Success For All - teaching children to read

[Baalamooree]

Is anyone familiar with the Success For All way of teaching children to read? I gather it is an American programme adopted by some schools (academies?) but not state schools.

How does it differ? Is it a more successful way of teaching reading, writing etc? Just wondering as I've come across a primary school that teaches this way and claims to have achieved remarkable results, but I have not heard of it before.

www.york.ac.uk/iee/assets/SFA_technical_report_2013.pdf

Isn't it nice when you can get funding for a longitudinal evaluation of your own commercial programme?

Might it have something to do with being the man in charge of the Institute for Effective Education...

Interesting that they noted that those schools that weren't using SFA were using some form of phonics program but only assessed the fidelity of the SFA schools. I wonder if they'd looked at the fidelity of all schools to whatever they were using and only looked at those with moderate to high fidelity they would have had the same results.

I'm a parent trying to do the same as you, only I don't have any teacher supporters.

Nice to know that plenty of teachers continue not to buy into the 'nothing by phonics' creed.

Even if they are ignoring the evidence and their statutory duty masha?

"I'm a parent trying to do the same as you, only I don't have any teacher supporters.

Nice to know that plenty of teachers continue not to buy into the 'nothing by phonics' creed."

Problem is, marsha, that the parents of the children being taught by these teachers are, in may cases, quite desperate because their children aren't learning to read. Like many of the posters here on mumsnet primary ed.

Nearly all children go through phases where they find learning to read English difficult. This is rarely because of the methods teachers use, but because they have trouble decoding words in which letters have different sounds from the ones they first learn for them, such as 'man - many, on - once, ear - learn, sound - soup'.

But luckily for the children of parents who post on MN primary, they are very unlikely to end up among the 1 in 5 who still don't read well by the end of primary school - because they get plenty of the one to one practice which makes all the difference.

If u look more closely at what goes on in the schools who are good at teaching reading and claim that this is because they use phonics, u'll find that they simply spend more time on teaching reading and give more one to one help to children who struggle.

But luckily for the children of parents who post on MN primary, they are very unlikely to end up among the 1 in 5 who still don't read well by the end of primary school - because they get plenty of the one to one practice which makes all the difference.

Thy're not so likely to end up among the 20% because they post on mumsnet about their dc's problems and get excellent advice from the phonics practitioners who post here AND from the experienced parents who know how phonics teaching has benefitted their dcs.

If u look more closely at what goes on in the schools who are good at teaching reading and claim that this is because they use phonics, u'll find that they simply spend more time on teaching reading and give more one to one help to children who struggle.

Could you clarify please whether this is a fact which you can back up, or your own opinion?

My ds was one of the 20% thoroughly confused and demoralised by mixed methods teaching - he loved books and stories and had shared them every day since being a baby.

The push for more literacy teaching began in the 80s, and especially after the introduction of the Literacy Hour in 1998. So all schools teach it much more now, to avoid the displeasure of Ofsted, than they used to 3 decades ago.

But if u read any of the so-called phonics 'research' like the Clackmananshire study carefully, u find that what the more successful classes did differently was simply give more help to struggling pupils.

My ds was one of the 20% thoroughly confused and demoralised by mixed methods teaching. So why were u as a phonics expert not able to help him.

My son was dyslexic, but i had no trouble seeing that all the words which were causing him reading or spelling problems had tricky bits in them. I was therefore able to help him cope by helping him to find ways of dealing with those. My main strategy was to draw his attention to the regular and tricky letters.

I suppose what SP does is not so different, because it makes children aware that many spellings have several sounds, especially the vowel ones, as single letters:
apple, apron, any; even, ever; finger, find; on, only, once; us, use; type, typical;
or in combinations:
paid, said; ear, early; our, your; good, food, flood; friend, fiend...

I am sure u know much better than i do how best to help children cope with those irregularities, but it is surely blindingly obvious that those inconsistencies are the main reason why so many children don't find learning to read easy?

Teachers can come up with different ways of dealing with them, but they can't make them go away.

How do you know they gave more help than either a) they did before or b) than other schools?

You don't.

It might be more correct therefore (see what I did there?) to say 'i rather suspect' or 'i suspect you would fund's.

My ds was confused by the sudden introduction of words such as naughty, furniture, children, etc, given to him for 6 months in a sight word scheme after a year of alright-ish phonics instruction and suitable books in Reception. The school are now in RI because of poor phonics teaching and writing results - unsurprisingly, they are not in RI because of irregularities in the English language.

'I suspect you would find'.

Sodding autocorrect.

How do you know they gave more help than either a) they did before or b) than other schools?

The Clackmananshire study which was widely used as the basis for promoting phonics was pretty shoddy. - There was hardly any comparison with matched schools or classes. The researchers appeared to have little idea what 'controlled research' means.

But the comments by assistants which were included in their report made it very clear that more careful monitoring of pupils who were falling behind and lots of extra help made all the difference.

From what u say, your son's problems are also open to other interpretations rather than the teaching methods used.

One thing is certain, there would be far fewer children with any kind of reading or writing difficulties if English spelling wasn't so inconsistent.

If it's certain, why do you say it in every single post?

I only point out that there would be far fewer children with any kind of reading or writing difficulties if English spelling wasn't so inconsistent when u and other phonics evangelists blame all reading and spelling difficulties just on insufficient use of phonics.

I try to put debates about reading and spelling difficulties on a more rational footing.

I try to put debates about reading and spelling difficulties on a more rational footing.

In which case, marsha, instead of posting your very discouraging messages on every thread on which we are offering practical advice to parents whose children are having problems, you might like to start a thread solely for debating the topic. Then we can have a good old ding dong without boring everyone else rigid.

And let u keep pushing your 'nothing but phonics message' unchallenged, Maizie?

I don't know if you've noticed this, marsha, but there are an awful lot of parents and teachers on this forum who 'push' the same message. Why do they push it? Because they know it works extremely well despite the idiosyncrasies of English spelling.

Perhaps if you had any experience of working with young children using a successful alternative masha people would take you seriously but all you do is repeat that it's because English is difficult without offering any workable suggestions how to help.

My DC's state school adopted SFA last academic year. They are still, as far as I know, teaching phonics thoroughly from nursery using letters and sounds and Jolly Phonics.

SFA seems to work well for this school as it's only a one form entry, and being able to group children from Y1 to Y6 according to their level / ability across the school rather than by their age and then groups within each class seems to be working well for them.

However, they've had good results for the phonics check since it was introduced because they teach phonics well, so SFA will be building on what they already do anyway.