana_reading__by_phone#/

Educators International is also keen to connect educators from around the world with some of the teachers in Ghana who are close to qualifying. If you would like to find out more about being a pen-pal mentor to one of the highly committed, volunteer teachers in Ghana please click here to find out more.Ghana boys reading

Michael Stark, one of Educators International’s directors and trustees, urges all those who value literacy and reading to make a difference:

‘If properly taught using phonics, all these children will learn to read and write well, rather than drop out of school early. Help us achieve a miracle – reading success for huge numbers of children in Ghana.’

Educators_International

Please help spread the word and share this blog post with friends and colleagues. Thank you.

The Reading Reform Foundation Conference, March 2015 *updated*

‘From the Rose Review to the New Curriculum. A growing number of schools successfully teach every child to read; the majority still don’t. Why?’

The theme of the Reading Reform Foundation conference (above) drew attention to the fact that some schools achieve very highly despite complex and challenging circumstances. Indeed, London schools, despite being ‘inner city’ schools, are gaining a reputation in England for nationally high standards and some commentators attribute this to the rise in standards particularly in primary schools. Many primary headteachers would attribute their rise in standards to getting the foundations of literacy right by ensuring high-quality Systematic Synthetic Phonics provision within enriched language and literature settings.

The conference was very well-received and attendees included people from America, Spain, Ireland, Scotland and Australia.

Most of the talks were filmed and will be added to this blog posting as the footage becomes available.

Debbie Hepplewhite gave the opening talk, ‘Does it really matter if teachers do not share a common understanding about phonics and reading instruction?’ Having watched the talk via youtube, a number of ‘tweeters’ recommended this video for INSET (In-service training) suggesting that ‘all teachers’ would benefit from watching it!

Debbie’s PowerPoint – click here

Next, Anne Glennie talked about the lack of ambition and lack of phonics training in Scotland with her talk, ‘The Attainment Gap? What about the Teaching Gap?’ – and this is despite the fact that England and other countries internationally paid heed to the Clackmannanshire research (Johnston and Watson) conducted in Scottish schools.

Following Anne was Josie Mingay with her talk, ‘Phonics in the Secondary Classroom’. This talk generated a great deal of interest and Josie had more questions from the audience than anyone else. Clearly we still have weak literacy in many of our secondary schools – and this is surely why ALL teachers need to be trained in reading and spelling instruction, not just infant and primary teachers. In any event, a ‘beginner’ for whom English is a ‘new’ language, isn’t necessarily a five year old.

Sam Bailey was appointed headteacher of a struggling school with results well below national expectations. The theme of her talk was, ‘Transforming the life chances of our children – simple methods, great results’.She described in detail the rapid improvements with the adoption of Systematic Synthetic Phonics programmes (Oxford Reading Tree Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters and Phonics International) in a climate of support, expectation, challenge, and rigour.

Gordon Askew brought his wealth of knowledge and experience to bear for his excellent talk, ‘Assessment, including the Phonics Screening Check and assessing reading at the end of Key Stage One’. To be honest, his talk was not what one might have expected and it turned out to be quite inspirational considering the topic!

Marj Newbury is a retired Early Years teacher with 37 years experience, She has also delivered synthetic phonics training extensively in schools both in the UK and worldwide – including as guest lecturer in her local universities. Marj’s talk, ‘Teacher Training’ not only described her work, but also voiced her concern about changes to the way we are training teachers in England.

Angela Westington HMI CV (Her Majesty’s Inspector) was invited to talk about her very important Ofsted report, ‘How a sample of schools in Stoke-on-Trent teach pupils to read’. Angela has considerable experience of leading and participating in national surveys and what is so important about Angela’s report is the clear description of strong phonics and reading practice and weak practice. Angela was not filmed but her ‘Stoke-on-Trent’ report is a must read and you can find it via the link below:

Stoke-on-Trent report – click here

Finally, the RRF was very appreciative that Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Reform, rounded off the conference with his final ministerial speech prior to the general election in the UK, Nick Gibb has been at the forefront at looking closely at the findings of international research to inform reading instruction and championing changes in the statutory National Curriculum to incorporate Systematic Synthetic Phonics. The theme of his talk was, ‘The Importance of Phonics’:

Nick Gibb’s speech – click here

 

A New Paper by Professors James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer on Reading Recovery

IFERI is delighted to be able to share with you a brand new paper by Professors James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer, from the Institute of Education at Massey University, New Zealand.

This paper was presented, by invitation, at the 39th Annual Conference of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities (IARLD), Vancouver, Canada, July 8, 2015. Professor James Chapman has been a Fellow of IARLD since 1983.

IARLD (International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities) is an international professional organization dedicated to conducting and sharing research about individuals who have learning disabilities. Fellows of IARLD include premier scientists, educators and clinicians in the field of learning disabilities throughout the world.

For convenience, some extracts and conclusions from the paper are published as part of this blog post. To open or download the complete paper, simply click the title below.

The Literacy Performance of ex-Reading Recovery Students Between Two and Four Years Following Participation on the Program: Is this Intervention Effective for Students with Early Reading Difficulties?

 James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer

Sustainability of Gains Made in Reading Recovery

Considered together, the PIRLS results for 9-year-old children who had received RR in Year 2, the enrolment data for students receiving support from RT:Lits, and the two New Zealand studies on the sustainability of RR outcomes for discontinued children, show that RR simply has not achieved its primary goals in New Zealand. Clay’s avowal that RR would “clear out of the remedial education system all children who do not learn to read” (Clay, 1987, p. 169), and the RR New Zealand’s website claim that RR operates as an “effective prevention strategy against later literacy difficulties” and, therefore, “may be characterised as an insurance against low literacy levels” (www.readingrecovery.ac.nz/reading_recovery), are without foundation.

Why Does Reading Recovery Fail to Result in Sustainable Gains?

We have argued elsewhere (Chapman et al., 2015) that the effectiveness of RR interacts with where children are located on the developmental progression from pre-reader to skilled reader. Because of limited knowledge of print at the outset of learning to read, and/or developmental delay in acquiring the phonological awareness skills that are essential for learning to read successfully (e.g., Pressley, 2006; Snow & Juel, 2005; Tunmer, Greaney & Prochnow, 2015), a large proportion of young struggling readers operate at low developmental phases of word learning, which Ehri (2005) described as pre-alphabetic and partial-alphabetic phases. Delayed readers who are still in these phases, typically those students who struggle the most with learning to read, will not be able to grasp the alphabetic principle and discover spelling-to-sound relationships on their own or in a program that emphasizes text rather than word level instructional approaches. These students will require more intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically based decoding skills than what is provided in typical RR lessons.

What Should be Done to Improve the Effectiveness of Reading Recovery?

There are serious shortcomings and much-needed improvements in several aspects of RR, including the theoretical underpinnings of the program, the assessment battery which fails to include measures of phonological processing skills, the specific instructional strategies emphasized in the program (e.g., the multiple cues approach to word identification), the manner of program delivery (one-to-one versus instruction in pairs), and the congruence between classroom literacy instruction and the RR program.

Regarding the issue of congruence between classroom literacy instruction and RR, the program was originally developed to complement regular whole language classroom literacy instruction in New Zealand. Clay (1993), nevertheless, claimed that RR was compatible with all types of classroom literacy programs, but she offered no evidence in support of this claim. To test this belief, Center et al. (2001) investigated whether the efficacy of RR varied as a function of the regular classroom literacy program. They compared the effects of RR in “meaning oriented” (i.e., whole language) classrooms and “code-oriented” classrooms (i.e., those that included explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and alphabetic coding skills). Their results indicated that at the end of the second year of schooling, children in the code-oriented classrooms (regular and RR students combined) significantly outperformed children in the meaning-oriented classrooms on measures of phonological recoding, reading connected text, and invented spelling, as well as on a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Overall, however, Center et al. (2001) reported that the RR students in both types of classrooms failed to reach the average level of their peers on any of the literacy measures. These findings clearly contradict Clay’s (1993) claim that the regular classroom context does not differentially affect the literacy performance of RR children.

Although regular classroom literacy instruction influences the effectiveness of RR, the most serious shortcoming of the program is the differential benefit at the individual level. The program may be useful in the short term for some struggling readers but not others, especially those struggling readers who need help the most. More intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based decoding skills is likely to be required than what is normally provided in RR lessons for those who struggle most with learning to read, and for any gains made in RR to have a lasting effect (Iversen, Tunmer & Chapman, 2005; Tunmer & Greaney, 2010).

Slavin et al. (2011) found reading programs for younger children that had less emphasis on phonics, including RR, showed smaller effect sizes than those programs that included phonics. They noted that RR is the most extensively researched and used reading intervention program in the world, but that the outcomes were less than might be expected. Further, Slavin et al. observed that the overall effect size for 18 studies involving paraprofessional or volunteer tutors using structured and intensive programs was about the same as the effect size for RR studies (+0.24 vs. +0.23), despite the very intensive training that RR teachers receive.

Conclusion

The RR program remains largely un-revised in its instructional approach despite clear evidence showing that claims about RR being an insurance against on-going literacy difficulties are without foundation. The New Zealand Reading Recovery website continues to assert the effectiveness of RR; assertions that are not supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s own data (national monitoring reports and PIRLS), or by the two independent studies undertaken in New Zealand on students two to four years following successful completion of the program. If the RR program is not changed to reflect contemporary scientific research on reading interventions, it should be dropped and replaced by a more contemporary, research-based, reading intervention approach, together with more effective literacy instruction in children’s first year of schooling.

See also:

Excellence and equity in literacy education: the case of New Zealand. W.E. Tunmer & J.W. Chapman (eds.) (June, 2015). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/excellence-and-equity-in-literacy-education-william-e-tunmer/?K=9781137415561

Dr Marlynne Grant at researchED 2014

Dr Marlynne Grant is a chartered educational psychologist and a member of the Reading Reform Foundation. She is also the author of the high quality phonics programme, Sound Discovery. Her must-see talk below, which was given at researchED 2014, is about ‘What works to achieve accurate and confident literacy for whole classes of children, from Reception to Secondary’. The talk is in three parts, all are listed below.

The slides from Dr Grant’s talk are also available here: http://www.workingoutwhatworks.com/en-GB/Resource-library/Videos/2014/rED-v-marlynne-grant-2014

Thanks to researchED!

 

Samuel Blumenfeld author of Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers and The Whole Language/OBE Fraud has died.

Author of many books and articles on the topic of what’s wrong with education, Blumenfeld has been described as a ‘lonely voice in the wilderness’. His latest book, “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children,” , co-authored with Alex Newman, was published last month (May 2015) by WND Books.

Much of Blumenfeld’s work was dedicated to exposing what he saw as a faulty method of teaching children to read and championing an alternative. His 1973 book, “The New Illiterates,” blamed the “whole-word” method of reading instruction for dyslexia and reading disabilities in many children.

Blumenfeld’s answer was always the same – intensive, systematic phonics. In 1983, he published “Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers” as a way to help parents, teachers and tutors teach children to read in an easy, effective manner.

IFERI acknowledges Samuel Blumenfeld’s contribution to the promotion of effective reading instruction.