Ruth Miskin Fresh Start

[Mintysmoons]

Hi folks,
Any thoughts on this for improving year 7 literacy? In particular with dyslexic students..
Thanks!

We use it for our UKS2 children. Seems to be helpful. It's very prescriptive though and helps if you've had the RWI training.

I don't like it. If you're using it, it will only work if you follow the program exactly as it says which means devoting a lot of daily curriculum time to it. If you don't follow it to the letter, it won't work. Instead, I would get some phonics flashcards and teach letter sounds alongside high frequency words. Give out 'Songbirds' staged books to those receiving intervention and listen to the children read daily.

We've got it for a biggish minority of students who have come up not able to read or write. Two members of staff have been on the training and students are grouped for their English lessons in this instead of the normal English curriculum.

Staff doing it love it and progress is being made pretty quickly. Not sure about using it for dyslexic students though - I feel they'd find it babyish and probably most can access the curriculum without it. Our students cannot access anything atm.

I prefer Apples and Pears.

Thanks all for taking the time to respond.

The reason I ask is my son will be coming up to the secondary in which I teach. He is dyslexic and performing pretty poorly in reading at primary.

My school runs Fresh Start for low readers, including some dyslexic students in the current year 7/last year’s 7s. I am not entirely convinced it will be useful for my son so I’m interested to hear about other interventions being used successfully.

Just wanted to get some views from you wise ones!

Thanks again.