A plea from former UK OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) Inspector ‘Miss Emma’ regarding PM Benchmarking, Running Records, Reading Levels, Guided Reading and the Three Cueing System.

“Research must trump ideology, or schools using these approaches will continue to fail around 30 – 45% of Australian students. We must follow the lead of the UK government. All children deserve to experience the joy of independent reading, for pleasure, by the age of six. Resources and approaches that prevent this from happening, such as the Three Cueing system, and

Guided Reading must be removed from Australian classrooms without delay. There must be a more proactive drive from the education department to mandate that evidence based strategies and tools that align with the Big Six replace them. The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach is one such example.’ The LDA (Learning Difficulties Australia) is an association of teachers and other professionals dedicated to assisting students with learning difficulties through effective teaching practices based on scientific research. In May of 2015 a statement was released to clarify their position with regards to the teaching of reading in Australia. The ‘LDA supports approaches to reading instruction that adopt an explicit structured approach to the teaching of reading and are consistent with the scientific evidence as to how children learn to read and how best to teach them. This approach is important for all children, but is particularly important for children who have difficulty in learning to read … This does NOT include programs that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach, which place emphasis on the three cueing system and guessing from context as acceptable strategies for identifying words. .. Examples of programs that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach include but are not limited to programs such as Reading Recovery and the literacy approaches developed by Fountas and Pinnell, including Levelled Literacy Intervention and Guided Reading.’

This was made clear in the UK almost a decade ago, following the Rose Report. In the Primary National Strategy (2006a), the three cueing model (known in England as

the Searchlight model) is finally and explicitly discredited. Instead, the Strategy has acknowledged the value of addressing decoding and comprehension separately in the initial stage of reading instruction.

“ … attention should be focused on decoding words rather than the use of unreliable strategies such as looking at the illustrations, rereading the sentence, saying the first sound or guessing what might ‘fit’. Although these strategies might result in intelligent guesses, none of them is sufficiently reliable and they can hinder the acquisition and application of phonic knowledge and skills, prolonging the word recognition process and lessening children’s overall understanding. Children who routinely adopt alternative cues for reading unknown words, instead of learning to decode them, later find themselves stranded when texts become more demanding and meanings less predictable. (Primary National Strategy, 2006b, p.9).”

The Australian Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. The first letter, published in The Australian, was signed by 26 researchers and practitioners and warned of problems in the way reading was taught in schools, which continued to ascribe to the "whole language" view that learning to read was like learning to speak and children would pick it up if they were read to. The 2004 letter said this view ignored 20-30 years of reading research, which found that mastering the letter-sound combinations and how to join sounds to make words were the necessary early steps in learning to read.

The letter was prompted by the results in the international Progress In Reading Literacy Study tests that revealed almost 25 per cent of Year 4 children in Australia failed to meet the standard in reading for their age, to the shock of many educators and governments.

"We have significant problems in education from the beginning stages, in that we do not teach reading well," the letter says.

"We do not use approaches known to be effective in initial reading instruction. As a nation, we do not routinely screen students entering school for underdeveloped pre-reading skills critical for facilitating learning to read, nor do we monitor student progress ... in a manner that allows for successful early intervention with students failing to progress.

"We do not redress our early system failure during the middle primary years. In the secondary years, we have a significant group of disillusioned students who have lost contact with the curriculum because of these earlier issues. We tend to focus attention

and resources upon compensatory educational options instead of emphasising the resolution of our earlier mistakes.

"The sequence of initial failure-shame-frustration-disengagement-dropout is predictable and ongoing. Currently, it is being addressed piecemeal, as if they were separate problems."

As a result an Inquiry was commissioned.

The inquiry, chaired by the late expert on teaching and learning Ken Rowe, found that teachers were not properly trained in how to teach reading, with many universities failing to devote any time to the subject.

The Rowe report made 20 recommendations, none of which was implemented. A subsequent inquiry in 2009 by the dyslexia working party made similar recommendations about teacher education, but these have not been introduced either.

"Federal governments have known about this problem for nearly a decade, and have received advice from two independent committees of investigation about how to deal with the problem," yesterday's letter says. "This advice has been ignored. Little productive change has eventuated at the policy level, much less at the classroom level.

"Indeed, if the recommendations of the NITL (National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy) were adopted, wholesale retraining of teachers would be necessary to provide them with the understanding of literacy not presented to them in their own teacher training. We need a vast shake-up at all levels of teacher training. We ... urge your immediate attention to what has become a national disgrace." http://www.readaustralia.com/inquiry_teach_reading.htm

We are renewing this urge for immediate attention through the Give a Duck Campaign. Also by offering the solution for change through SSP; an inexpensive, fun, easy to implement and highly effective approach that allows even the most inexpensive teacher to meet the needs of all students.

Why is it so important? Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman’s (2000, 2005) offers an overview of the economic aspects of human skills formation. Heckman concludes that investment in the learning development of young children is crucial. For Heckman, literacy competence is an essential area of learning investment in the young, being a ‘skill that begets many other

skills’ (an index of ‘self-productivity’, as he calls it), because it constitutes a ‘key part of our capacity to increase our capacity’'

Literacy under-achievement has high social and economic costs in terms of both health and crime. The Committee for the National Inquiry for the Teaching of Literacy received evidence indicating that the overlap between under-achievement in literacy (especially in reading) and poor behaviour, health and wellbeing, is a major issue to the extent that what should be an ‘education issue’ has become a major health issue (e.g., DeWatt et al., 2004). According to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, an increasing number of parents are seeking help from health professionals throughout Australia for their children whose self esteem and behaviour problems have arisen as a consequence of (or are exacerbated by) learning difficulties and failure to acquire adequate literacy skills.

If we want to bring about radical change, as in Finland, the focus becomes on individual children, and on the journey that prepares each child for life. Students learn to read for pleasure and to learn, and teachers proactively develop an intrinsic desire to do so. This means that a big part of the journey becomes a focus on what the student chooses to read... The struggle at night becomes getting them to switch off the light and stop reading….not getting their 'levelled reader' out in the first place.

Reading for pleasure is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Reading for Change, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

According to Nell (1988), reading for pleasure is a form of play that allows us to experience other worlds and roles in our imagination. Holden (2004) also conceived of reading as a “creative activity” that is far removed from the passive pursuit it is frequently perceived to be. Others have described reading for pleasure as a hermeneutic, interpretative activity, which is shaped by the reader’s expectations and experiences as well as by the social contexts in which it takes place (e.g. Graff, 1992).

But reading for pleasure is so much more than just a form of play or escapism – it is also a way of connecting with text. According to Pullman (2004), writing on the features that make reading pleasurable: Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book…. It isn’t like a lecture: it’s like a conversation. There’s a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader

questions, the book responds, the reader considers. And we are active about the process… We can skim or we can read it slowly; we can read every word, or we can skip long passages; we can read it in the order it presents itself, or we can read it in any order we please; we can look at the last page first, or decide to wait for it; we can put the book down and … we can assent or we can disagree.

Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2002) showed that reading enjoyment is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status. Reading for pleasure could therefore be one important way to help combat social exclusion and raise educational standards. According to Krashen (1993, p. 85), who is a major proponent of the value of reading for pleasure: When children read for pleasure, when they get “hooked on books”, they acquire, involuntarily and without conscious effort, nearly all of the so-called “language skills” many people are so concerned about: they will become adequate readers, acquire a large vocabulary, develop the ability to understand and use complex grammatical constructions, develop a good writing style, and become good (but not necessarily perfect) spellers. (But don't worry; the Speedy Six takes care of that!) Although the cornerstone for lifelong reading is laid in the early years, we also know that it is never too late to start reading for pleasure (Sheldrick-Ross, McKechnie and Rothbauer, 2005).

The National Literacy Trust cites overwhelming evidence that literacy has a significant relationship with a person’s happiness and success. A deep engagement with storytelling, and great literature, link directly to emotional development in primary children, according to the UK Inquiry (The Rose Review, 2008 Independent Review of the Primary School Curriculum.)

There is a strong association between the amount of reading for pleasure children reported and their reading achievement, reports the Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) (National Foundation for Educational Research, 2006, Twist et al. National Report for England) But the academic benefits of a strong leisure reading habit are not confined to improved reading ability. Leisure reading makes students more articulate, develops higher order

reasoning, and promotes critical thinking, says the National Endowment for the Arts in "To read or not to read", 2007.

So let us break it down - it is clear that children should be able to read for pleasure, not a level, but how do we ensure that children CAN read for pleasure?

Over the past four decades, numerous large-scale reviews of research into the effective teaching of reading have occurred in North America, Britain and Australia in an attempt to provide definitive and evidence-based guidelines for education systems (Adams, 1990; Anderson, 1985; Chall, 1967, 1996; DEST, 2005; NICHD, 2000; Rose, 2006). There is a compelling consistency in the findings and recommendations of these met analyses. This paper http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/literacy/files/links/link_157541.pdf brings together those findings within a framework containing six major components. “While it is somewhat perilous to reduce a complex behaviour such as reading into a small number of component parts, for the purposes of clarity and ease of understanding, the framework is offered here as one way of synthesising the major findings of an enormous number of empirical studies into the components of an effective reading program. Each of the following six components will be expanded in future papers that will provide key messages and strategies for classroom implementation.” The ‘Big Six’ comprise of Oral language / Phonological awareness (specifically phonemic awareness, a subset crucial for reading and spelling) / Phonics / Vocabulary / Fluency / Comprehension

There is a ‘preparing the brain to be ABLE to read’ phase (1), a ‘learning to read’ phase (2) and a ‘reading with higher order thinking, to excite the heart and soul’ phase. (3)

Within SSP students go through the first two phases in class, together, using differentiated teaching, so that they ALL enter Year 2 already in Phase 3 and are on a more even playing field. The focus is then on reading for pleasure, curriculum content, and further developing higher order thinking, and high level writing skills. The two go hand in hand. So the elements of the Big Six are embedded within Phase 1 (Oral Language and Phonemic Awareness) and Phase 2 (Oral Language, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency and Comprehension. Why is there a ‘Phase 1’?

Some children are ready to move to Phase 2 in week 2 of Prep! This structure ensures that ‘red alert’ students are picked up straight away however, as this warns us of potential issues, eg Dyslexia. The basic Phase 2 routine ensures that teachers include every element of the Big Six, for two hours, daily. Use the SSP free ‘coded reader’ site SSPReaders.com to download and order codable readers, to reinforce code knowledge during the learning to read phase (SSP Phase 2). Readers are organised according to the explicit teaching order of the code, and align with the UK Government program Letters and Sounds.

When they are fluently code mapping, with comprehension, they are no longer in the ‘learning to read and spell’ phase and move into Phase 3.

So in Prep and Year 1 teachers confirm what students already know – i.e. ‘your child is on the Yellow Code Level’, and parents know what this means. Students work through Green, Purple, Yellow and Blue Code Levels, with rapid coding and comprehension at that code level. Everyone speaks the same language. Students understand their own learning journey.

For Australia to really move forward, and no longer send students into year 2 in the ‘learning to read’ phase, simply use SSP, so that the whole code has been taught explicitly and discovered using inquiry learning. But also use it so that children are not just able to read, but CHOOSE to read. They go through the 4 Code Levels in the learning to read phase (these align with the UK Government program Letters and Sounds) and are then known as Clever Clouds i.e. ‘readers’. You can Probe test them for a ‘level’ if you have to, but during the year there are no ‘reading levels’ and children choose what they want to read for silent and shared reading times. The National Curriculum dictates what they read

to learn. The teacher also chooses books to share with the class, as a way to evoke oral comprehension.

‘Australia could become a country obsessed with ‘reading for pleasure and not a 'level'’, which would change everything with regards to our academic outcomes across the curriculum.’ A Prep teacher recently wrote to us about this issue (www.facebook.com/readaustralia June 14 2015) " I know benchmarking has to be done and I, like many, are just doing it to tick a box so to speak – but I cannot keep up with the Running Records!

My kids are moving at least 1 level per week! I have 21 chn in my class and 16 chn have completed the END OF YEAR Prep Reading Benchmarks for the North Queensland Region (PM7-PM9).

The 16 chn are Reading PM 7 – PM 14, with the majority on PM 10/11, these chn have just completed Yellow Code Level this week.

I have 18 out of 21 who reached the Semester 1 Benchmark of a PM 4.

I am very excited for them and where they will go!

We are using the M100 words (school decision) – I have coded every level and my kids also code these everyday – just 5mins with each child at their level. I have children who have completed the first 100+ words and say them automatically instead of having to code them – it is just amazing to see how quickly they can code an unfamiliar word and make the necessary changes to the speech sounds in a heartbeat so that it is pronounced correctly.

While completing a maths activity today, I noticed that each table was reciting, discussing and making up their own versions of texts that we have read together in class. As if this wasn’t enough, they were then reciting it in speech sounds and orally spelling random words from the texts to each other, all while completing the maths activity – multi-tasking at its best! "

I love where SSP is taking my kids – I can’t wait to see where they are in Term 4

Recent Research - reading for pleasure boosts maths results.. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10299763/Reading-for-pleasure-boosts-pupils-results-in-maths.html Reading was found to be more important for children’s cognitive development at secondary school than the influence of their parents. The combined effect of regular reading, visits to the library and ready access to

newspapers at 16 was four times greater than the advantage children gained from having a well-educated parent with a university degree, it was claimed. Dr Sullivan added: “It may seem surprising that reading for pleasure would help to improve children’s maths scores. “But it is likely that strong reading ability will enable children to absorb and understand new information and affect their attainment in all subjects.”

Please read and share this http://pennykittle.net/uploads/images/PDFs/Reports/Reading_pleasure_2006.pdf and help change our focus.

Recommendations from the International Dyslexia Association place emphasis on the importance of learning the alphabetic code and the twin processes of blending and segmenting as the basis of learning to read. They do not support programs, therefore, that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach, which place emphasis on the three cueing system and guessing from context as acceptable strategies for identifying words. Examples of programs that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach include but are not limited to programs such as Reading Recovery and the literacy approaches developed by Fountas and Pinnell, including Levelled Literacy Intervention and Guided Reading. The Learning Difficulties Australia (LDA) recently released a clear statement in this regard. https://www.ldaustralia.org/client/documents/LDA%20Position%20Statement%20on%20Reading%20Instruction%20%20May%202015.pdf

As shown in the LDA document, Dr Louisa Moats recommends that a Speech to Print approach should be taken, and not a Print to Speech Approach. Disappointingly, many phonics based programs take a print to speech approach, which then leads to them also expecting children to memorise

whole words eg using ‘sight word flashcards’. Using a Speech to Print approach all but two words in the whole of the English language are ‘coded’ i.e. the students can link speech sounds with their representations on paper.

See the SSP Spelling Cloud keyring (a world first) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW3uU27oGxk

Published By: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Regular readers of this foundation's publications and web site know we believe strongly that schools should utilize "best practices" that are supported by scientific research. Three things are clear about early reading:

• Millions of children are needlessly classified as "disabled" when, in fact, their main problem is that nobody taught them to read when they were five and six years old.

• We know what works for nearly all children when it comes to imparting basic reading skills to them.

• We also know what doesn't work for most children. It's called "whole language."

Louisa Moats, has been a project director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Interventions Project in Washington, DC, a multiyear study of early reading instruction. She is one of the world's leading voices for the application of reading research in teacher preparation and classroom instruction. Louisa Cook Moats describes the whole-language approach; shows why it doesn't work and how it has been disproven by careful research; and explains why it nonetheless persists in practice and what should be done about that.

http://www.ldonline.org/article/6394/

The PM Reader and Benchmarking systems, Three Cueing System and an idea of ‘Levelled Readers’ all comes under the heading of ‘whole language’.

I created ‘Read Australia' after moving to Australia from the UK, where I was an OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) Inspector, responsible for reporting on standards and making recommendations for improvement. The UK government was already bringing about change, following the Rose Report. The Independent review of the teaching of early reading presents an interpretation of the evidence that Sir Jim Rose and his team of five advisors collected during their review of early reading and systematic phonics. The review addressed five aspects. The first aspect is the most significant: “what best practice should be expected in the teaching of early reading and systematic phonics” (p. 1), because the other four aspects which cover the development of national curricula; children with literacy difficulties; leadership and management; and value for money, are all influenced by aspect one. I soon realised that almost half of Australians were functionally illiterate (see ABS) and that teachers were not being given the support, training and resources needed to bring about dramatic change. I expected that changes were being made as a result of the National Inquiry, but (ten years later) little has changed, and far too many Australian students are still not getting what

they need, and deserve. So 'Read Australia' speaks for itself- let's get the whole of Australia not only ABLE to read but also choosing to read, for pleasure.

SSP Trainers deliver PD in-house and via Skype, however teachers can follow the SSP program without training. Prior to inspecting education standards in the UK I had a long and varied career, teaching children to read and spell before they started 'big school', advising schools about positive behaviour management, and helping disengaged, delinquent teenage boys get back on track after being in trouble with the police. The fact that none of them could read or write only increased my interest in 'the reading brain'. Why do so many students struggle to learn to read and spell, and so many never achieve this even after ten years in school? I have a 100% success rate i.e. have successfully taught every single student I have ever worked with. I would now challenge anyone in the world to teach any child to read and spell more quickly and easily. ‘I am The Reading Whisperer.’!

I chose Dyslexia, Behaviour Modification and PSDE (Personal, Social and Emotional Difficulties) to

study at Masters Degree level at Nottingham University and graduated with a Master of Special Educational Needs.

Rather than attempting to teach every student who is struggling to learn to read and spell, I decided to replicate what I do in a 'program' type structure that not only incorporates the 'what is needed' but my unique style of 'how'. Learning is meaningful, code cracking becomes part of story that the students become emotional invested in. I use an approach that literally 'wires brains' for learning, and ignites a passion for learning and an intrinsic desire in students to be their best self. The reason for using SSP is not just to ensure that no child enters Year 2 still learning to read, but that no child enters without a love of reading.' Reading for pleasure, reading to learn' becomes the norm.

The 'Wiring Brains' approach revolves around a child centred 'Piagetian' style that builds the curriculum around the child rather than expect the child to adapt to the curriculum, and where the learning environment becomes powerful with the teacher more of a 'Conductor' who facilitate optimum learning conditions.

It really is 'Visible Learning' (see John Hattie's research findings) in action. A fun, fully differentiated, stimulating approach that values individuals, and values the journey more than the end product. As you will realise after seeing SSP in action however (the literacy element of Wiring Brains) end results/ data are outstanding, in any socio economic area. So how can you access the SSP Program as a parent, tutor or classroom teacher, with students of any age? How can you start focusing on the Phase 2 routine which quickly moves students from code mapping speech sounds and their representations on paper, to being code mappers who do this with fluency and comprehension, and can write (with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation) as quickly as they can talk? Start at www.WiringBrains.com

An important element of the SSP Approach however is that it is grounded in research rather than ideology, as discussed. Therefore, students are not given whole language readers (eg PM Readers) at least until they are coding with fluency and comprehension at the SSP Blue Level i.e. equivalent to Letters and Sounds Phase 5 (free Government program). The likely-hood of teachers, aides or parents unwittingly using the three cueing system is therefore dramatically reduced, and students become independent readers before Grade 2. Readers can be seen at www.SSPReaders.com

Wiring Brains (Education) aim to ensure that every school has the resources, support and knowledge needed to ensure that every child learns to read and spell by the time they are six years old. Is this farfetched? Not in the UK, where changes have been implemented since their National Inquiry. Please read the document ‘Reading by Six, How the Best Schools Do It’ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reading-by-six-how-the-best-schools-do-it There is only one thing worse than knowing that almost half of Australians have been deprived of the ability to not only read, but to be able to read for pleasure. That is putting the next generation through the same fate. PM Readers, Benchmarking, Levelled Readers, Running Records and the Three Cueing System must be removed from Australian classrooms. To hear that some education departments are mandating that schools use strategies that do not align with the National Inquiry is not only exclusive (dyslexic students will struggle to learn to read and spell in this way) but it slows down the process for the majority. It has to stop..

Miss Emma

The Reading Whisperer

www.WiringBrains.com www.ReadAustralia.com

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