Teachers - Read, Write, Inc

[ConfusedGovernor]

I observed a RWI lesson yesterday and was very surprised by what I saw.

The school are thrilled with RWI and keep telling us governors how wonderful it is.

The statistics say otherwise, which is why I asked to observe a lesson.

(In particular, while adequate progress is made in reading, no progress is made in writing)

It is a junior school and I observed an hour lesson of 6 Y3 students all currently working at NC L1. All who have been in this RWI group for 2 terms now.

What I saw was:

• The children made no progress - they were taught nothing new in the hour.

• They read about 20 words, which they could already read before the lesson started.

(They read these words over and over, off the IWB and from their books - but it was still only about 20 different words)

• They wrote about 3 sentances, again with no new words or punctuation in them.

• The students weren't challenged. There was no opportunity for kids to read or write harder words. There was no differentiation at all.

Can any teacher tell me what's going on?

Why does schoool think it's brilliant?
Do you think it's brilliant?
What do you do teach reading / writing to kids in Y3 who can't read or write?

Do you teach writing in RWI, or do you teach it separately?
Do you spend a whole hour on RWI?

I'm well aware that as a governor I'm not allowed to have any opinion on teaching.

But I have a meeting after Easter to discuss why the kids aren't progressing and just want to know more about how the whole thing works, or should work.

I think (hope) you'll see far less L1s/ps coming up.
As I mentioned, 7 children from Y3 did RWI with KS1 at the beginning of the year. 4 of these were already low L2s (2 were from different schools, so hadn't accessed the whole scheme).
The 2 children remaining on the scheme with KS1 are the children with learning difficulties.

In Y4, the KS1 books are used with 2 children (who are reading at L1) who can't access the Comprehension scheme.

What might be a good idea, is to talk to the RWI manager of the infant feeder school, who should be able to tell you about the children's improvements in reading this year.

Fresh Start is intended for y5,6 & 7 RWI is intended for children working at 2B or below so that would include many older children....

We don't use any of the other RWI schemes.

This year we're trialling 'Power of Reading' (and are of course very happy with it)

Not sure what spelling scheme we use - but we have one.

And we're doing lots of Pie Corbett type stuff with writing - but we are not doing it exactly as he prescribes. We've modified it to suit.....

Perhaps pointing out to the head

In particular, differentiation borders on discrimination where pupils are constantly withdrawn from mainstream activities physically or follow completely different subject matter. In addition, working in one way, with few other opportunities to work in different types of settings will not meet all the needs of pupils or develop the flexibility to interact with a range of different people and in a range of situations.

Yes mrz. The Fresh start resources are for the older L2 children. It incorporates reading and writing, and has age-appropriate fiction and non-fiction texts to accompany it.

It seems to me that confused's school is not using age-appropriate RWI resources.

What would you expect a school to use with Y3 children working below level 3 mumbles?

There isn't any age appropriate RWI resources for Y3 and 4 children who are working at a level 1.

Regardless of what our feeder school does we need appropriate provision for these children.

RWI is good, and better than many of the alternatives, but it's not perfect. And it doesn't work well as a Y3/4 catch up program.

Mrz - I'd love to use your quote (where does it come from?) - but fear it is way too confrontational / antagonistic.

It's actually from the Downs-syndrome education online
(I will teach a pupil with DS next year and I'm doing some research)

www.down-syndrome.org/information/education/curriculum/?page=4

mrz They use a RWI comprehension programme / creative curriculum mix for those who are off the RWI scheme.

Currently, there are only two Y3 children on the RWI scheme with KS1. Both of them still come to the KS1 groups at the Y3 teachers' requests, as they are showing progress in their reading and writing. These two children need the continuous reinforcement of the sounds, which would not be done for 10 minutes at the start of each literacy lesson, however well differentiated!

So of the 3 L1/p children last year, one has left, one has been assimilated back into Y3 literacy as she is now reading at 2b, and the other two are progressing through the RWI groups.

Just out of interest, these are our current results, so assuming a sub-level's movement by the summer, there will probably only be 5 children visiting KS1 in the Autumn term.

2011-2012 SPRING HALF TERM RESULTS
(RWI IN Y2, 2.5 TERMS IN Y1, NONE IN YR)

I meant 4 L1/p children !!

CG. I don't think that there is anything wrong with RWI being used as an intervention. It teaches the same things that any other SP 'intervention' would teach. I can't help feeling that the way it is being used might be part of the problem.

The lesson you describe in your OP feels very slow to me, but, not knowing the children, what sort of speed they can work at, how much overlearning they need etc. it is difficult to judge.

In FreshStart I wouldn't be overtly practising words that the children had read in a previous lesson, but there are at least 3 opportunities in each module for children to read the same words; they practise reading some words initially, including words with the new grapheme or graphemes which the module focusses on, then they read the story (which obviously contains those words), then they read some again, later, in the Speed Words. So, if someone saw just the Speed Words section of the lesson they might think that the children haven't learned anything new, but in fact, they may have had a problems with some of the words in the initial practice and the repetition throughout the module has provided overlearning and mastery. Not to mention the fact that it is constantly reinforcing the fact that decoding and blending is much more reliable than guessing!

Another consideration is that, because the lessons aren't supposed to be hard for the children they might be giving the appearance of being easy when, in fact, they are pitched at just the right level of difficulty. With struggling children it is really important to keep their confidence levels up; challenge (within their capabilities), yes, but don't discourage.

I am interested to know why the school thinks so highly of the programme. What evidence do they give that the programme is working well?

Those reading levels look very good.

What are their writing levels?

For those 5 children who haven't made L1 after 2 years on RWI, will you still continue it in Y3? Won't you try something else?

I would have thought EAL kids would have different reasons to SEN kids for not learning to read, and you'd need one intervention for the EAL kids and a different intervention/s for kids with SEN.....

Reinforcement of the sounds does not have to be done in literacy. It could be done at another time......

RWI was written in a school with high levels of EAL

RWI was written in a school with high levels of EAL
And which achieved 90%+ L4 in English at KS2!

CG You may be interested to read this article by Ruth Miskin written in 2002 when she had just started publishing her programme (then called RML).

www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID=96&n_issueNumber=49

I am interested to know why the school thinks so highly of the programme. - me too! The evidence is it doesn't work (for us). We have quite a few children in Y5 who still can't read.

I guess I'll have to be brave and ask them.

they might be giving the appearance of being easy when, in fact, they are pitched at just the right level of difficulty - this is true, and impossible for me to evaluate. It is possible that the lesson was perfect.

(But there's still something going wrong, because they're not learning to write)

What bothered me was the complete lack of differentiation in that lesson. I know some of those kids well enough to know they have very different reasons why they can't read yet. Like I said there was a huge spread in cognitive abilities. 2 of the kids had severe learning difficulties. 5 didn't. (1 of the kids with SLD was only present for the first 10 minutes)

I'd expect a child who didn't learn to read in KS1 due to glue ear (which is now fixed), to make faster progress than a child who didn't learn to read due to SLD. But there wasn't the opportunity for a child to make faster progress in this lesson.

Re. the 5 children: they're actually all reading within L1 (I meant L1 and under) Revisiting KS1 groups t has worked with the 4 L1 and under this year, but we do have a question about children stalling that we have on our list to ask a RWI advisor. We are concerned about one of the Y3 children who has significant learning difficulties, and, as you say, has been doing RWI for 2 years.

RWI is working with the EAL children. (We do have a separate 'vocabulary' intervention session for them.)

Yes, in Y3, the sound reinforcement could be done at another time, but it isn't only about that. These two children need the 'Fred Fingers' approach for reading and spelling, as it is really working for them. Also, the teachers feel that they need to learn how to write simple sentences correctly, gradually introducing adjectives and connectives.
These two children are feeling good about themselves, as they are achieving, and can see their own progress through the groups.
Another thing is school-specific. Y3 has sporadic TA support, so these children would be required to work independently within a literacy session. At the moment, they are in a small group of 6-8 children, making steady progress in reading and writing skills, without being bombarded with the higher level text work which they can't understand.

Writing levels at Feb half term:
L1 and under 6, 2c 8, 2b 20, 2a+ 16
Not quite as impressive, but the trend's in the right direction.