As the lockdown continues, we’re sure you must be running out of ways to entertain your child, never mind keep them engaged in learning. In previous blogs, we’ve offered suggestions of how to make the most of home learning, so now – especially as we enter the holiday period – we thought you might appreciate some ideas for fun games you can play with your child that are also educational, so they will be improving their literacy skills without even realising.
Even once Term 4 resumes, you might find these games make a welcome break from your child’s daily learning, so keeping one or more as part of your daily routine will be a great way of building their vocabulary and phonemic development.
Play word games while walking with the family – I Spy, finding something beginning with a certain sound. This is an easy one that you don’t need any materials for and takes very little effort. Be sure to use sounds rather than the letter names, which will better assist their reading acquisition.
Make a treasure hunt in the garden or house with clues they have to read. This game requires a little more time investment and creativity, but is great fun and the reward mechanism involved is something children love. It might be somewhat onerous to make this a daily, or even weekly activity, but every couple of weeks or once a month is a good idea, as it gives your child something to look forward to – and gives you the time to think up more creative clues and hiding places.
Invest in some crossword puzzle books, or download some printable crosswords and do them together. Easy crosswords are fun and educational, such as these: https://www.puzzles-to-print.com/crossword-puzzles-for-kids/ We also love this website, which has crosswords based on the books of Roald Dhal. This is a great way to combine reading and games. You can spend time reading the books first, then work on the puzzles, which is a clever and fun way to nurture comprehension.
Download and work through the ICR Literacy Guides. Head to the RESOURCES page of our website, where you can request our Literacy Guides, which break down reading development into easy bite-sized chunks, with guidance on each topic. We post a new guide every month, so you can request all of the guides currently available, then check in each month to get the next issue.
Set aside time for reading together each day – making it fun. Not all children have a natural love of reading, so if reading time feels stressful for your child, or they find it difficult, they are going to resist. Think of ways to make this a special time of the day for them. For many children, simply having some quiet, uninterrupted time with you and reading together and maybe enjoy their favourite drink or snack as a treat is enough. But you can also get creative with this, and have your child create a tent where you can snuggle up together and read, or if the sun is shining, make a little picnic in the garden to accompany your reading time. Take the time to invest in making this essential learning time special and in no time you won’t have to persuade your child to read – they will be the one reminding you.
Make a list of words and play a “yes” or “no” game to work out each word, with questions such as:
· Does the word begin with the sound /cuh/?
· Does the word end in a vowel?
· Does the word have two syllables?
Make up silly rhymes, even inventing nonsense words. This can be so much fun and as the rhyming is the important part of this exercise the words don’t even have to mean anything.
Take turns in coming up with words that begin or end with a certain sound. You can also turn this into a more physical game, for example, by combining it with a game of ‘catch’. Think of a sound, then each person has to think of a word beginning with that sound as they catch the ball. Keep going until you run out of words, then start again with a new sound.
During these difficult covid times, education remains of paramount importance and includes the vital component of homework. We know this can be a challenge – especially if students are already completing their daily schoolwork at home, as well as their I Can Read lessons. It’s tempting to overlook homework, but homework involves essential activities which support and reinforce your child’s classroom and online learning. It is important that students know how to tackle homework, in order to reinforce what they learn from their lessons.
We’ve pulled together some useful tips on how you can best support your child to complete their homework during lockdown.
First, your child needs to know and understand the task required. Take a few minutes to sit with them to make sure that he or she fully appreciates exactly what is required to complete the set homework.
WRITING HOMEWORK
First, make sure your child has everything they need to complete the task without having to break their concentration to look for whatever item is missing.
If the task requires handwriting, does your child have clean paper and a good pen or pencil before they start?
If they can complete the homework on a computer, does he or she have access to the device for the duration of the task in order to complete their homework uninterrupted?
It’s a good idea to break the task up into a few sections defined by time. For example, divide the homework into a beginning section, a middle section and a final section. By allocating a set time for each section – say 30 minutes, your child won’t find the task overwhelming and feel discouraged by an hour and a half of continuous homework.
This technique gives them a sense of progress and achievement as they go and makes the work feel much more manageable.
Sections of writing tasks
Most writing tasks involve an introduction, a middle section (body), and a conclusion. An easy way to organise the task is to commence with a plan.
Ask your child to plan his or her work by making brief notes outlining the introduction, then jotting down points to expand on in the body of the piece, then finally, a couple of points for the conclusion to summarise what has been said.
Have your child take a break after the plan is completed. Then use another session to write the introduction, using the notes from the plan. The introduction may be only a paragraph if necessary, but should set the scene for the text.
Give them another a break (unless they are keen to carry on) before commencing the main body of the writing. This is the longest part and several paragraphs may be needed to develop the story, or to list details of a report to support the introduction. The middle section may be done over two sessions if necessary.
Finally, they can write the conclusion by summarising the points made and the premise of the writing.
The length of the piece of writing will determine how many breaks you would like to use to make the task accessible for your child.
READING AND SPELLING HOMEWORK
If the homework consists of reading a story and learning some spelling words from the story, divide the homework into sections. For example, if your child has a week to complete the homework before their next lesson, read the story over two or three sessions, ask the comprehension questions and learn the spelling. Separate these tasks so that the homework is completed over several days, rather than all at once.
Ten minutes reading every day (if your child is learning to read) is preferable to one long session of reading in which the child may be decoding new and unfamiliar words.
Children can tire easily with long tasks, which may affect their enjoyment of reading in the long term. Keeping sessions short makes tasks less arduous, and provides something to look forward to during the break.
SUMMARY
Tackling homework demands comes down to using time well. Only work as long as your child is able to before taking a break. If your child works on a task for 30 minutes, perhaps a ten minute break will be in order. Reward positive and cooperative behaviour with small rewards that you know will be effective with your child (though be sure to avoid sugary treats that will affect their ability to concentrate). Allow your child to take breaks but always set a restart time. Say, “We’ll have a short break but you will resume the task in 10 minutes, okay?”
Perhaps agree on an activity they look forward to once they finish their homework, such as playing a favourite game, going for a walk, watching a favourite TV show.
Breaking up tasks into smaller manageable units makes the job seem less onerous and this principle can be applied to most homework challenges.
For younger children, please also remember to check out our series of fun and educational Literacy Guides, which will help you to keep the literacy momentum going between pre-reading and reading lessons. https://icanreadsystem.com/resources/
If you’ve found this article helpful, please let us know and we will write some more along these lines. If there are any particular topics you would like us to address, again, please share your ideas with us and we’ll be happy to include our advice in future articles.
It’s hard to know exactly how your child is performing in literacy, and how to benchmark their progress. With children home-schooling, you currently have a rare opportunity to see them in action and with this guidance can gain a valuable insight into their reading competency.
By around the age of 7, all children should be literate and well able to read. In order to become literate, children must be taught how to read by teachers who are properly trained in the acquisition process. Though you could reasonably expect this to be the case in our schools, it unfortunately is not, which goes some way to explaining how and why Australian children now rank around 17th on the world scale where once they were ranked 3rd.
This article however, is not about why our ranking in Australia is so dismal or how it came to be. It’s about markers, which identify that your child may be at risk of reading failure. This is very important because the fact is that should your child be failing to acquire the necessary skills to become literate, it is likely that without the correct intervention, your child will continue to underachieve in this area. If you would like to read more information on this topic, check out our blog article on the subject https://icanreadsystem.com/why-the-final-australian-education-system-is-failing-your-child/
For the purpose of this article, we will assume that your child is 7 years or older and you have some concerns about his or her reading skills. Many children under the age of 7 years are not yet appropriately literate but the indicators of later reading failure are more subtle and as a parent or primary caregiver you should get your child assessed in order to determine if there are or will be problems in the future.
Assuming your child is 7 years or older, we can make some observations which should raise the red flag and you might consider doing some follow up. Please do not take on board anyone who says, “Oh, he’ll be right. He or she will come good later.” The evidence is that the child will not come good unless you take some positive action.
Let’s explore what observations you might make and what might be done to remedy them.
Children destined to become poor readers are hardly likely to enjoy reading, so make a note of how much your child actually reads without being pushed. If your child presents as quite competent in other indirectly related areas such as use of social media and communication, it may be that they just prefer not to read books. Try to avoid acting too concerned with your child, but time how long they might take to read something they themselves have picked up, and casually try to determine how much they comprehended. Should your child only read reluctantly, you may have some issues to address.
Today, with a lot of research identifying the importance of the relationship between sound and associated alphabetic symbols, you might like to note how easily your child associates sounds with the letters of the alphabet. Difficulty manipulating sounds in words is one of the hallmark characteristics of reading difficulties and can be seen at a young age. Your child might struggle with rhyming, word games, or recognizing words that start with the same sound so a few game-like exercises might indicate there are some issues to address.
For instance, if your child has difficulties playing the age-old game of ‘I Spy’, you might need to take a closer look. Make sure that you play the game by saying, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with the sound /cuh/,” but don’t say with the letter ‘c’. Choose objects represented by unambiguous first sounds like ‘cat‘ or ‘car’ but not ‘city’ which starts with the sound /ssss/ for example.
You can play a game by saying, “I’ll say 2 words which start with the same sound, like /cat and /car/ so what sound do they both start with?” The answer is /cuh/, not ‘c’ (the letter name).
In short, a child likely to have reading delay or problems with acquisition will probably present with a number of issues, which are listed below. These indications may be summed up as negative. Negative, in that your child is unlikely to read much or will not enjoy reading if he or she is challenged in these ways. You may be advised to get an assessment if you are concerned. A good assessment will determine the root cause for your child’s issues. Our experience is that an early identification of possible impediments to becoming a good reader makes it much more probable that the issues can be rectified with the right intervention by a professional reading teacher. Bear in mind that your child may, in today’s world, just not want to read when he or she has an internet connected device to play with. It’s worth your while to find out.
Here is a list of the more common indicators of reading delay:
Slow reading speed.
This indicates your child has issues with processing the text. They may be struggle to remember sight words rather than having the ability to decode the words and therefore be able to read words that are new to them.
Transposing letters in words.
This is when your child mixes letters up, causing them to incorrectly ‘read’ certain words.
Poor reading comprehension
Not only does the child have issues with articulating the words but also in understanding them.
Difficulty identifying single words
If your child reads books they are familiar with, they begin to memorise the text. Try pointing our single words to see whether they are able to read them in isolation. Memorising text could mean your child is lacking decoding skills.
Problems with spelling
Spelling issues are quite complex and linked to decoding ability. If your child has problems spelling relatively simple words, this indicates they have not acquired the phonemic skills required to correctly construct the words.
Omission or substitution of words while reading
Look out for your child glossing over, or guessing challenging words, rather than sounding out and decoding them.
Reversal of words while reading
If your child reverses some words, for example, the word ‘bad’ becomes ‘dab’. This usually happens when the first and last letters are similar, or mirror images of each other.
Difficulty decoding
Your childstruggles to decode words by breaking them down into syllables. They may even have difficulty with single letters and associating them with specific sounds.
Limited sight word vocabulary
Sight words are subject to recall abilities, and there is a limit to the number of words a child can retain in his or her memory. This is why decoding skills are so important. Sight words do have a role to play, but should not form the basis of reading acquisition.
Resistance to reading and lack of enjoyment
This is a big indicator of poor or weak reading skills. If reading is difficult for your child, it will always feel like a chore and they will resist.
While one or more of the above may be an indication of Dyslexia, it is probably unlikely, as this condition actually affects less than 5% of the population. You can read more about Dyslexia in our recent article https://icanreadsystem.com/is-your-child-dyslexic-we-dont-think-so/
In summary, people traditionally believed that learning how to read was something they ‘picked up’ as part of their overall education. Some children actually do pick up reading skills and there’s a reason they do. But those who cannot, need to have parents on their toes and taking notes, because – and keep this in mind – ‘it is unlikely that your child will grow out of any reading difficulty’ and poor literacy will prove to be a real hindrance for them in today’s world.
If you have concerns about your child’s reading abilities, please contact us for advice. We are passionate about early literacy and always happy to discuss any issues you may have, or answer any questions.
We continue to offer our free diagnostic assessment service via zoom, maintaining our face-to-face process as far as possible.
We know that online lessons can be a challenge and it can sometimes be difficult for parents to assist their child to participate. For younger children, the degree of parent interaction will be greater, and this is hard when you may be working yourself at home, and/or have myriad chores to keep on top of.
The psychologists at I Can Read have some suggestions to try to help you make your child’s online learning experience a little easier and less stressful.
Here are our top tips for successful home learning.
Create a quiet space for your child.
We know this is difficult during lockdown when all the family is at home, but it is one of the most important issues your child faces. Distractions of family members, pets, noise in the background, all contribute to reduce the effectiveness of their online lessons. If the lesson is presented by a teacher, these distractions at the student’s home will make the teacher’s job much harder too, especially if there are several students participating in the same lesson. It’s also a good idea to clear a desk or table of anything that could serve as a distraction, so the only thing your child has to focus on is the screen, the lesson, and their notes.
2. Give them privacy.
If your child is fortunate enough to have a one-to-one lesson with their teacher, please get out of the way and give them some privacy! Just as your child would not want you to witness them making a mistake in the classroom, nor would they want you to hear them make a mistake a mistake at home. Just as parents are not present in the classroom at school, we need to respect that dynamic and allow children the freedom to express themselves without feeling conscious of the family listening in.
3. Be mindful of the camera and microphone.
If there are other students participating in the lesson, do remember that they will be able to see you and you will see them. This has implications for the privacy of online lessons, and should be avoided, so it is important to remember not to enter the room, or study area while lessons are in progress. It is also extremely distracting for other students to see you or other members of your family during a lesson or at the beginning of a lesson. Also be aware of noise levels in the home, as your child may be required to unmute their microphone from time to time in order to participate effectively.
4. Get lesson-ready.
Get into the routine of setting up the computer and logging into the lesson well before it starts, to avoid any log in or connection hiccups. If the teacher has to wait while you get everything working, this takes up valuable lesson time. Much better that your child is online and waiting for the teacher, than the other way around, which also gives them a little quiet time to get into learning mode before the lesson starts. The best idea is to show your child how to log in to the lesson so that your assistance is not required, in which case you can be in another room for the duration of the lesson and leave student and teacher to it! Remember, the teacher wants your child’s full attention, and your child will benefit far more from the lesson if he or she is able to give his or her full attention to the teacher.
5. Start an end-of-the-day habit.
Home learning can be tiring and requires more focus than you might think, so at the end of their school day, it is tempting to let your child leave their desk straight away and relax, but just a few minutes preparing for the next day will prove invaluable.
Ask him or her to check what lesson they have first thing the following morning and to make sure they have all the materials they need set up and ready for the next day. Then throughout the day, at the end of each session, to repeat the process and assemble all required items for the next lesson.
It is not advisable to have students leave the lesson to look for a pencil or a book, for example, while the teacher looks at an empty chair and is obliged to wait! If there are other students in the same lesson, they will be obliged to wait also, unless the teacher continues the lesson in your child’s absence, which means he or she will miss part of the lesson.
The result is that everyone concerned will feel frustrated and this will affect the whole lesson.
6. Always be positive and encouraging about online lessons.
Remote teachers are doing their best, and they want their students to try their best also. We can all appreciate that online lessons are not ideal, but they are better than no lessons at all. When your child has finished the lesson and has logged off, then praise him or her, ask if there is any homework, and show how glad you are that he or she is taking their lessons seriously and wants to learn. Ask them to talk about their day and be sure to tell them how their positive attitude makes you proud!
7. Monitor your child’s wellbeing.
First of all, make sure your child is getting enough sleep. It’s tempting to let them stay up a little longer because they don’t have to get to school, but being tired will have a significant impact on their learning ability. Make sure they are awake well in advance of their daily lessons, have had time to eat and digest breakfast and keep well hydrated during the day.
Between lessons, encourage them to go outside and get some exercise and fresh air.
It is also a good idea to check on the temperature and aeriation of the room. Too cold and they won’t be able to concentrate, too warm and they will become lethargic. An open window and a little sunlight can do wonders for their concentration.
Should your child find the challenges of on-line learning unpleasant or emotionally difficult and you are unable to persuade him or her to take part, please don’t be impatient – just allow your child to take a break and then suggest attending for shorter periods until he or she gets used to it. Discuss strategies with your teacher so everyone is on board with a plan to engage your child effectively.
Keeping in touch with their friends is also very important, so coordinate with other parents and try to arrange a time every couple of days for your child to catch up with friends online.
8. Have some fun!
Being at home all day is tiring for the whole family, so give your child something to look forward to in the evening. Whether it’s going for a family walk, playing a game, watching a family movie, or reading a book together, this family time is very important and rejuvenating.
We hope this helps you to get the most out of this difficult time, and if you have any other ideas you would like to share from your own experience, please feel free to post them on our Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you.
Every year, approximately 15,000 Year 6 students across the state of New South Wales seek selective school placement by participating in the Selective High Schools Test to win one of the 3,600 places offered for first-year entry into selective high schools.
Competition is fierce and it’s important to note the importance of literacy and its influence on the overall academic assessment test.
The process and marking criteria
First, let’s look at the test components and how it is marked.
The Selective High School Placement Test changed in 2021, with the new test giving greater emphasis to thinking skills, mathematical reasoning, reading and writing, and has adjusted and balanced the weighting given to the mathematics, reading and thinking skills test components.
Thinking Skills (previously General Ability), which now has 40 questions in 40 minutes. Mathematical Reasoning Skills, with 35 questions in 40 minutes. Reading, with 30 questions in 40 minutes, and Writing, which has increased to 30 minutes in time, as well as a different style in the stimulus.
The process also includes ‘wild-score’ processing which identifies students who, based on their school performance, may have done much worse than expected in the test. Where such students have been identified the moderating process takes this into account and adjusts scores accordingly. This ensures that students will not be disadvantaged by other students who attend the same school and may have done much worse than expected because of serious illness, misadventure or other cause.
In general, entry into a government selective school is determined by a profile score, which is derived by combining the students’ school marks in English and mathematics with their test results in the placement text.
The new test format is marked differently to previous years, and is now scored out of 100 (previously scored out of 200). Raw tests scores are then scaled to reduce the variability in test question difficulty. This scaled score is added to the moderated school assessment score to determine the final placement score. Scaling is a state-wide undertaking, with each scaled test component adjusted so they are weighted equally.
The weighted scaled test scores for each component are as follows:
Reading – 25
Mathematical Reasoning – 25
Thinking Skills – 35
Writing – 15
And the moderated school assessment score is 20.
The Selection process
The placement score will vary from year to year depending on the number of students applying, versus the number of places available.
Selection committees, consisting a minimum of two people – typically the principle as well as a parent or community representative, will review the list of applications in order of profile scores.
They will also consider requests for special consideration, the potential impact of disabilities, ethnic backgrounds, and students whose English education is less than 48 months.
Additionally, they may consider other relevant evidence of academic merit, for example, from overseas or interstate.
Once placements have been offered, the committee will then create a reserve list, based on reserve numbers offered in the previous year.
Reading is the key
Clearly there is a strong emphasis on the combination of reading and writing, but the importance of literacy goes far beyond those two immediate subjects.
When students struggle with reading comprehension, they often find themselves struggling in other areas of their education, and without the essential foundation of literacy skills, can find it difficult to excel in school into their later studies.
This may cause students to struggle with the understand instructions in a variety of different subjects, including maths and thinking skills. However sharp a student’s thinking skills may be, the inability to fully understand some of the questions will inevitably affect their results and inhibit them reaching their full potential.
Literacy affects our daily lives; the way we think, the way we communicate, how we fit into society. Early literacy acquisition is much more than an educational priority – it’s an investment in your child’s future that will position them for success.
I Can Read can help. Our unique, proprietary reading system delivers a fail-safe programme to bring your child’s reading skills up to par, as well as a number of writing programmes to ensure your child is able to comprehensively express themselves in writing. Contact us to explore which of our programmes best provides what your child will need to succeed in his or her application.
A great starting point is to book a free diagnostic assessment at one of our centres, where your child can be benchmarked against expectations for their stage of education.
If you feel your child has the potential to win a selective school placement, it pays to start their literacy acquisition and development early to give them the edge they need.
I recently came across this article, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5th March 2021, with the alarming title;
Kids in the crossfire: ‘It’s not just that they can’t read – it affects every minute of their day’.
You can read the full article here, but as a literacy and reading acquisition expert and educational psychologist, I wanted to offer my interpretation of the piece.
This article should not be taken too seriously, except that the subject of the article is Callum who is 17 years old and has reading difficulties. These difficulties are hampering his life. It is not uncommon for teachers to tell parents whose children are struggling, “They’ll catch up.” But they don’t catch up!
Our view is that if a child cannot read effortlessly by grade three, something is wrong. The article points out two home truths. By grade 3, Callum needed intensive intervention in all areas of literacy, which never happened, so he never received the intervention he needed to overcome his difficulties. Second, his mother spent what she could afford on private tutors but by then, the gap between Callum and his peers was too wide, which is code for he was not instructed properly.
In its simplistic fashion, the article identifies that Callum failed to receive ‘phonics training’ which would certainly been of benefit to him. And that would likely be correct, as phonics has only just been reintroduced to the curriculum this year for year 1 students.
But, as discussed in our previous article https://icanreadsystem.com/when-will-they-ever-learn/, while we are happy to see phonics return as a necessary adjunct in learning how to read, phonics, per se is not sufficient. Teaching children to read is a specialised skill, which unfortunately is not prioritised when training teachers. The renowned researcher Max Coltheart wrote a great article about ten years ago, where he pointed out that the solution was not at hand because there were few people in Australia who could train teachers how to instruct children in the reading acquisition process.
The article hones in on ‘phonics’. It may be that children are not taught enough about phonics, but it is also as likely that those who are given ‘phonics training’ are misdirected and remain teachers of sight-based memory driven methods.
The tragedy is, as the article points out, that one in five 14-year-olds cannot read well enough, according to 2019 NAPLAN results, a figure that’s barely improved over a decade of national testing. Unfortunately, this article seems unaware that ‘Reading Recovery’ despite many teachers endorsing it, has little research to support that it is effective. Connie Juel wrote a penetrative report on Reading Recovery showing that its efficacy depended on children receiving one-on-one instruction and, in any event, the learning effects failed to sustain the child after about six weeks.
Teaching children to read using a word’s meaning as their guide is not balanced literacy. It’s rubbish! But it’s true that ‘Balanced literacy has been favoured by most Australian primary schools and university education faculties for decades’, which may go some way to explaining why so many children have acquired reading difficulties. The article contains a plethora of half-truths and misinterpreted assertions, but is it well meaning?
The syllabic approach does not work, but the article cites a number of schools using it. Its references to synthetic phonics is on steadier ground. However, the 18th century did not favour whole language and if you fail to learn how to read at Oatley Public School you must have a learning difficulty. The deviations to Japanese kana systems are meaningless, though it is probably quite true to assert that, ‘A lot of the kids in year 3, who were being referred to learning support, were struggling with phonemic awareness.’ Many teachers mention phonemic awareness, having little idea how to apply it. However, from what we read, there does seems to be a genuine desire to fix up the mess and one section stands above all others: ‘Children who can decode and understand words will find reading easier, the research says. And the more they read, the more readily they will recognise words, allowing them to focus more on what the words mean. They can fall back on phonics to decode unfamiliar words, just as adults do.’
The politicisation of this debate has not helped. School principals and teachers, irrespective of their time in the system, are unlikely to know how to teach reading, although this lack of expertise does not stop many educators promoting what they consider to be a result of their lengthy time in the classroom.
This article appears to place ‘phonics training’ up against the ineffectiveness of alternative approaches. The research does support phonics instruction if it is taught properly as part of the pre-literacy acquisition process but most often, it is not taught correctly.
Perhaps surprisingly, the ‘back to phonics brigade ‘does help. Many children who fail to appreciate that the spoken language consists of words and words consist of phonemes catch on when this simple fact is pointed out to them. The division between opposing groups as to the best instructional approach seems based more on beliefs rather than evidence. If the evidence was read closely and applied, our failures to teach children how to read would decrease significantly. The debate is not truly between ‘phonics’ and ‘whole word-whole language’ approaches any more than there is a debate between smoking or vaping. Both are bad for you. One might be less bad, so to speak.
With our passion for children’s literacy success, we created I Can Read, building a unique system, that has now taught over 300,000 children to read, and has never had a failure.
If you have concerns about your child’s reading education and would like find out more, we are always happy to chat. Please feel free to contact us any time…
Tony Earnshaw PhD
I Can Read Co-founder and Educational and Cognitive Psychologist
Parents often approach us with concerns that their child may be dyslexic.
So is dyslexia growing at an alarming rate, or is there another explanation? We believe the later.
You may not be aware that research into reading acquisition shows that, irrespective of the instructional methods used by teachers, some 60% of children will learn how to read. So this means, that irrespective of the teaching methods utilised by their teacher, around 60% of students work out for themselves the nature of the alphabetic principle, how to access phonemes, how to process a sequence of phonemes into co-articulated utterances, and more.
This 60% statistic enables schools to claim a majority success in teaching children to read, and the remaining 40% are noted as having some kind of learning difficulty. This is simply not true, and the failure rate of children learning to read at school can be attributed to the instructional inadequacy of the teaching method.
Dyslexia has become an easy label to assign to any child struggling with reading acquisition, while ignoring the root cause.
Some years ago, I worked for the Ministry of Education in Singapore as a Senior Educational Psychologist. Our work creating the I Can Read System had been completed, but we had not yet released the product into the educational market. Many children in Singapore attending elementary or primary school could not read. It was a puzzle, given that most non-readers were of at least average intelligence, and there was no apparent culprit that stood out as the cause of these poor levels of literacy. It was the time of my doctoral studies and my supervisor Professor Brian Byrne was visiting from the University of New England. Professor Byrne wrote The Alphabetic Principle and was right up to speed on the bottom-up approach to reading acquisition, starting with phonemic awareness.
We were both quite surprised at the extent of poor literacy in the local schools. I knew that it was unlikely that more than 3-5% of these students would be dyslexic, so it was a puzzle as to why so many had not learned how to read properly.
First a word about dyslexia.
TRUE DYSLEXIA IS QUITE RARE!
True developmental dyslexia is quite rare. A ‘truly’ dyslexic child resists even the best reading instructional attempts to remediate the condition and the condition has been shown to have strong organic associations both genetically and within the operations of the brain. The current estimate is that up to 5% of children may be in this category. The truth is that no one really knows.
Although we identified 20-40% of children in Singapore schools presenting with reading weaknesses, the fact is that most were not developmentally dyslexic and could respond positively to correct reading instruction. Herein lies the key to the problem of acquired reading difficulties: poor, ineffective teaching methodologies.
Singapore aside, acquired reading difficulties exist in nearly every English-speaking country where children are expected to know how to read, including Australia, and the cause is simply poor, ineffective teaching methodologies. Traditionally, children acquire the skill of learning how to read by passing through a pre-school process such as kindergarten, or they may be home-schooled in their early years and receive misguided instructions from parents or care givers.
We can list a number of such instructional approaches but most of them have a few things in common. These variables are the hidden culprits. What they have in common is that rather than rely on cognitive processing, they are memory-dependent. Teachers commonly start their instructions by drawing attention to the alphabet. They write the letters on a board, a,b,c… and the child often learns the names of the letters before anything else. Later the child may be shown a picture of a cat. The child may say the word /cat/ and be told that the word /cat/ starts with the letter c /see/. Overall, the child is taught the alphabet and is expected to memorise it. This is very common. We have all heard teachers say, “Ay for apple!”
However, there is no relationship between the first sound in the word /cat/, and the letter /see/. What this boils down to is that the child learns a whole language-based recall of previously sighted words. Just take flash cards which juxtapose a picture with a word. The child sees these enough times, and should the child have a strong visual memory, he or she will, in all likelihood, acquire a sight vocabulary of up to 2000 words. If a memory-dependent methodology is utilised by the child successfully, it is highly likely that the child may end up with no way of decoding unfamiliar words, words previously unseen and therefore un-memorised.
A child may look at the word ‘cat’ and say, “See, ay, tee” over and over, but sadly will never be able to produce the word ‘cat’ from this combination of letter names. Or another child (who may have memorised ‘cat’ as a sight word) may look at a nonsense word such as ‘dap’, and by saying “Dee, ay, pee,” will never be able to coarticulate the letters in the word to pronounce the word correctly, without knowing that the word is a combination of sounds (represented by letters) rather than letter names.
Some twenty years ago, most western education systems woke up to the effectiveness of ‘phonics training’, although sadly many failed to understand how phonics training should work. Instead of showing the child a picture of a /cat/ (example) and telling the child that the scribble below ‘says’ cat, teachers showed the child a picture of a cat and told the child that cat has three sounds /cuh-ah-tuh/ so don’t forget that (i.e., remember). Teachers have been famously caught starting ‘phonics training’ by writing the letter ‘a’ on a board and telling the child that this letter says the sound /ah/ and so on, except that it isn’t true. Letters do not make or say sounds. Letters represent sounds (are pictures or drawings of sounds). We make the sounds!
By now you might have gathered that the traditional method for learning to read was and is in many places, based on the ability to remember (for example) that the letter ‘a’ says the sound /ah/. It doesn’t!
The word /have/ does have the sound /ah/ but the word /gate/ does not. Nor do the words /was/, /path/, /any/, /ago/ (and there are more). This is where it all starts to go wrong for the child endowed with a weaker visual memory who applies the memory-dependent lessons into his approach to reading. Cumulatively, children taught to read through a memory-dependent sight-based methodology may work out for themselves the relationship between the spoken word and the ear’s ability to access its sounds and then attach the sound to its common visual representation. If they have (innate) phonemic awareness, the brain – having learned the language/words – they may be able to separate and access the sounds making up a word. Having accessed the sounds without being told the sounds, the next step required is the ability to process the sequence making up the word. It might sound a bit technical, and our opinion is that many children with acquired reading weaknesses are likely to have been taught by teachers who themselves, through no fault of their own, are poorly trained in teaching reading. Thus, these children may be experiencing what we call ‘acquired dyslexia’.
Enrolling your child with a specialist reading centre, such as I Can Read in preparation for starting school, will give them the best chance of reading success and equip them with skills they need to overcome the current ineffective teaching methods they will encounter. However, it is important to continue with their specialist reading education if possible, once they do start school to avoid losing the advantage they have gained.
Having established their child’s early learning, parents often fall into the trap of ceasing this specialist education at the start of Kindergarten. It is their reasonable belief that this external education it is no longer required, but in reality, find their child succumbing to ‘acquired dyslexia’ as a result of having to adapt to the education system’s memory-based learning.
Parents choosing to cease specialist learning at school age may find it useful to return to their reading centre periodically for an assessment to ensure their child is not falling behind.
Some children are better able to adapt than others, but at least being aware will be helpful in monitoring their progress.
The I Can Read system has taught over 300,000 children to read, including those with learning difficulties and some with dyslexia. In our experience, every child can learn to read with the right methodology, and any difficulties you do encounter, is likely not due to dyslexia.
Tony Earnshaw | Co-founder and Educational Psychologist, I CAN READ
If you would like more information on reading acquisition, are concerned about your child’s reading progress, or would like to book a FREE assessment, please contact the I Can Read head office at Dee Why on 02 9972 1419 or
A response to the Department of Education’s latest innovation!
NSW Education authorities are now making an assessment for phonics compulsory for 2021 Grade 1 students. It’s about 20 years late!
Frankly it’s ridiculous. The evidence cited by Sarah Mitchell (State Minister for Education) has been available since the 1970s. Clearly an assessment for phonics sensitivity is required but most so-called education experts do not appreciate that, while phonics awareness is a necessity, it is NOT sufficient for the beginning reader. One wonders how it is possible that a government isn’t up to speed on the research.
The reason is that the Department of Education doesn’t follow the research. Remember how it wasted $450 million on the failed system called ‘Reading Recovery’ which didn’t recover many participants even though a plethora of vocal teachers lauded it. It was applied because of political pressure from a minority of interested parties without the benefit of any supportive data.
This new ‘initiative’ from the NSW Dept of Education won’t hurt. It will mislead parents and teachers into believing that, by returning to a phonics inclusive approach, the solution will be found. The Department is playing catch up, again!
Phonics alone is NOT an effective way to teach reading.
Applying phonics as part of the learning process is clearly an improvement on whatever failed systems the Department currently applies, but it does not teach children how to read. Why the Department continues to trot out simplistic non-existent solutions beats us. Do they think that parents will blindly accept their poorly thought-out approaches?
Research has identified a number of necessary variables required as part of the English language acquisition process and phonics is clearly one of them. Phonics is basically the ability to associate a sound with a written letter. There is also the assumption that those tested will somehow have no difficulties processing the sequences of sounds/letters. This is false because many children will easily follow this approach innately without appreciating their actual cognitive activities.
We have no aim to be inflammatory, or political here – we are simply driven by our passion for the subject and our work of more than 20 years, built on solid research that the Department of Education chooses to ignore. This passion led us to create the unique I Can Read system, a proven and complete bottom-up based system which has taught nearly half a million children to read since 2003 and has never had a failure with its core programme. The I Can Read methodology is completely driven by research and was created by Australian registered educational psychologists.
Created here in Australia, our system was accepted by the Singapore Ministry of Education and made available in schools in that country. I Can Read was instrumental in Singapore becoming one of the most literate countries in the world, and has since spread across Asia.
Australian education leaders declined to embrace our system, and meanwhile, Australia has slipped in literacy from 4th in the world to 17th. For this reason, we created our own I Can Read total literacy learning centres for parents who are simply not satisfied with their childrens’ literacy progress in school.
Stick with those who actually know what they are doing in the application of reading instruction and have the data to back up their claims.
If you’d like more information, check out the following pages of our website, and if you would like to talk to someone to find out more, please call us on 02 9972 1419.
In most English-speaking countries, reading instruction begins as soon as a child develops the ability to be phonologically sensitive to the segmental sound system of English. This occurs at about four to five years of age Therefore, it is not unreasonable for primary teachers to expect Year 1 children to be able to read. But the reality is that many children won’t be fluent readers at that stage, and many of them will know little about phonological awareness, the alphabetic principal or blending strategies.
The reasons for this are:
Firstly, about twenty percent of children are phonologically insensitive. This means that cognitively, they don’t hear the separation of sounds in spoken words.
Secondly, some children are learning to read English as a second language, and have become confused about processing sequences of sound-letters. If they have captured their first language by depending on cues, recall or other memory-dependent associations, they may try to learn to read English in the same way.
Thirdly, a problem is bound to develop when instructional practices do not take into account how the brain processes information from sound to sight.
A good example of poor instructional practice is in the misapplication of phonics. We know the teaching of applied phonics is frequently applied incorrectly because many non-reading children actually know their phonics. They can associate a letter ‘b’ with its common sound /buh/, but they are learning backwards! The mistake occurs when the teacher shows the child the letters before correcting the child’s phonological (ability to access spoken sounds) skills.
These language skills need to develop before children learn to connect spoken sounds with their visual appearance in letters and words. When teachers introduce children to the letters of the alphabet first, before establishing phonological sensitivity, they mistakenly encourage the child to become dependent on visual recall or memory instead of linking the child’s appreciation of sounds and symbols through processing of sound to symbol.
Many teachers do not appreciate the significance of pre-reading skills, simply due to the way they themselves are trained through the current education system.
As parents, you can help prepare your children to learn to read, Here’s how:
Encourage them to use vocabulary and read to them every day.
Be patient and wait until the child is phonologically ready (usually after 3.5 years) before helping them to identify beginning spoken sounds.
Avoid memory dependency by not using flash cards for phonetically regular words and not pointing to words and asking your children to remember them.
Encourage them to love story time.
Play the I Spy game after the age of 3.5 to 4 years to encourage your children to hear the first sounds in spoken words (use sounds only; not letter names). Start with easy continuous sounds, such as /ssss/ and /mmm/ (sun, monkey).
Last, but not least, take them to a specialist reading centre like I Can Read so they can learn the right way!
If you are a parent or caregiver of a young child and if you have been attracted to internet based, or face-to-face learning programmes purporting to offer materials or resources designed to teach your child to read, perhaps you should consider a number of variables before you make any decisions.
Anyone promoting their products can pretty much say what they like on the internet. So how do you know it’s true? How do you know it’s reliable? Can you trace their claims back to the source? Or is it just spin? In the event that the site under your consideration makes attractive claims about what children can or cannot learn in respect to reading and literacy, ask a few questions such as:
To whom can a claim be traced? Or is it just rhetoric with no point of reference? In other words, does the site lack credibility? A site to take notice of will cite its authors and reference its claims; otherwise it lacks credibility.
For example, If you are checking out the I Can Read® System, you will learn how the I Can Read® came into existence. This is verifiable information: you can check it.
The I Can Read® System was developed by two Australian educational psychologists, Tony Earnshaw & Annabel Seargeant between 1997 and 2000. Both Tony Earnshaw and Annabel Seargeant are qualified and registered Australian educational psychologists. Tony has an undergraduate degree in English and a psychology degree from the University of New England in NSW as well as a Masters degree with first class honours in how children learn to read. Annabel has an undergraduate degree in English with a major in English literature, as well as a psychology degree and a post-grad Diploma in Counselling.
