School Report - Secure at Reading Level 1 - pls explain

[carocaro]

What does that mean?

I have Googled but can't find anything specific about the levels. I just would like a guide of where my DS should be for his age, roughly, I get they are all a different places.

He's finishing year 3, is dyslexic.

If it's National Curriculum Levels Year 3 should be within levels 2 and 3

It means he's not doing very well. This is the level he should be achieving in Year 1.

Sorry..... My DD is also dyslexic and also a level 1. So I can guess how you feel

What is the school doing about this?

You might find this interesting:

SP study result - no dyslexia, ALL children reading...

The study was carried out by an Educational Psychologist.

This is not at all interesting without some more information and real data to back it up and clarify.

Nor does learning to read stop a dyslexic from being dyslexic. All it means is that they have learnt to read, but they still have their brain wired differently which can be both a gift and a hinderance.

Einstein and Da Vinci didn't stop being dyslexic when they learnt to read...

You are right that it is a crime that our kids are being failed - but you are not right that synthetic phonics is a magic wand that will solve the English worlds reading problems.

"The BPS (British Psychological Society) definition of dyslexia is children who fail to read and write after receiving appropriate teaching."

That is the only bit of the 'dyslexia' definition which is common to all definitions.

As far as I am aware, 'conditions' which appear to be psychological or physical in origin are categorised and defined by the appropriate medical or psychological bodies.

Psychologists stick very much to this 'basic' definition of 'dyslexia'. Unfortunately there is much speculation, and many different theories, as to what causes this difficulty with learning to read. So much so that some theorisers have postulated a number of different 'types' of dyslexia. Among the welter of theories and 'types' positive assertions about the nature of dyslexia seem a bit optimistic.

And what evidence is there that Da Vinci and Einstein were 'dyslexic', apart from the fact that it appears to be an amazingly elastic condition which can be stretched to accommodate any assertion anyone cares to make..?

This however is interesting:

Mumsnet threads on reading and spelling

It looks like a fairly systematic campaign is being launched to convince us middle-class south-east mums that synthetic phonics is the answer to all our childrens problems...

I think it's working. I do think you've convinced most of the poor neurotic mums who post here.

This is also interesting:

What works for pupils with literacy difficulties?

It is a government report that evaluates and rates a range of literacy interventions that are currently being used in our schools. It is genuinely interesting - although my SENCO didn't seem to think so....

I am very glad to hear that 'it is working'.

The more children who are given good, systematic, structured synthetic phonics instruction the fewer will present with reading difficulties. Then mumsnet won't be full of threads started by mothers who are ( quite rightly) worried about their children's reading skills (i.e. lack of).

When somebody presents me with the evidence that any other method reliably teaches all but a very tiny handful (3 - 5%, as opposed to the current 20%) of children to read and spell I shall be very pleased to look at it. As it is, the evidence so far is that the methods which have prevailed in UK schools for the last 30 years or more have reliably failed 20% or more of the population.

Has it not struck you that the posters who stress the importance of SP teaching are professionally involved in one way or another with the initial teaching of reading or the remediation of reading difficulties. All that we are interested in is the most effective way to do this. We aren't interested into clinging to a failed ideology; we do what we do because it works; it doesn't fail children.

And, heaven help us, we are daft enough to think that we could save some parents & children a lot of heartache (and inappropriate labelling) if they were pointed in the right direction for help.

(P.S I'd be interested to know what you found interesting about Prof. Brook's publication. As I recall, the most effective interventions were all phonics based)

MaizieD, You recall wrong. The top 2 most effective interventions in this report are Arrow and AcceleRead, neither of which are phonics based.

You are right that teaching children to read with synthetic phonics is a good idea - but there will still be children who don't learn this way. If you look at the stats on the read write inc site you will see that schools are still not teaching all of their children to read in the infants using this scheme.

Now these are good results, and indicate that read write inc is a good scheme that should be used. But what it also indicates that other strategies are needed as well for some kids.

I am not interested in finding a strategy that works for all kids. I am interested in finding a strategy that works for my kids. And I know schools need to be use multiple different strategies if they are going to teach all kids. (That does not necessarily mean multiple strategies all at once. It might mean an initial 2 years of read write inc for all kids - and then tailoring individual programs for the 10 - 20% of kids who are not making adequate progress.)

But individual programmes for struggling readers, that is taken from a wide range of research and ideas is the key to getting all kids to read.

So, when you are posting on here to an unknown mum, you may well be talking to someone whose kid has been taught with synthetic phoncis and who desperately needs a different strategy to use.

What did your SENCO dislike about the publication IndigoBell.

We've actually been doing a small scale review of all the programmes (and their effectiveness) used by schools in my CoL SENCO/EP group.

Very interested in interventions I hadn't come across, Indigo, and so I googled Acceleread. Here's a description: "AcceleRead AcceleWrite by Vivienne Clifford and Martin Miles provides full instructions on how to use almost any computer to improve reading and writing skills. This is achieved through structured phonics exercises."

Another link describes it as "a structured, cumulative systematic phonics programme which involves the use of a computer with speech feedback software".

The descriptions of the Arrow programme are disconcertingly vague, but I would like to read further.

We've made excellent results with 3 dyslexic children using something called 'Dyslexic Protocol', given to one of our TAs in her last school by an Ed Psych. I don't know anything about it, other than it is phonic based, and the 3 children concerned have just rocketed from 2c to 3b in two terms. Am trying to get her to leave the materials with us, since she's moving to Scotland at the end of the term.

Sorry, just checked my notes and it's called 'Reading Protocol'. Am having no luck googling it though.

I use AcceleReadAcceleWrite with some ppupils. It's a very simple and useful little programme.

"Many parents on this forum will have already tried synthetic phonics, as most schools have now adopted this method..."

Really? From what I'm reading on here it sounds very much as if a few schools have adopted it and a large number are paying lip service to it.

I am really interested these 'other strategies', along with an explanation of how they teach the skills necesary for successful reading, and some longitudinal data on their effectiveness.

I would agree with maizie many schools say they are teaching reading using phonics but staff aren't confident in teaching phonics and the school insists on using ORT /Ginn etc reading schemes ...

mrz It wasn't so much that my SENCO didn't like the report - she didn't like me pointing it out to her. I'm fairly sure she didn't read it at all.

Feenie The concept behind AcceleRead is really simple. It has nothing to do with phonics, I think they are just using the popular tag for marketing purposes. Anyway all it is is using text-to-speech software to feed back to the kids what they have really written. Set any text-to-speech software up to say what is typed after every word, then ask the student to read and memorise a sentance, then take it away and ask them to type it.

The text-to-speech thing is excellent because the computer reads exactly what the type, so they don't have an adult correcting them, and they get to experiment with different letters until they understand how they correspond to the sounds....

I'm not sure any of this is of any comfort to the OP?

AcceleRead is a phonics programme in so much as the sentences that the children have to read and type are carefully structured phonics-based covering all the phonemes/grapheme.

IndigoBell I would treat the report with caution and not draw conclusions from it as to which intervention is most effective. As you have probably noticed the same intervention carried out by different authorities can have hugely different outcomes
AcceleRead in Devon had a reading gain of 16+ whereas in Jersey it only gave a gain of 8+ ...
Any programme is only as good as the staff delivering it!

both AcceleRead and Arrow are phonic programmes

from the report

Focusing on phonological skills for reading
Phonological skills, including spelling, were the focus of the largest number of studies. Among those
analysed here, the following mainly phonological schemes focused on reading:

Fourteen main schemes: ARROW, AcceleRead AcceleWrite, Direct Phonics, Lexia, Phono-Graphix?,
[PAT], Phonology with Reading, Read Write Inc. (including Fresh Start), SIDNEY, Sound Discovery,
Sounds~Write, Sound Training for Reading, THRASS and Toe by Toe;

We use LEXIA as our main intervention and find it effective when delivered by skilled staff.

I'm not a fan of AcceleRead - Direct Phonics - Read Write (in FS & KS1) THRASS or Toe to Toe and haven't had experience of using Arrow

mrz The conclusion I was drawing was that 5 minute box was not an effective intervention for my DD (she had alread been on it a year with very little progress), and that there were a lot of other interventions out there for the school to look into....

IndigoBell I was responding to your post where you said AcceleRead and Arrow were the top 2 most effective interventions and merely pointing out that the same programme can get wildly different results depending on how it is delivered and by whom...
The Five Minute Box has been extremely effective in some areas but as you say not worked for your child. Our LS adviser swears by Direct Phonics but we found it totally ineffective.

I would also say as a SENCO that I am aware there are lots of things out there but I really don't have the budget to buy them I wish I did. We have purchased LEXIA at a cost of a few thousand pounds ...yes thousand! other programmes cost hundreds of pounds and unfortunately with cuts to education spending it's going to be more difficult to provide individualised programmes

Indigo Bell said:

"The text-to-speech thing is excellent because the computer reads exactly what the type, so they don't have an adult correcting them, and they get to experiment with different letters until they understand how they correspond to the sounds..."

Which is 'phonics'!!

I do wonder what you think 'phonics' actually is

It is a very useful supplementary programme for getting children to understand that letters do indeed spell 'sounds' and that where they place the letters in a word is very relevant to reproducing the spoken word in writing.

It's very cheap, too

maizieD it does appear I had a different idea of what synthetic phonics was than you do. I thought it was reading systems like toe-by-to, dancing bears, and Read, Write, Inc, which do endless flashcards of a sound and then lots of blendings of sounds.

Whereas Acceleread does not expicitly teach a sound, and definately does not teach how to blend the sounds, or how to read the sounds stand-alone.

So this system definately feels very different than Read, Write, Inc which is always held up as the model.

But now I understand your definition.

Here is the wikipedia defintion:

Synthetic Phonics is a method of teaching reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.

So, I don't think acceleRead would meet this definition. Because it does not teach how to blend the sounds, nor what the actual sounds are.

Think you may be splitting hairs slightly, IndigoBell.