Learning Difficulties Australia | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

Bulletin

50 years of advocating for better outcomes for students with learning difficulties

LDA Bulletin | Contents

LDA Council 2015-16 OFFICE BEARERS PRESIDENT Dr Lorraine Hammond IMMEDIATE PAST-PRESIDENT Jan Roberts VICE-PRESIDENT Alison Clarke TREASURER Dr Pye Twaddell SECRETARY Alison McMurtrie COUNCIL MEMBERS Professor Pamela Snow Tanya Forbes Jo Whithear Pam Judge Dr Wendy Moore Kristin Anthian Sue Spencer Dr Nicole Todd Professor Anne Castles COMMITTEE CONVENORS EXECUTIVE/ADMINISTRATION Lorraine Hammond

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Dr Lorraine Hammond

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Council Notes

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Teaching and using decodable text Maureen Pollard responds to a Q&A on decodable texts in a reading program

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PUBLICATIONS Wendy Moore

CONSULTANTS Diane Barwood

LDA Contacts CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS PO Box 349, Carlton VIC 3050 www.ldaustralia.org.au ADMINISTRATION & MEMBERSHIP Kerrie McMahon [email protected] GENERAL ENQUIRIES Lorraine Hammond [email protected] Journal Editor Kevin Wheldall [email protected] BULLETIN AND eNEWS EDITOR Wendy Moore [email protected] WEBSITE EDITOR Pye Twaddell [email protected]

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The Bulletin is designed by Andrew Faith (www.littledesignstudio.com) Printed by The Print Team.

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The relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It’s complicated Danielle Colenbrander

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LDA MISSION

Learning Difficulties Australia is an association of teachers and other professionals dedicated to assisting students with learning difficulties through effective teaching practices based on scientific research, both in the classroom and through individualised instruction. THE BULLETIN The Bulletin is produced by the Publications Committee of Learning Difficulties Australia. Members of the Committee are Wendy Moore, Alison McMurtrie, Nicole Todd, Roslyn Neilson and Molly de Lemos. We welcome the submission of articles from LDA members and others with an interest in learning difficulties for possible inclusion in upcoming editions of this Bulletin. Please submit articles, correspondence about the Bulletin, or letters for publication to the editor ([email protected]). For questions about content, deadlines, length or style, please contact the editor. Articles in the Bulletin do not necessarily reflect the opinions nor carry the endorsement of Learning Difficulties Australia. Requests to reprint articles from the Bulletin should be addressed to the editor.

Decodable Words Versus Predictable Text Patrick Groff explains why decodable texts help students to apply phonics learning

WEBSITE Pye Twaddell

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Nicole Todd

From the President

Teaching early reading: a synthetic phonics approach Principal Jacqui O’Donnell shares her school’s success story

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Resource Review:

Phonics International resources and online course Debbie Hepplewhite provides on overview of her phonics resources

What can online courses offer in teacher education for learning difficulties?

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Kristin Anthian reviews a MOOC: A comprehensive free online training course

Predicting a child’s spelling skills at age seven

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Tanya Serry on findings from the ELVS study

Cover Story

50th Recollections

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50th Memories & Transmogrification: Diane Barwood and Daryl Greaves remember and reflect on the history of LDA

Another Brick in the WARL

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Kevin Wheldall describes an early literacy assessment tool

Assessment Review:

WARP

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Jan Roberts reviews the Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages

A letter to the Minister for Education

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Jo Rogers

Greg Ashman discusses cognitive load theory

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Consultants Corner

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Sue Spencer

Dr Lorraine Hammond

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s an academic I am in the privileged position of working with pre-service teachers who are about to start their careers, and experienced educators who are returning to post graduate study. With this great responsibility comes large piles of marking and I have just finished the final bundle for 2015 for the specialist units I teach about Learning Disabilities/Difficulties and Explicit/ Direct Instruction. My teaching is imbued by the same fundamental principle of ‘effective teaching practices based on scientific research’ that underpins the work of Learning Difficulties Australia. In fact, this is the one thing I hope my students take away from their studies: the ability to make and defend good instructional choices. Given this, it was particularly heartening to read a number of student papers (in the early hours of this morning) that cited Lyon and Esterline’s (2007) unwavering position that research is the only defensible foundation for educational practice. Others impressed me noting that literacy programs for students with learning difficulties are only every as good as the teacher and his/her understanding of the English language and process involved learning to read, write and spell.

The desire to have a positive impact on the quality of instruction students with learning difficulties receive is what cements LDA together as a Council and a Membership

For the three members of LDA Council who retired this year: Dr Molly de Lemos, Diane Barwood and Dr Roslyn Neilson, developing teacher knowledge is both a calling and a talent. Bringing a strong background in research and dedication to evidence-based practice, Molly served on Executive Council from 2004. Molly attracted speakers of the highest quality to LDA events and worked tirelessly in a number of different roles spanning professional learning, writing for the Bulletin and administration. Diane joined LDA in 1975 and has been a staunch supporter of our Consultant members ever since. She served on Executive Council and in recent times was the Convenor of the Consultants. There isn’t an app Diane has not heard of and we’ll be sure to call on her for her extensive knowledge of technology. While Ros joined us for just one year, she willingly shared her vast knowledge about speech and language, wrote for the Bulletin and remains a strong supporter of LDA. The desire to have a positive impact on the quality of instruction students with learning difficulties receive is what cements LDA together as a Council and a Membership. I look forward to working with the 2015-2016 Council who include researchers, speech pathologists, school principals, consultants, clinicians, teachers and academics. Together we bring a unique perspective of the challenges faced by individuals who experience difficulty with learning and a strong desire to see exemplary practice as the norm for all students. Lyon, G. R. & Esterline, E. (2007). Advancing education through research: False starts, broken promises, and light on the horizon. Behavioural Science, 20. pp. 27 – 93.

2016 LDA Membership Renewal In December, all existing LDA members who joined LDA in 2014 or earlier will receive their annual 2016 member renewal notification by post and also by email. The email will be sent via LDA’s upgraded website, which now provides for online renewal and emailed receipts for all online payments. However, there will still be manual member renewal and payment options for those who prefer not to pay online. Membership renewal notices for all members who joined in 2015, will be issued on an annual basis from their date of joining LDA. This will also apply for all Consultant Members who, if they choose to pay online, will have their certificates forwarded upon receipt of renewal and required evidence by LDA. Annual consultant renewal forms will be available on the website at www.ldaustralia.org and by post. Consultant members can also pay their annual Online Tutor Search registration fee online. In preparation for online LDA membership renewal, please make sure your contact details are up to date, especially your email address. Check your profile by logging in from the website homepage using your user name and password. Your user name is your LDA membership number. If you have forgotten your login details, please contact Kerrie McMahon at [email protected], and she will email these details to you. When you login, you can choose to have the website securely remember your login details for future reference. Pye Twaddell Convenor, Website Committee Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 3

LDA Bulletin | Presidents Report

From the President

LDA Bulletin | Council notes

Council notes

The 2015 Annual General Meeting Alison McMurtrie, Secretary, LDA

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he Annual General Meeting for LDA was held on Saturday the 17th October at the Treacy Conference Centre in Melbourne. An encouraging number of members and guests attended the AGM, 2015 Awards Presentation and then the 50th birthday celebrations. The outgoing LDA president, Jan Roberts, provided a comprehensive report outlining the activities of the past year. LDA’s commitment to quality professional development was highlighted, which was clearly demonstrated by the successful speaking tour of Dr Louisa Moats in March. This tour reached over 800 professionals. Later in the year LDA hosted a couple of events where Professor Julian Elliott, author of the well-received book “The Dyslexia Debate” spoke about the usefulness of the term ‘dyslexia’ which provoked some debate and respectful, much-needed discussion. On another occasion Dr Lorraine Hammond, LDA Vice-President and senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University spoke at an LDA workshop in Melbourne alongside two successful principals from Perth. Events such as these enable LDA members and nonmembers to access current research and discussion around effective instructional practice and policy in the area of learning difficulties. Jan expressed her gratitude to Dr Wendy Moore, convener of the LDA Publications Committee, for setting up the LDA eNews. This monthly communication enables LDA to inform members of interesting and relevant news items, upcoming LDA events and notifications. 4 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

The joint LDA/SPELD/LSTAQ conference in Brisbane was a great success. Numbers were up from the previous conference and Jan thanked Council member, Dr Nicole Todd for representing LDA on the conference planning committee. Pye Twaddell, treasurer of LDA and convenor of the website committee presented the audited financial statements for the year ending June 30, 2015. These are available upon request. She also informed members that work continues on streamlining and automating LDA administrative procedures. Members will, for the first time, be able to renew their membership online at the end of the year. Pye’s work on the website functionality is greatly appreciated. Members formally approved the recommendation by Council that Peter Westwood, Molly de Lemos and Diane Barwood be awarded Life Memberships for their contribution to the work of LDA over many years. Peter Westwood has contributed to both the Bulletin and Journal numerous times over several decades. His first contribution to an LDA publication was way back in 1978 and his latest contribution is in the most recent Journal, 37 years later! Molly de Lemos has worked with great dedication on Council for over 10 years. She has held the positions of secretary and president as well as convening the administrative committee. Her expertise and commitment to evidence-based practice has provided LDA with leadership and direction over the last decade. She has contributed significantly to identifying relevant professional development opportunities as well as sourcing and writing articles for our publications. She has also spent a considerable amount of time supporting consultants and helping with the setting up of administrative procedures. Diane Barwood’s involvement in LDA goes back 40 years. She has been on Council several times and has, in the last couple of years, headed up the Consultants Committee. It is fitting to acknowledge the dedication of members such as these as we

celebrate 50 years. The ongoing work of LDA depends on this voluntary commitment of its Council members. Following the business of the AGM, the recipients of the LDA Awards were announced. Emeritus Professor Max Coltheart was awarded the Eminent Researcher Award for 2015, presented by Taylor and Francis, publishers of the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties. Dr Tanya Serry was awarded the Early Career Research Award and Dr Anne Bellert’s paper was highly commended under the same award category. Emeritus Professor Brian Byrne was awarded the LDA Mona Tobias Award and Dr Danielle Colenbrander was awarded the LDA Tertiary Student Award. Max, Tanya and Brian shared their research and reflections at the Award Presentation following the AGM. As is the usual practice, a full Council meeting preceded the AGM where the incoming council members for 2015-16 were able to meet face to face to begin to plan for the year ahead. This year we welcomed three new members to Council, Tanya Forbes, Professor Pamela Snow and Kristin Anthian. Molly de Lemos, Diane Barwood and Roslyn Neilson retired from Council. They were thanked for their contribution to LDA during their time on Council. Fortunately LDA will continue to benefit from their experience as they have offered to stay involved. Incoming President, Dr Lorraine Hammond was welcomed. The 2015-2016 Council is looking forward to continuing the work of LDA in 2016. Thank you to our members for their support and commitment to the work of LDA.

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hree new members have joined Council for the year ahead. Professor Pamela Snow, Tanya Forbes and Kristin Anthian have agreed to serve on Council for 2015-2016. Each of them will bring valuable expertise and knowledge to LDA. Dr Molly de Lemos, Dr Roslyn Neilson and Diane Barwood have retired from Council. LDA extends grateful thanks to all three who have done a tremendous job. In particular we should highlight the contribution of Molly de Lemos over ten years. Molly’s role in providing stability and leadership over this time cannot be over-estimated. She will be greatly missed on Council but she has indicated she would be very happy to continue with her involvement in the organisation. A vote of thanks should also be extended to outgoing president, Jan Roberts, who led LDA admirably over the past year. It has been a particularly significant year for LDA as we celebrate 50 years. Jan has worked hard to ensure that events have run smoothly. Dr Lorraine Hammond takes on the role of president for the next year. Lorraine has served on Council for a number of years and was president in 2013. Her LDA experience will enable Council to ‘hit the ground running’ and she brings great vision and passion to the role. The changes to the LDA Constitution accepted at the AGM in 2013 are almost fully in operation. This will be the last year where we will have the position of Immediate Past President. All office bearers have been nominated for one year. Council members for 2015-16 are as follows:

Executive • Dr Lorraine Hammond – President • Jan Roberts – Immediate Past President • Dr Pye Twaddell – Treasurer • Alison Clarke – Vice President • Alison McMurtrie – Secretary

Ordinary Members of Council • • • • •

Professor Anne Castles Dr Nicole Todd Jo Whithear Dr Wendy Moore Pam Judge

• Sue Spencer • Professor Pamela Snow* (see profile below) • Kristin Anthian* (see profile below) • Tanya Forbes* (see profile below) * new members of Council

Introducing… Council Member Professor Pamela Snow, Vic PhD, FSPA, MAPS [email protected] Pamela is a Professor and Head of the Rural Health School at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University. She has taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate health professionals and also has experience in teacher education. Pamela is a registered psychologist, having qualified originally in speech pathology. Her research interests include oral language of high-risk young people and the role of oral language as an academic and mental health protective factor in childhood and adolescence as well as the application of evidence in the language-to-literacy transition in the early years of school. Pamela has research links with the education, welfare and justice sectors, and her research has been published in a wide range of international journals. She is frequently called upon to address education, health, welfare, and forensic audiences. She is a Fellow of the Speech Pathology Association of Australia and is a past Victorian State Chair of the Australian Psychological Society. She has over 120 publications, comprising refereed papers, book chapters, monographs and research reports. LDA is very fortunate to have access to Pamela’s expertise and looks forward to her contribution.

Council Member Tanya Forbes, QLD BSc, Grad Dip Ed (UNSW) AMADA [email protected] Tanya is a trained chemistry and biology teacher with experience in biomedical research. She spent ten years as a secondary Science Teacher in public and private schools in NSW and Queensland. Tanya became aware of issues around dyslexia or reading difficulties when her younger son started struggling in Prep. She realized that there was a real lack of understanding of the issues around dyslexia in the school and she began to educate herself in all the critical issues around difficulties with reading and writing. She did this to both support her own son, but to also advocate for all students with a learning difficulty. She completed specialist training in Orton Gillingham Multisensory Structured Language with the Australian Dyslexia Association and currently works as an education advisor for Speld Qld. Tanya is committed to closing the research to practice gap in our education system and has been working closely with local schools in her area to promote evidencebased practice. She has lobbied key politicians, contributed to submissions for reviews, worked with teachers and supported families. Her work with the Gold Coast Dyslexia Support Group has been around creating awareness and sharing information to support teachers, students and parents. Tanya has already worked with LDA by helping organize professional development in Queensland. She brings to Council both passion and knowledge that will greatly benefit LDA and its members.

Council Member Kristin Anthian, Vic Dip.T(EC), B.Ed(P), PGDip.Ed.St(ECI), M.Ed(SE.I&EI) [email protected] Kristin Anthian has worked in Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 5

LDA Bulletin | Council notes

LDA Council 2015-2016

LDA Bulletin | Council notes

education for over 25 years, 15 of those in the special education and learning difficulty field. She has worked in a variety of direct teaching and consultancy roles including supporting indigenous students with Auditory Processing Difficulties and Learning Difficulties for Save the Children Fund, as a Preschool Field Officer and Assessment Officer for Local Government to identify children at risk for learning difficulties and disabilities and in Early Intervention for Gateways Support Services as part of a

multidisciplinary allied health team. Kristin is currently a consultant member of Learning Difficulties Australia, a professional member of ADA and has her own private practice. She is a participant of the Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy Network, contributor to the Learning2Read website and runs workshops and speaks professionally on topics related to learning difficulties and evidence based practice, including systematic synthetic phonics. In 2013 she spoke at the Critical Agenda’s national Special Needs Conference on the impact of ADHD on learning and executive function, and positive intervention strategies for inclusive settings. In 2014 Kristin was involved in the VCAA VCE special

provisions review focus groups for students completing their final year of schooling, advocating for better understanding and support for students with learning difficulties. Kristin’s professional qualifications include teaching degrees in early childhood and primary education, a post graduate diploma in early intervention and a master’s degree in special education and inclusion. She is passionate about ensuring students presenting with language and learning difficulties receive targeted, explicit and systematic early intervention that is evidence based. Kristin brings to Council an array of skills and knowledge and we particularly look forward to her contribution to the consultant networks.

LDA Awards 2015

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DA congratulates all those who were the recipients of awards in 2015. The annual LDA awards presentation recognises those who have contributed significantly to the field of learning difficulties through research and/or practice.

Mona Tobias Award This year LDA is pleased to announce that Emeritus Professor Brian Byrne from the University of New England was awarded the Mona Tobias Award. Professor Byrne’s career has spanned many decades

and his research into reading has greatly contributed to the body of research that is cited when considering reading development, reading failure and reading interventions. He is widely published both in Australia and overseas and is particularly well known for his involvement in large-scale twin studies, disentangling genetic and environmental factors in reading acquisition. He has been committed to ensuring that research has practical applications for students who struggle with learning and continues to contribute to the area. Professor Byrne gave an insightful presentation after the AGM on the 17th October where he shared his reflections on his long career and his key influences along the way.

Tertiary Student Award

From L to R: Emeritus Profesor Max Coltheart, Outgoing President Jan Roberts, Dr Tanya Serry, and Professor Brian Byrne 6 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

Dr Danielle Colenbrander received the LDA Tertiary Student Award for her paper entitled Individual differences in the vocabulary skills of children with poor reading comprehension. A summary of her paper can be found in this Bulletin. Danielle, until recently, worked in the Cognitive Science

LDA Bulletin | Council notes

Department at Macquarie University where she completed her doctoral thesis earlier this year. She has recently relocated to the United Kingdom and has taken up a three-year research position at Bristol University.

AJLD Awards 2015 Eminent Researcher Award Emeritus Professor Max Coltheart AM from the Cognitive Science Department at Macquarie University, received the 2015 Eminent Researcher Award in recognition of his long career in reading research. Professor Coltheart’s influential contribution to the understanding of reading acquisition and impairment has provided a theoretical framework, the dual-route theory of reading, widely used today to understand the reading process and causes of reading failure. He has been an important figure in many areas relevant to learning difficulties including advocacy and encouraging research-based teaching practice. Max was presented with this award after the AGM by Sarah Blatchford, Regional Director of the Routledge (Taylor and Francis) who publish the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties (AJLD). He then presented a summary of his research on the causes of reading impairment and the implications for intervention. A paper on the same topic will be published in the next issue of AJLD. Professor Coltheart continues to guide scientific research through his work at the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders based at Macquarie University.

Early Career Researcher Award The Early Career Researcher Award was presented to Dr Tanya Serry for her paper entitled Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: findings from a community sample of Victorian children. This paper has been published in the latest issue of AJLD, which focuses on spelling. Dr Serry’s research is considered to have both theoretical and practical importance in the area of early identification of children at-risk of literacy difficulties. Dr Serry is a speech pathologist who has a particular research interest in literacy. She is currently a research fellow at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne and lecturer at La Trobe University. She was presented with her award by Sarah Blatchford, the Regional Director of Taylor and Francis who publish the LDA Journal and she

The audience at the LDA awards ceremony, where Emeritus Professor Max Coltheart, Dr Tanya Serry and Professor Byrne accepted their awards and spoke of their research and its impact. presented the key research finding of her research at the Awards Presentation following the AGM in Melbourne.

Early Career Researcher Award – Highly Commended Dr Anne Bellert was highly commended for her paper Effective Reteaching which will be published in the next edition of AJLD. This review focuses on re-teaching within a formative cycle of instruction in regular classroom settings. Dr Bellert has a research interest in learning difficulties, effective teaching of literacy and numeracy and the role of neuroscience in education. In 2008 she was awarded the LDA Tertiary Student Award. One of the goals of LDA is to encourage research into practice. Supporting and acknowledging those who contribute to the area of learning difficulties through the annual awards presentation is an important part of furthering this aim. LDA is grateful for the support of Routledge in sponsoring the Eminent Researcher and Early Career Researcher Award. Nominations for the LDA General Awards for 2016 are now open. See page 18 or the LDA website for further information about these awards and nomination procedures.

Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 7

LDA Bulletin | Decodable texts

Teaching and using decodable text Maureen Pollard – literacy consultant, educator and author of the Little Learners Love Literacy series – responds to a Q&A on decodable text with Jo Earp, from ACER’s Teacher magazine.

This article first appeared in Teacher, published by ACER. Reproduced with kind permission. Visit www.teachermagazine.com.au for more. What is decodable text? ‘Decodable text is text that children can read using their phonic knowledge. In the classroom we are teaching explicit phonics, the alphabetic code - the 44 sounds of English. Decodable text is the application of this knowledge and skill. Once children know the English alphabetic code, they can read anything. That is our goal - to teach this code explicitly, sequentially, quickly and apply it to decodable text. ‘The look on children’s faces when they realise how easy reading is knowing the sounds and connecting them to graphemes on the page. I call decodable text the ‘no tricks books’. They are so simple to use for both teachers, parents and children and importantly decodable text is supported by evidence-based research [from the US, the UK, and the National Inquiry into Teaching of Literacy in Australia].’ How do you incorporate it into your teaching? ‘It’s most effective in conjunction with an explicit and sequential phonics program.  In the UK they refer to this as 8 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

synthetic phonics, which sounds artificial, but it means synthesising or blending sounds. You can use decodable text without a structured phonics program, but it is not as efficient. ‘Little Learners Love Literacy is an example of a program that uses decodable text. It has seven stages and in the first stage children learn eight sounds and two vowels. They are then ready to read five decodable books. These books have a simple story structure and beautiful illustrations, which can be used for discussion and comprehension. ‘You choose books to match the sounds you’re teaching (if the child is in secondary or upper primary remember you’ll need to be looking for age-appropriate texts). The Alba and Talisman series from the UK are written for older children.’ How much time do you need to allocate in your planning? ‘You need to allow for daily, explicit teaching and practice of the skills. As well as making it part of your practice, the incidental application is important. So, weaving the teaching of the 44 sounds into other parts of the day, other areas of the curriculum, is vital.’ You mentioned about choosing books to match the sounds you’re teaching – what if the children want to read other books? ‘You will have children who will learn so quickly [with decodable text] that they will move on to other texts very quickly, and we encourage that – the aim is to have all children reading any book as quickly as possible. With this approach, the teacher is still reading literature-based books with and to the children every day and that’s important for vocabulary and language development. Provide a language-rich classroom but make sure you build into the day explicit phonics teaching and decodable text.’

What about children who are already reading when they get to school? ‘When you’re teaching phonics, it’s not just about reading, it’s about phonemic awareness and spelling. It is fine if children start school reading, as the teacher can then work on phonemic awareness and spelling. They need to know the alphabetic code when they are writing. ‘This approach supports both reading and spelling. If you are teaching children the alphabetic code they decode when they are reading, but they are also encoding with the same code when they are spelling. ‘As soon as you start introducing the first eight sounds, then children start to manipulate these graphemes to make words. They actually start spelling ... for example /t/-/a/-/p/, change it to /t/-/i//p/, change it to /t/-/i/-/n/. The reading and the spelling skills mesh together beautifully. I believe spelling starts in the Foundation Year.’ What about involving parents? In my experience, parents are keen to help and want to know how to support their child at home.  Explaining to them the school pedagogy, teaching them the code so they know exactly what their children are learning, and how to support them. What is so wonderful about decodable books is children practice at home what they have been taught at school. It is common sense. Parents understand it immediately.  As I said before, decodable books give children confidence - they do not have any tricks!   ‘It’s more effective if you adopt this approach across the school - there’s the collegial support, you can plan and monitor together and you can explain to parents that it’s a whole-school understanding.’

Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University

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he idea of “decodable words” is one of the basic principles of direct, intensive, systematic, early, and comprehensive (DISEC) instruction of a prearranged hierarchy of discrete phonics information. Soon after the alphabetic code (the concept that each speech sound in a language can be represented by a letter) was conceived, a method of teaching this phonics information to novice readers was devised. The most logical practice to this effect has been to bring to beginning readers’ conscious awareness the speech sounds in the language. This phonemic awareness is accomplished by showing fledgling readers a letter, while at the same time pronouncing a speech sound that the letter commonly represents. Then, the learners look at the letter in question, and repeat the given speech sound. These speech sound-letter correspondences are called phonics rules.

Decodable texts thus are ones that contain only familiar words that students have previously been prepared to decode through the application of phonics rules This “paired-associate” learning of phonics rules proves to be effective in getting neophyte readers ready (a) to look at letters in the serial order in

which they appear in familiar words, (b) to attach appropriate speech sounds to each letter (or letter cluster) in words, and (c) to blend together the speech sounds generated so as to produce an approximate pronunciation of a recognizable word. Beginning readers readily can infer the authentic pronunciation of a familiar written word if they gain access to its approximate pronunciation, it is found experimentally. This process of written word recognition is called “decoding.” A “decodable” word therefore is a familiar one that a learner has been prepared ahead of time to sound-out (attach speech sounds to each of) its letters. Decodable texts thus are ones that contain only familiar words that students have previously been prepared to decode through the application of phonics rules. It is discovered empirically that beginning readers are more successful in accurately reading decodable texts than they are in reading texts that contain words students have had no prior DISEC phonics instruction on how to identify. As opposed to decoding written words through the application of phonics rules, the experimentally discredited Whole Language (WL) approach to

teaching children to identify written words uses what WL experts call “predictable texts.” In this regard, the “Whole” in WL refers to the WL principle that children new to reading best learn to recognize written words within the context of whole words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. To understand adequately the meaning of “predictable” in predictable texts, as WL exploits the term, it is necessary to explain at some length what constitutes WL reading instruction. Instead of emphasizing young students’ attainment of knowledge of phonics rules, and how to apply them to read words, WL reading instruction concentrates on a different procedure. This is encouraging children to use the contexts of written sentences, paragraphs, and stories to guess at the identities of their words. Rather than teaching children a comprehensive amount of phonics information, and how to apply it to decode words, WL instructors reduce the number of phonics rules children learn to a bare minimum. In this respect, it often is recommended by WL luminaries that children’s knowledge of only the consonant speech sound-letter correspondences that occur at the Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 9

LDA Bulletin | Predictable v Decodable texts

Decodable Words Versus Predictable Text

LDA Bulletin | Predictable v Decodable texts

beginnings of words is necessary. This WL doctrine stipulates that application of a highly limited amount of phonics knowledge, along with guessing at the names of written words from sentence, paragraph, and story contexts, is the most time-effective way for beginning readers to master written word recognition skills. However, the vast majority of critical surveys of what relevant experimental investigations have to say on this issue reveal something else. It is that this WL doctrine, along with its other unique ones, are not corroborated by empirical findings. My many observations of WL teaching of reading in action, plus my extensive perusal of the writings of leaders of the WL movement, reveal other reasons why this form of reading tutelage is relatively time-ineffective. In WL classrooms, the entire class of illiterate children first sit as a group on a rug facing their teacher, who reads aloud to them, several times, an easy to understand story. Much time is devoted to stimulating children to engage in openended discussions of the story’s simplistic content, to expressing ideosyncratic reactions as to concepts and meanings in it, to repeating words and sentences the teacher has read aloud, and to acting-out the story’s narrative. Following these activities, the WL teacher displays an enlarged copy of the story previously read aloud. The children, who are unschooled in how letters represent speech sounds, are directed to “follow along,” as the teacher again and again reads aloud the given story. Occasionally, the WL teacher will stop, point out an individual word in a story, and request the pupils to repeat it. Sometimes, an explanatory remark will be made by the teacher about the initial consonant speech sound-letter correspondence of these words. However, it is impossible to know in this procedure to what extent the entire class of children actually is looking at words in the story being read aloud. It is my impression that it is customary for some children to not even look in the direction of the enlarged copy of the story on display. Also problematical is whether any child who repeats a word in the story, upon a request by the teacher, is looking at it. The next order of activities in the WL reading development approach is to break up the entire class into smallersized groups, and reiterate with each group what transpired before. Whole Language dogma claims that this rearrangement of students allows the teacher ample opportunity to discover, 10 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

and remedy if necessary, how well children are progressing toward the acquisition of reading ability. At the end of this second stage of WL reading instruction, it is held that children are satisfactorily prepared to read independently the story in question. Accordingly, they are sent back to their seats to carry out that assignment. Now, WL teachers busy themselves with engaging children on a one-on-one basis. Experts in WL reading instruction express great pride in the latter accomplishment, although pertinent experimental findings do not validate it as a time-effective instructional strategy. The stories involved in all the above WL procedures are ones selected because they are “predictable texts.” That is to say, the stories are deliberately written so that they repeat many times certain words, phrases, or sentences. A WL principle is that words, phrases, and sentences in these texts become predictable, i.e., foreseeable or logically calculable by beginning readers, if these pupils look at them a given number of times. For anyone familiar with the history of reading instruction in the U.S., WL assumptions about the efficacy of predictable texts clearly are borrowings from the now notorious “look-say” method of reading instruction (that nonetheless was highly popular for generations in America’s public schools). Look-say reading instruction textbooks also downgrade the importance of teaching phonics rules in a DISEC manner. This method’s foremost presumption is that the time it takes for novice readers to recognize written words via phonics instruction could be shortened significantly. It was held that if nonreaders were repetitively shown whole written words, until they were recognized as “sight” words, this would speed up their overall acquisition of reading ability. Sight words are ones children recognize rapidly, without sounding-out their letters. It now is well-established experimentally that the look-say methodology has fatal flaws. Children taught in this manner somehow are able to remember the identities of a relatively small number of words. However, they soon suffer an overload on their memory systems, and begin guessing wildly at the names of words in sentences. Coinstantaneously, pupils’ ability to accurately comprehend what they have read is badly affected.

This latter fault in WL reading teaching is hoped to be compensated for by urging beginning readers to add, omit, or substitute words or concepts in written materials--as they see fit. However, that is a vain expectation, as objective examinations of the results of WL reading instruction reveal. In California, for example, WL reading teaching recently was more popular than in any other state. As a consequence, the standardized reading test scores of young children in this state devolved to the lowest in the nation. This article on the differences between decodable and predictable texts by the late Dr. Patrick Groff, formerly Professor of Education at San Diego State University, was first published on the National Right to Read Foundation in September 2001. Dr Groff was a long standing supporter of direct systematic instruction in phonics and a critic of the whole language approach to the teaching of reading. This article can be downloaded from the NRRF website at http://www.nrrf.org/old/ decodable_vs_predictable.html.

An example of decodable text from the Little Learners Love Literacy series. Available at http://littlelearnersloveliteracyonline.com.au

Danielle Colenbrander

A

crucial aim of primary education is to ensure that children are able to read aloud accurately and fluently. However, there is more to reading than this. If children are to be able to understand the information they read, they must also be able to determine the meanings of the words they read, decipher the grammar of complex sentences, keep track of connections between ideas, and so forth. These latter skills are spoken (oral) language abilities. Children may have difficulties with these aspects of reading comprehension, even if they do not have difficulties with reading aloud (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Children who have poor reading comprehension despite age-appropriate reading aloud are often referred to as “poor comprehenders”. It is difficult to determine how many children fit this profile, largely because there is disagreement as to how exactly it should be defined, but estimates indicate that approximately 3-10% of school-aged children can be classified as poor comprehenders (Hulme & Snowling, 2011; Nation & Snowling, 1997; Stothard & Hulme, 1992; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991). Studies have shown that poor comprehenders have weak oral language skills from an early age (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop, 2010), and that their reading comprehension improves when they receive training in oral language skills

(Clarke, Snowling, Truelove & Hulme, 2010). Therefore, oral language difficulties are likely to be both a proximal and a distal cause of poor reading comprehension. Oral language is not a single skill however – it’s a range of different skills (including vocabulary, morphology, syntax, verbal reasoning). So which oral language skills are most important for reading comprehension? Do all poor comprehenders have problems with the same types of oral language skills, or do individual children differ? These questions are crucial when it comes to planning intervention (Cain & Oakhill, 2006). For example, oral vocabulary intervention may be appropriate for poor comprehenders with weak vocabulary skills, but it may have no effect on the reading comprehension of those with age-appropriate vocabulary, because their reading comprehension may be limited by a different factor. As part of my PhD research, I ran a study exploring the oral language skills of poor comprehenders at both the group and individual level (Colenbrander, Kohnen, Smith-Lock and Nickels, submitted). Thirteen poor comprehenders (children with age-appropriate nonword and irregular word reading abilities, but poor reading comprehension) aged 8 to 12 were compared to 20 controls with ageappropriate reading comprehension as well as age-appropriate nonword and irregular word reading accuracy. All participants were assessed on a variety of oral language skills such as vocabulary (ability to recognise written and spoken forms of words, ability to recognise and provide word meanings, name pictures, and comprehend the relationships between concepts), measures of phonological processing (nonword repetition), understanding of

syntax (matching pictures to complex sentences), listening comprehension (ability to answer questions about spoken paragraphs), working memory and non-verbal reasoning. At the group level, we found that poor comprehenders were poorer than controls on all measures of vocabulary and on measures of syntax and listening comprehension. There were no significant differences between the groups in phonological processing, working memory, or non-verbal reasoning. This is consistent with previous literature (Catts, Adlof & Weismer, 2006; Nation, Clarke, Marshall & Durand, 2010; Stothard & Hulme, 1992). However, the picture at the individual level was more complex. While the majority of poor comprehenders scored more poorly than controls on at least one of the vocabulary tasks, three poor comprehenders (23% of the sample) scored just as well as controls on all vocabulary measures. However, these three children did score more poorly than controls on other oral language tasks: either the syntax task, the listening comprehension task, or both. Hence, these aspects of oral language may have caused their reading comprehension problems. In addition, it was clear that all the poor comprehenders had some level of oral language deficit, but they did not all have the same type of oral language deficit. By assessing both oral language and reading comprehension at a single point in time, we could tell that poor comprehenders had oral language deficits. However, we could not tell whether their reading comprehension difficulties were caused by their oral language difficulties, or whether it was the other way around (for example, poor reading comprehension skills may have limited the children’s vocabulary growth). Therefore, we ran another study (Colenbrander, Nickels, Smith-Lock & Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 11

LDA Bulletin | Oral language and comprehension

The relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It’s complicated

LDA Bulletin | Oral language and comprehension

Kohnen, in preparation) in which 10 of our poor comprehenders received oral vocabulary training. This training was based on a method known as “Rich Vocabulary Instruction”, in which children receive many exposures to words in rich, interactive contexts (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002). By comparing each child’s level of improvement over the training program to their improvement over time without training, children acted as their own controls, and we could explore their response to intervention on the individual level. We found that while all poor comprehenders made improvements in vocabulary, only four made significant or near significant improvements in reading comprehension. These children were the ones who had the poorest vocabulary skills to begin with (they were also the youngest children in the study). This provides some evidence that poor vocabulary skills can cause poor reading comprehension – but only for some children. Future studies are needed to tease apart the effects of age and vocabulary skill, and to explore the causal role of other types of oral language difficulty. However, it’s important to note that poor comprehenders are not the only children whose reading comprehension skills may be affected by oral language weaknesses. Many children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are likely to have poor reading comprehension. In fact, it is likely that children with SLI and poor comprehenders sit at different points of a continuum of oral language skill (Kelso, Fletcher & Lee, 2007; Nation et al., 2004). There are, of course, also children who have both poor word reading abilities and poor oral language skills. In an ideal world, explicit oral language teaching (such as vocabulary instruction) should form a part of the regular curriculum, delivered alongside explicit, systematic phonics instruction, so that children receive a strong base in the important areas underlying reading comprehension skill. Excellent classroom teaching of these skills could be accompanied by a “response to intervention” framework which would allow for the detection and treatment of children who are falling behind (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan & Young, 2003). Furthermore, explicit oral language teaching should continue into the later primary and even secondary years of education (Starling, Munro, Togher & Arciuli, 2012). Reading comprehension 12 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

deficits (in the absence of deficits in reading aloud) may only become apparent in the later primary years, when children are expected to be able to learn independently from what they read (Elwer, Keenan, Olson, Byrne, & Samuelsson, 2013). In addition, demands on oral language skills change as children grow. Children with poor oral language skills may not be able to keep up with these changing demands, and may fall further behind as they get older (Kelso et al., 2007; Starling et al., 2012). Practically, many questions remain as to how explicit oral language teaching could be included in the curriculum, and what type of oral language instruction would be most beneficial – particularly since different children can have different types of oral language weaknesses. In light of this, it is likely that a multi-component training program targeting a variety of oral language skills would be most beneficial for the widest range of children. Indeed, a large randomized controlled trial comparing oral language and text comprehension training (Clarke et al., 2010) showed that multi-component oral language training – including vocabulary training, figurative language training, spoken narrative training, and reciprocal teaching (facilitated discussion about spoken texts) – was very effective in improving children’s reading comprehension at the group level. However, we do not know how children fared at the individual level, or which components of the oral language intervention were the most crucial. Nonetheless, our research and that of others (e.g. Cain & Oakhill, 2006; Clarke et al., 2010; Nation et al., 2004) demonstrates that oral language skills play a crucial role in reading comprehension, and that oral language instruction can mitigate reading comprehension difficulties. Future research at both the group and individual level is essential, so that we can determine not only what types of oral language teaching might be effective, but also for whom, and under what circumstances. Dr Danielle Colenbrander is the recipient of the 2015 LDA Tertiary Student Award. She is a speech pathologist whose primary research interests lie in reading and spelling acquisition, vocabulary, oral language and comprehension. Until recently she worked in the Cognitive Science Department at Macquarie University where she completed her doctoral studies earlier this year. She

moved to the UK in October where she has taken a three year research position at Bristol University.

References Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York, NY: Guilford. Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. (2006). Profiles of children with specific reading comprehension difficulties. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 683-696. doi:10.1348/000709905X67610 Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., & Weismer, S. E. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the Simple View of Reading. Journal of Language, Speech and Hearing Research, 49, 278-293. doi:10.1044/10924388(2006/023) Clarke, P. J., Snowling, M. J., Truelove, E., & Hulme, C. (2010). Ameliorating children’s reading-comprehension difficulties: A randomized controlled trial. Psychological Science, 21, 11061116. doi:10.1177/0956797610375449 Colenbrander, D., Kohnen, S., SmithLock, K., & Nickels, L. (Submitted). Individual differences in the vocabulary skills of children with reading comprehension difficulties. Colenbrander, D., Nickels, L. SmithLock, K., & Kohnen, S. (In preparation). Individual differences in response to vocabulary intervention for reading comprehension difficulties. Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Fourth Edition. Minneapolis, MN: Pearson. Elwer, S., Keenan, J. M., Olson, R. K., Byrne, B., & Samuelsson, S. (2013). Longitudinal stability and predictors of poor oral comprehenders and poor decoders. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 115, 497-516. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2012.12.001 Fuchs, D., Mock, D., Morgan, P. L., & Young, C. L. (2003). Responsiveness-tointervention: Definitions, evidence, and implications for the learning disabilities construct. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 18, 157–171. doi: 10.1111/1540-5826.00072 Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10. doi:10.1177/074193258600700104 Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The Simple View of Reading. Reading

Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2011). Children’s Reading Comprehension Difficulties: Nature, Causes, and Treatments. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 139-142. doi:10.1177/0963721411408673 Kelso, K., Fletcher, J., & Lee, P. (2007). Reading comprehension in children with specific language impairment: an examination of two subgroups. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 42, 39-57. doi: 10.1080/13682820600693013 Nation, K., Clarke, P., Marshall, C. M., & Durand, M. (2004). Hidden language impairments in children: Parallels between poor reading comprehension

and specific language impairment? Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 47, 199-211. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2004/017) Nation, K., Cocksey, J., Taylor, J. S., & Bishop, D. V. (2010). A longitudinal investigation of early reading and language skills in children with poor reading comprehension. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51, 1031-1039. doi:10.1111/j.14697610.2010.02254.x Nation, K., & Snowling, M. J. (1997). Assessing reading difficulties: the validity and utility of current measures of reading skill. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 67, 359370. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1997. tb01250.x

Starling, J., Munro, N., Togher, L., & Arciuli, J. (2012). Training Secondary School Teachers in Instructional Language Modification Techniques to Support Adolescents With Language Impairment: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 43, 474-495. doi:
 10.1044/0161-1461(2012/11-0066) Stothard, S. E., & Hulme, C. (1992). Reading comprehension difficulties in children: The role of language comprehension and working memory skills. Reading and Writing, 4, 245-246. doi:10.1007/BF01027150 Yuill, N., & Oakhill, J. (1991). Children’s problems in text comprehension: An experimental investigation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge.

Teaching early reading: a synthetic phonics approach Jacqui O’Donnell

2009, after considerable reflection on our students’ achievement in reading, we adopted Phonics International as the framework for intervention across our early childhood years.

Impetus for change

O

ur school is a public primary school in the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. It is a large school with around 850 students, ranging from 4 to 12 years old. There are four classes in most year levels, meaning that collaboration among teachers is extremely important to ensure consistency in learning programs. In

Analysis of the school’s performance in Reading in the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in recent years showed that our average score in Year 5 had been consistently below that of like schools (similar Socio-Economic Index) since 2007, and the gap was widening. The Year 3 results had been declining over the last 3 years, and for the first time the average score was below that of ‘like schools’ in 2009. It was a situation that was of concern and motivated a

thorough examination of the school’s approach to the teaching of reading. As Deputy Principal, I sourced research on the teaching of beginning reading, including a number of significant reports describing research undertaken to determine best practice in reading, especially early reading. Findings from the National Inquiry in to the Teaching of Reading (NITL, 2005), the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (Rose, 2006) from the United Kingdom, and reports of the National Reading Panel (2000) and the National Institute for Literacy (2005) in the United States were cited in various curriculum documents in Australia and overseas as evidence for the approaches advocated in the teaching of reading. A synthesis of the Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 13

LDA Bulletin | Synthetic phonics overview

and Writing, 2, 127-160. doi:10.1007/ BF00401799

LDA Bulletin | Synthetic phonics overview

key findings of the research identified a number of practices considered to be effective in the teaching of early reading. The common element in all reports was the need to provide systematic synthetic phonics instruction to students from the age of 5.

Systematic synthetic phonics instruction Both the NITL report (2005) and the Rose report (2006) identify the crucial role of systematic phonics instruction in developing effective word recognition skills for success in early reading. Phonics instruction is systematic when all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught directly and they are covered in a clearly defined sequence. Research and classroom findings suggest that the synthetic phonics approach, based on the level of the phoneme and the important skills of blending and segmenting all-throughthe-word, is the most effective (Johnston & Watson, 2004).

I encouraged the teachers to keep an open mind and ‘give it a go’. On reflection, our current approach to teaching beginning reading was to build students’ knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences; however the focus on blending and segmenting phonemes was not explicit in the early years. I searched the Internet for systematic, synthetic phonics approaches to determine what programs were available and it was here I came across the UK program, Phonics International (PI). I also read the Letters and Sounds program from the UK Literacy Strategy and found that the approach and sequence described in Phonics International reflected the phases within Letters and Sounds. I read carefully through the PI website and downloaded the free Unit 1 of the program. The three complexities of the alphabetic code are made explicit in the program: 1. One sound (phoneme) can be represented by one, two, three or four letters eg. k, sh, igh, eigh 2. One sound (phoneme) can be represented by different spellings (graphemes) eg. /oa/ can be represented by o, oa, ow, oe, o-e, eau, ough 3. One spelling can represent multiple sounds (or various phonemes) eg. ‘ough’ can be /oa/ though /or/ 14 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

thought /oo/ through /ou/ plough /u/ thorough What attracted me to using PI was the systematic approach to teaching the phonemes from simple to complex code. All resources needed by teachers to support effective phonics teaching were provided in printable, user-friendly and detailed step-by-step materials. This would save time and ensure a consistent approach between all classes within the Pre-Primary (‘Foundation’) and Year 1 teams. After discussions with the Principal, it was decided to purchase a site licence for Phonics International and begin implementation initially with the PrePrimary and Year 1 students the following year (2010). I made contact via email with Debbie Hepplewhite, the developer of the PI program, to seek her support and advice regarding introducing the program to teachers. Debbie has been a constant source of encouragement throughout our process of implementation.

Implementation of Phonics International I began by meeting with teachers in the Pre-Primary and Year 1 teams and sharing the data on reading achievement in the NAPLAN tests. I discussed the findings of the abovementioned research reports and the need to adopt a systematic, synthetic phonics approach to ensure quality first teaching in beginning reading. I described the Phonics International program to them and how it reflects international research on reading instruction and leading-edge practice. I printed off the PI Guidance booklet and downloaded all twelve units of PI and the Early Years Starter Package from the website, which I then burned to a CD, so that teachers could take the resources home to read and explore. I spoke to each

teacher individually about their thoughts or concerns about using PI to gauge how best to support implementation of the program. The response was mixed: some teachers were excited by the program and felt that the rigour of phonics teaching was exactly what was needed; others expressed concerns over trying to cover too much too soon and whether students in Pre-Primary were ready. I encouraged the teachers to keep an open mind and ‘give it a go’. We would regularly monitor how the program was going and make adjustments as needed.

The expectation was that teachers taught focused, explicit phonics lessons each day with opportunities for revision throughout the day. We commenced our PI journey at the start of 2010, excited about the opportunity it would provide for students to learn to read. I read through the PI website thoroughly, watching the videos, with the aim of putting together an approach to using the resources that I could share in a professional learning workshop with the teachers. I listed down the ‘must-haves’ for each phonics lesson as described in the section of the video ‘Basic Phonics Lesson’: • Revise previously taught graphemes • Introduce new grapheme • Practise blending all-through-the word to read • Practise segmenting all-through-theword to spell • Activity to consolidate learning This helped me to identify the essential resources needed to begin

included using the ‘I can read’ texts or ‘Sentences’ for dictation and creating a ‘phonic cloze’ where the phonemes taught over the previous couple of weeks were ‘clozed’ out and students had to choose the appropriate phoneme to complete words correctly. Pre-Primary teachers produced various activities to consolidate learning of the phonemes. These include a ‘placemat’ task where children got to learn a rhyme, write the grapheme, find the letter in magazines and draw a picture. To practise blending, teachers produced ‘Blend Books’ for students which consisted of the ‘I can read’ words’ list in each unit. The children were able to take them home each night to practise blending all-through-the-word to read. Teachers also listened to the children blend each day to ensure the sounds were being produced correctly. Teachers would model writing using words from the ‘I can read’ words’ list and other brainstormed words. Children suggested sentences which the teacher then modelled with appropriate punctuation. The students then copied the sentences into their ‘Sounds Book’. To provide students with guided practice in reading, teachers used the PI decodable cumulative texts, however, they felt they were not attractive for young students, lacked illustrations and did not have the feel of a ‘real’ book. I went in search of published decodable texts that were organised around particular phonemes. I purchased Dandelion Readers, which are available in three levels: Launchers, Initial Phonic Code and Extended Phonic Code. The readers were excellent as they moved from simple to complex alphabetic code. I have recently purchased the Floppy Phonics texts published by Oxford as they follow the PI phoneme sequence. As their confidence and skills developed, students were keen to read these texts to their parents when they came into class before school started. Feedback from parents was very positive as they had noticed how their child was beginning to ‘read’ through blending sounds they knew. Year

n

2010 2011 2012

95 86 103

Raw Scores June Mean Standard Deviation 7.59 6.96 15.14 13.19 14.59 11.13

Assessment It was important to monitor and assess how successful the program was in developing students’ ability to read. After researching various instruments that could be used with young children, it was decided to use the Burt Word Reading Test to measure students’ word recognition skills. The test gives an indication of a child’s reading age within a 6 months margin of error. All teachers administer the test at the end of Term 2 and 4 to monitor student progress across the year. Table 1 shows changes in raw scores. Effect sizes of over 0.8 are usually considered to be large (Hattie, 2007), suggesting a substantial improvement in skills over a six month period. Results for our first two years of implementation are shown in the graphs below.

Young children are capable and ready for explicit teaching of phonics and are highly motivated by their success in reading ‘real’ words. As can be seen in Figure 1, the results from 2010 to 2011 in each year level show a decrease in the percentage of students with a reading age below chronological age at every range. What is especially pleasing is the impact of PI in Pre-Primary. There were no students below their chronological age in reading in 2011. The significance of the PI approach can be seen when examining the percentage of students with a reading age above their chronological age since the program’s implementation, Figure 2. Within every year level, there is a marked increase between 2010 and 2011 in the percentage of students whose reading age is more than 12 months above their chronological age. In particular, nearly a third of the 98 Year 2 students were more than two years ahead of their chronological age in reading. This is double the number of students that were this far ahead as Year 1s in 2010. Raw Scores December Mean Standard Deviation 20.20 12.67 31.97 15.38 28.41 15.31

Effect Size

1.28 1.18 1.04

Table 1. Pre-Primary student’s scores on the Burt Word Reading Teest at mid year and end of year. Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 15

LDA Bulletin | Synthetic phonics overview

implementing the program. I described the key facets of a basic phonics lesson, including showing the video from the website and outlining which PI resources were essential. I printed and laminated the Alphabetic Code chart, grapheme tiles, frieze posters, picture posters, and word blend cards of Unit 1 to show teachers what they would need to use. We discussed the Sound Activity Sheets and the ‘I can read’ texts as important activities to use to help students consolidate their learning. I developed a sequence for teaching the units over each of the four terms. As this was the first year of implementation, I started both Pre-Primary and Year 1 at the beginning of Unit 1. Our goal was to reach the end of Unit 4 by the end of the Pre Primary year and the end of Unit 6 by the end of Year 1. In sharing the sequence with teachers, I emphasised that it was a ‘work in progress’ and that we would learn together, sharing our experiences, positive and negative, in weekly team meetings. I assisted teachers by copying resources where needed and modelled phonics lessons in their classrooms. I observed lessons to provide feedback to teachers and to ascertain how students were coping with the program. The expectation was that teachers taught focused, explicit phonics lessons each day with opportunities for revision throughout the day. The sequence of phonemes was followed in each class within the year level and teachers were encouraged to share resources and ideas they found successful with each other in our weekly team meetings. I was impressed with how teachers found creative tasks to enable focused practice of the learned phonemes that supported the resources within PI. After a few weeks of copying the ‘Sounds Activity Sheets’, the Year 1 team discussed how we could reduce the amount of photocopying needed but still maintain the integrity of the activity. It was decided to only copy the ‘word practice’ section of the sheet, as practising writing the grapheme and drawing a picture could all be done in an exercise book. This has proved to be an important modification to the PI resources that works for us. Children also got the opportunity to practise writing the grapheme on dotted third paper to support their learning of correct letter formation. Having students use individual whiteboards – ‘show me boards’ – to practise segmenting words into individual sounds, like the game ‘hangman’, was very motivating. Other activities used to consolidate learning

LDA Bulletin | Synthetic phonics overview

Typical Pre-primary writing in December 2006 Samples of students’ writing were collected and shared during year level team meetings. Teachers noticed the improvement in spelling skills demonstrated by students as a result of an increased focus on phonemes. Children were making phonetic choices for sounds they heard in words including trickier long vowel sounds. The difference in writing was particularly noticeable in Pre-primary. Teachers commented on the willingness of students to have a go at writing unfamiliar words and their confidence in taking risks in writing.

Reflection Overall, the introduction of PI in PrePrimary and Year 1 classrooms has been

a resounding success. The consistency and clarity it has afforded in phonics teaching in early childhood has been worth the time and effort. Young children are capable and ready for explicit teaching of phonics and are highly motivated by their success in reading ‘real’ words. Some things we have learned following the first year of implementation of PI: • Learning two new phonemes a week provides plenty of opportunity for revision • Daily explicit focused teaching of phonemes with opportunities for practice and revision is critical to student achievement • Using only the essential resources of

PI is important initially as teachers gain confidence and familiarity with explicit phonics teaching • Completing the program to the end of Unit 5 in Pre-Primary is a realistic goal • Spending time revising the first five units at the start of Year 1, at a faster pace, makes sense to allow opportunities for at-risk students to consolidate simple alphabetic code • Reaching the end of Unit 6 by the end of Year 1 is achievable, providing time for consolidation • Listening to children blend allthrough-the-word each day is vital to ensure each sound is produced correctly and children develop the skill of blending • Reading cumulative decodable texts allows children to put into practice their developing reading skills with ‘real’ books – success breeds success • Weekly meetings with all year level teachers foster collaboration and sharing of good ideas and resources • Using a ‘Have A Go’ pad to try out spelling unfamiliar words is useful for drawing upon students’ growing knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences In 2011, Phonics International was adopted as a whole school approach to the explicit teaching of phonics. A sequence for teaching the phonemes from Units 1 to 12 across Pre-Primary to Year 6 was constructed to ensure that students had the opportunity to learn all 44 phonemes and spelling alternatives in a systematic way. Teachers in Year 2 and above incorporate the explicit teaching of the focus phonemes for their year level into their existing spelling program, which is based around spelling journals. All teachers have access to the PI resources on the school’s network. My role continues to be one of mentor where I participate in weekly team meetings with the PrePrimary to Year 2 teachers and model and observe lessons as needed. Teachers have allowed me to video their phonics lessons so that we can model for other teachers how to plan and present effective phonics lessons using the PI resources.

Impact on results

Typical Pre-primary writing in December 2011 16 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

Our 2013 and 2014 NAPLAN results in Year 3 Reading reflect the first two cohorts of students taught to read using the PI program from Pre-Primary onwards. As Figure 3 shows, our Year 3 average score in reading is now above ‘like schools’ by 15 points in 2013 and 25 points in 2014. This is a very different scenario to 2009 when we were below our like schools. Our students are

Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 327–357. National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. (2005). Teaching reading: Report and recommendations. Canberra: Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research

literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Rose, J. (2006). Independent review of the teaching of early reading. London: Department for Education and Skills. National Institute for Literacy. (2005). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read (3rd ed.) Kindergarten through Grade 3. Washington DC: Partnership for Reading.

Figure 1. Percentage of students with reading below chronological age

Conclusion

References Hattie, J. (2007). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Johnston, R., & Watson, J. (2004). Accelerating the development of reading, spelling and phonemic awareness skills in initial readers. Reading and Writing: An

Figure 2. Percentage of students with reading age above chronological age 3 2 1 Test Score

The implementation of PI has certainly been a learning journey for all involved. It has inspired many conversations around effective pedagogy and creative learning tasks. Teachers have had the opportunity to refine their understanding of teaching phonics in a systematic way. Some have reflected on their expectations of what young students are capable of learning and modified their beliefs about what is possible. As a curriculum leader, I am delighted with the results that PI has produced in developing beginning reading, spelling and writing skills. The PI approach has added immense value to the achievement of early childhood students which has been noticed and appreciated by parents as well as teachers. Leaders and Early Childhood teachers from several other primary schools have visited our school to observe how PI is implemented in classrooms and to learn from our experiences.

0 -1 -2 -3 2009

2010

2011

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Trendline

Figure 3. Year 3 NAPLAN reading results showing the impact of the introduction in 2010 of a systematic phonics program for Pre-Primary and Year One students. Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 17

LDA Bulletin | Synthetic phonics overview

now performing better than like schools, and the gap is widening! The graph below compares our school’s reading performance to expected performance, as determined by our school’s demographic and previous results, over the past few years. The zero line is the expected performance. The colour scale indicates standard deviations away from expected performance. The yellow band is within the expected range; the red band indicates worse than expected performance, and the green band shows better than expected performance. The light blue line indicates the trend of the data over time. As can be seen, the reading results are on an upward trajectory and in the ‘green’. When we compared the distribution of our 2014 Year 3 students’ results within the different bands in reading, it was rewarding to see that 64% of the cohort were in the top two bands, compared with 40% in all WA schools. This is an outstanding achievement! Our results are certainly worth celebrating and are evidence that the explicit, systematic teaching of phonics is having a significant impact on students’ reading performance.

LDA Bulletin | LDA General Awards

Call for Nominations for the LDA General Awards 2016

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embers of LDA are invited to submit nominations for the 2016 Mona Tobias and Bruce Wicking Awards. Applications are also called for the 2016 LDA Tertiary Student Award. The closing date for nominations and applications is Friday 27th May, 2016. These Awards are open to both members and non-members of LDA, but nominators must be current members of LDA. LDA reserves the right not to confer an Award in any of these categories if no suitable nomination is received. Please note that nominators may not nominate the same person for more than one Award. The LDA Awards are designed to recognise outstanding work in the field of learning difficulties.

The Mona Tobias Award The Mona Tobias Award is presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the field of learning difficulties in Australia. This contribution may be in the area of leadership, research, practice or teacher and community education. Emily Mona Tobias, B.E.M., died in 1980 at the age of 74 years. She was acknowledged for her exceptional skills as a teacher and her devotion to children with learning difficulties. Mona took early retirement from the Victorian Education Department to study learning disabilities under Sam Clements at the University of Arkansas. This led to her second career where she influenced many teachers and parents of students with learning difficulties. The Mona Tobias Award commemorates the pioneering work of Mona Tobias in helping children and adults with learning difficulties.

The Bruce Wicking Award The Bruce Wicking Award is presented to an individual or an organisation in recognition of innovative 18 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

programs or practices relating to the teaching of children with learning difficulties. Bruce Wicking established the Currajong School in 1974, and was committed to the provision of programs which catered for the individual needs of children with learning difficulties. The funds for the establishment of this award were provided through the generosity of the Wicking family and their friends to commemorate the life and work of Bruce Wicking.

The Tertiary Student Award The LDA Tertiary Student Award is presented in recognition of significant research, which advances the understanding of theoretical and practical issues in the field of learning difficulties, carried out by a student in the course of their tertiary level studies. The Award is based on the submission of a research article to LDA, which will be considered for publication in the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties.

Announcement and Presentation of Awards Recipients of the 2016 Awards will be announced at the AGM later in the year, details of which will be confirmed at a later date. Travel and accommodation expenses to attend the ceremony will be met by LDA. Further information regarding the Awards and nomination procedures are provided on the LDA website at www.ldaustralia.org.

Phonics International course overview Literacy consultant and program developer Debbie Hepplewhite, from England, introduces herself and describes her Phonics International resources and her online training course.

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was trained in England as a junior teacher in the late 1970s. I cannot recall any content about phonics, reading, spelling or handwriting instruction, nor indeed anything about addressing ‘special needs’ or intervention. My broad primary teaching experience triggered very big worries about the teaching in particular of reading, spelling and handwriting and about the provision for children with special needs. I nevertheless recognized that all teachers were hardworking and dedicated. An appointment teaching 5 to 7 year olds enabled me to explore the systematic synthetic phonics teaching principles. My Year Two national results in literacy were outstanding and at the top of my local education authority. I was very clear that this was because of the phonics provision and not the (then) official National Literacy Strategy multi-cueing Searchlights model and guidance which I challenged locally and then nationally. I read widely about researchfindings and explored various phonics programmes and resources. I am eternally grateful to have learnt much from a number of wonderful literacy and phonics specialists – some with whom I became friends and went on to work collegially through the lobbying group, the UK Reading Reform Foundation. Thankfully, various influential people and politicians were persuaded about the need for

systematic synthetic phonics provision and cumulative, decodable reading books for all beginners. The explicit teaching of the letter/ssound correspondences of the alphabetic code and the phonics skills for blending for reading, and oral segmenting for spelling, are now statutory in England. The recommended model in England for understanding the two main processes of reading – word decoding and language comprehension – is now the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Sadly, ‘multi-cueing reading strategies’ still prevail in England so there is still much to be done with regard to promoting evidenceinformed reading instruction in England and also internationally. My husband, David, works alongside me and he provides the ‘technical’ expertise. For many years people have approached me for guidance because of my internet presence. Knowing that I was loath to suggest that they needed to spend money on glossy resources to teach reading and spelling, David pointed out that the internet would allow me to write a comprehensive but inexpensive phonics programme based on pdf printable and viewable resources. We could also continue to provide helpful free online resources and information which would enable transparent review. Thus – the Phonics International programme, available online at www. phonicsinternational.com, was launched in 2007. This comprehensive body of work is suitable for all ages, for mainstream and special needs, and for English as the main or additional language, and can be used flexibly and according to need. When Jacqui O’Donnell, Deputy Principal at that time of a primary school in Perth, investigated the research on reading and searched for a suitable phonics programme for her school, she chose to trial Phonics International along with her colleagues and subsequently wrote a report describing the school’s journey and results – including a later update with the NAPLAN results. So, thanks to the internet, my work and interest in the field of literacy has long since been multi-faceted and international. For a while I was also a primary headteacher and the manager of a Learning Support Unit in

two very different but challenging schools, enabling me to expand on my practical knowledge and understanding. Eventually I resigned from teaching because I really could not keep up with teaching and teacher-training and the multiple aspects of my professional life. In September 2015, we launched Phonics Training Online: www.phonicstrainingonline.com. The course includes 20+ hours of video based on research findings and leading-edge practice. I present reading and spelling instruction through generic teaching principles and guidance documents to enable participants to evaluate and compare phonics programmes, practices and their own provision. Twelve audio-visual modules include accompanying ‘links’ to additional information and resources. There are two extra modules which describe the Phonics International programme in some detail and the Oxford Reading Tree Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters programme for infants (I wrote this collaboratively with Oxford University Press). Course participants are provided with a year’s free access to the full Phonics International online programme including the Early Years Starter Package. In the UK, I still provide face-to-face training and consultancy services but now the online training programme allows me to further support the international community in practical ways.

Reference: Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6-10. [email protected] Disclosure: As a director of Phonics International, Debbie Hepplewhite has a financial interest in Phonics International Resources and the Online course. Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 19

LDA Bulletin | Phonics International course overview

Resource Review:

LDA Bulletin | MOOC review

What can online courses offer in teacher education for learning difficulties? Course Review: Kristin Anthian on Supporting Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing: University of London, UCL Institute of Education & Dyslexia International

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ducators supporting young people with learning difficulties are often confronted with challenges in meeting their students’ complex needs in reading, writing and spelling. One of the persistent challenges that educators face is their capacity to enhance their own academic and practical knowledge in supporting this cohort. Increasingly, the demands of the teaching profession, and the ability of schools to provide teachers with release time, impact on teacher facility to attend face to face professional learning opportunities. It may be particularly difficult to access courses that are grounded in evidence based practices. This is noticeably problematic for many teachers in remote and rural areas. One recent solution to this challenge has come about in the form of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). The University of London, UCL Institute of Education, in collaboration with Dyslexia International is currently offering a large scale free online learning 20 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

platform, through Coursera, titled Supporting Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing. This course is currently in its second year of operation and it is anticipated that it will continue until 2017. It grew out of an online course which Dyslexia International designed in 2009 and presented, in both English and French, at the first World Dyslexia Forum in 2010 run by UNESCO. The original course was adapted by the Belgian Ministry of Education into an optional teacher training programme. Consequently, Dyslexia International sought a more permanent platform and Coursera and the University of London came on board, with the option made available for a course completion certificate. The first session-based version was launched in October 2014 with 90% of enrolled students (819 altogether) finishing the course which is a higher than average percentage of course completers (University of London, MOOC report, 2014). When asked to rate the course, 84% of participants rated it as as excellent or very good and 95% were likely or very likely to recommend it to others (University of London, MOOC report, 2014). As the original course was session based, many teachers missed out and others found it difficult to complete in the time frame with their teaching schedules. The course was relaunched in August this year as an on-demand course, meaning that commencement dates and deadlines are flexible. As of October the course has had 4916 registrations, 3349 active learners and 94 completers. The course consists of six modules, with each module including a selection of video lectures, professional readings

and assessment quizzes. Some modules also include peer reviewed assignments. While there has been some contention over the effectiveness of this, as the diverse participants bring with them a broad range of knowledge and experience in this field, such a large cohort of registered learners can only be assessed by employing this sort of process. Within each module there is the opportunity for questioning to clarify meaning, and queries are attended to promptly by teaching staff, volunteer mentors and other enrolled learners.

There is much merit to this course and I would recommend it to any teacher, parent or professional who would like to extend or update their knowledge and skill in the learning difficulty field. Each learning module has a particular focus. Module one includes information on various orthographic and logographic writing systems and explains the differences between those that are more opaque, such as English (where there are typically 44 phonemes and only 26 letters to represent these), and those that are more transparent,

identification of learning difficulties and appropriate intervention. The practical teaching approach components had a strong emphasis on teaching phonological and phonemic awareness skills and alphabetic codebased knowledge within a multisensory, explicit, and systematic teaching approach, which included corrective feedback. Reports by the US National Reading Panel and UK Rose review were referenced in terms of evidencebased practice in reading instruction. Further, it was clearly articulated within the video lectures and reading materials that whole-language based pedagogical approaches were not effective for students experiencing persistent learning difficulties in the acquisition of reading. Practical and theoretical knowledge was also shared on the teaching and acquisition of spelling skills, comprehension, written composition, and the use of inclusive technology for students with learning difficulties. Some additional instructional videos on developing the skills of decoding for reading and encoding for spelling, as well as grapheme- phoneme correspondence, may assist course participants to transfer and apply learning to their classrooms more effectively. As this course is a global course, it encompasses dialectal differences in English phonemes, and participants need to ensure they are producing pure sounds consistent with their own dialectal form, and not using letter names to try to blend sounds in phonetically decodable words. There is much merit to this course and I would recommend it to any teacher, parent or professional who would like to extend or update their knowledge and skill in the learning difficulty field. The continual reference to current research is commendable. While it can’t replace direct hands on professional learning and feedback, it can certainly fill a much needed gap in terms of accessibility. It is also free of cost for participants unless they require formal graded certification. One of the prevailing and most striking comments made by many participants has been that they felt ill-prepared from their teacher training to support students with learning difficulties. A great strength of this learning platform has been the ability to connect people on a global scale to engage in discourse related to the identification and intervention of learning difficulties.

Links Dyslexia International http://www.dyslexia-international.org/ourprojects/on-line-teacher-training-course/ Coursera https://www.coursera.org/learn/dyslexiadifficulties/ University of London MOOC report 2014 http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct= j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved= 0CCEQFjABahUKEwi53r_y7vPIAhXFtqY KHcsVDcA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. londoninternational.ac.uk%2Fsites%2F default%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2Fmo oc_report_2014.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEFKt2 4YhPTQfcASQ3F90J5gEksqg&bvm=bv. 106379543,d.dGY Kristin Anthian is a special education trained teacher and a consultant and council member of LDA. She has her own private practice supporting learners experiencing difficulties and provides professional development for teaching staff. E-mail: [email protected]

Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 21

LDA Bulletin | MOOC review

such as Spanish (where letter-sound correspondence is more consistent). This first module also draws on the research of Australian experts Coltheart and Castles and their dual route reading model, encompassing the direct access lexical route and the phonological decoding route. The importance of automatization of code knowledge is addressed, to ensure reading fluency develops, which is highly correlated with reading comprehension. The information on bilingualism in this unit was particularly informative. The identification of students who are English Language Learners (ELL) and may also present with risk factors for a specific learning difficulty was enlightening. Module two focuses on the definition and identification of dyslexia and possible risk factors across age ranges, from pre-primary to later secondary years. It provides participants with informal avenues to identify students who may be at risk of having dyslexia. The course administrators explicitly state that participants should not draw conclusive statements regarding a possible dyslexia profile. Rather, by administering the informal assessment tools and screens provided, teachers can begin to collect data that can be used as a starting point to inform classroom intervention and to refer students for additional assessment, if warranted. Dehaene’s research, on how the brain learns to read, was referenced throughout the course and the underlying causal factors of many reading difficulties were linked with phonological processing, which is consistent with much of the evidence in this field. An apprehension I had about the recommended identification process was that the scope of ‘at risk’ behaviours for dyslexia, was perhaps too broad. Many were not directly related to the act of reading. While these behaviours may certainly be concomitant with dyslexia, it might be confusing for teachers that the core indicator, an absence of fluent and accurate single word reading, is not at the forefront. Additional modules included comorbidity and psychological and social aspects of dyslexia, including attention, dyscalculia, auditory processing, oral language impairment, self-esteem, as well as the pros and cons of labelling. Siegel’s work was presented in light of the psychological and societal impact of unidentified learning difficulties. An overriding philosophy throughout the course was the importance given to early

LDA Bulletin | Article summary

What skills are associated with being a good speller, and can we predict how well a child will be able to spell at age seven? Dr Tanya Serry was presented with the AJLD Early Career Researcher Award at LDA’s recent AGM in Melbourne. Tanya provided the audience with a fascinating rundown of her research, and her presentation was very well received by those in attendance. In this article, she provides a brief overview of her study.

Study title Concurrent and predictive factors of single word spelling for seven-year old children: Examining a community sample of Australian children from the ELVS study

Authors Tanya Serry, Anne Castles, Fiona Mensah, Angela Pezic, Edith L. Bavin, Patricia Eadie, Margot Prior, Lesley Bretherton and Sheena Reilly

Introduction and aims A key rationale for this study was to develop a comprehensive set of criteria to detect pre-schoolers who may be at-risk spellers. (We also conducted 22 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

a similar investigation for single word reading but results are not presented here). Such criteria would assist in accurately identifying those children who need additional support in the critical early years of schooling. Moreover, our findings may have the potential to influence health and educational policy for optimising pre-schoolers’ opportunities to succeed in learning to spell (and read). This current investigation draws on data from a longitudinal observational Australian study known as the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS). In 2003, 1910 infants aged between 7.5 to 10 months were recruited, and these children and their families have participated in several assessment sessions since then. In this current project, we measured single word spelling skills from a sample of 971 children, now aged seven, using the Spelling subtest from the WRAT- 4 (Wide Range Achievement Test 4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2007). The children were spread across two year levels, Grade 1 and Grade 2, so we included length of time in school as one of our variables. We took a few other measures at the same time: single word reading, and expressive and receptive oral language skills. Further, we drew on measures that had been taken earlier in the ELVS study, when children were tested aged four and five. We used a range of child-related and broader environmental data, including questionnaire data and a battery of language, phonological processing and cognitive measures. In addition, parents (mainly mothers) were tested on expressive vocabulary, single word reading, and nonword repetition. We wanted to know what combination of all these measures could best predict spelling at age seven.

Summary of findings Scores for single word spelling were widely spread, although the majority of the children fell within the normal range. Of note however, eight children in grade 1 scored zero and forty of the 269 children in grade 2, spelt four or less words correctly out of a possible 42. The amount of time that children had been at school was found to significantly increase spelling scores. It was clear that spelling was strongly associated with single word reading ability. Expressive language skills and (to a lesser extent) receptive language skills were both significantly correlated with single word spelling. Which measures allowed us to predict spelling skills at age seven? Most of the significant prediction in our results came from early measures of children’s expressive language, sound matching, phoneme isolation and manipulation (at age 5), letter identification and word blending. A history of speech impairment was a significant predictor, and the reading ability of the children’s mothers contributed to the prediction as well. Using all our variables, we found we could predict about 33% to 39% of the variance in children’s spelling. It was interesting to find that, despite common preconceptions, gender did not predict spelling (or reading) skills in our study.

Conclusions Our study involves a large community sample of children and their families,

predictor of children’s word spelling raises an interesting question: would providing training and support for adults to improve their reading (and possibly spelling) lead to positive educational outcomes for their children? The findings suggest many possibilities for further research.

Reference sources Wilkinson, G. S., & Robertson, G. J. (2007). Wide Range Achievement Test 4. Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. For further information on the ELVS study: Reilly, S., Wake, M., Ukoumunne, O. C., Bavin, E., Prior, M., Cini, E., Bretherton, L. (2010). Predicting language outcomes at 4 years of age: Findings from Early Language in Victoria

study. Pediatrics, 126(6), e1530-e1537 For full details of the current study: Serry, T., Castles, A., Mensah, F. K., Bavin, E. L., Eadie, P., Pezic, A., Reilly, S. (2015). Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: Findings from a community sample of Victorian children. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 20(1), 83-102. doi: 10.1080/19404158.2015.1049189 Dr Tanya Serry is a lecturer in the Master of Speech Pathology program at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She is also an honorary research fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (Melbourne, Australia) and is engaged in a prospective, longitudinal study called the Early Language Victoria Study (ELVS).

LDA 50th Birthday Celebrations Alison McMurtrie, LDA Secretary

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o round up a year of commemorative events, members of LDA and invited guests gathered after the annual AGM and Awards Presentation in October for a special afternoon tea to celebrate LDA’s 50th anniversary. This informal, happy event enabled members past and present to catch-up with colleagues and reminisce together. A number of past presidents attended, as well as others who have contributed to the work of LDA (previously known as the Australian Remedial Education Association, or AREA) over the years, including some founding members.

Outgoing president, Jan Roberts, said a few words followed by Dr Daryl Greaves. Daryl, president from 1994-1997, spoke of the volunteer commitment required to keep the organization going and reflected on the days before email was around! Christa van Kraayenoord, a long-standing member of LDA, also spoke and acknowledged the important role of the Fred and Eleanor Schonell Special Education Research Centre in the early days when most consultants did the certificate course in what was then known as remedial teaching. Some of those consultants are still active today and would have influenced the lives of many, many students. It was lovely that so many consultants past and present were able to attend. LDA also took the opportunity to present framed Life Membership certificates to all those who have been acknowledged in this way. It was a way of re-affirming those that have played such an important role in the life of LDA. Looking through issues of the Bulletin of 20 years ago that were on display it

was interesting to see what were the burning issues of the day – some are still burning today! Through the various messages that LDA received in the memories book, it is clear that over the last 50 years the association has played an important role in supporting teachers to address the needs of struggling students. This support has been via access to LDA publications, professional development workshops and conferences, consultant network groups, and generally raising the profile of the work that support teachers do. The afternoon concluded with the cutting of the cake by founding members Anne Pringle and Chris Davidson and a glass of bubbly to toast both the past and the future. As a relative new-comer to LDA, I felt the sense of history and experience that was represented in the room and it was a lovely opportunity to put faces to names that crop up. It was a tremendously positive way to mark this milestone and with continued member support, the organization looks forward to going from strength to strength. Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 23

LDA Bulletin | Article summary

and we have drawn on extensive demographic and environmental data about the families as well as cognitive, language and phonologically-based data for the children who were assessed regularly over seven years. We feel that this allows our study to add usefully to current knowledge about spelling achievements in the early school grades. The significant variables in our study relating to children’s skills phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, expressive language competency and speech development history - may form a risk model for identifying preschool children at risk of later difficulties with word decoding and spelling mastery. The implications for early intervention are quite clear: oral language and literacy are closely related. The role of maternal word reading as a key

LDA Bulletin | 50th Recollections

Memories of D&RTAV/ AREA/LDA since 1975 Diane Barwood

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rom memory, my first attendance at AREA (Australian Remedial Education Association) meetings and professional development was in 1975. I think the name was the The Diagnostic and Remedial Teachers’ Association of Victoria (D&RTAV). The Office was in High St Kew. At the time I was studying full time, on study leave from the Catholic Education (CEO) system, in a post-graduate course at Melbourne State College (within the Lincoln Institute Building) and was encouraged to join by others in the course, some of whom had worked in special education for years. Luckily, I chose all the languagebased and assessment subjects so became part of a group of highly professional teachers who were graduates of the Schonnell training program in Qld. Anna Keir (RIP), a

a course classmate, introduced me to other highly regarded people in D&RTAV (AREA) such as Anne Pringle, Chris Davidson and Mim Davidson. D&RTAV member Jen Glenister (later Dr Jennifer Glenister) was also part of our classes. She was really inspired by our Language/Learning Difficulties lecturer Connie La Pointe from Boston University and actually followed her back to the USA a couple of years later to complete her PhD. Connie encouraged us all towards an interest in evidence-based research and was participant in many D&RTAV activities whilst in Melbourne. After the Trained Special Education Certificate course finished, I was seconded to the State Education Department into a Special Education Unit (SEU) for 12 months before setting up a similar structure for the CEO schools in the northern suburbs. In early 1977 D&RTAV ran an Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) accreditation course at Kew overover several weeks for teachers interested in assessment. It was conducted by Dr Stewart Sykes from Monash University. Having been accredited to use the ITPA in the TSpTC course, I was appointed as a supervisor to observe students being tested by the course attendees within their

Chris Davidson and Anne Pringle cut the 50th anniversary cake. 24 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

workplaces. Such a professional development provision was remarkable for the time and probably would be impossible outside a university nowadays. It launched what was probably one of the first internationally standardised early-language tests available for teachers in Australia. Since then D&RTAV /AREA/LDA has traversed many eras of learning, sustaining decades of a high standard journal, the Australian Journal of Remedial Education (later Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties) many issues of which were edited by Chris Davidson with great assistance by Mim, Dick Weigell and others. As the years progressed, the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties was taken over by an academic committee and is still respected internationally. I did not become an AREA Consultant until 1985 when the Consultant Committee was led by Rosemary Carter who had come with a great reputation from the Reading Treatment and Resource Centre in Bouverie St, a government provision for all schools in Victoria. Rosemary had an amazing memory for all those involved within AREA as well as details of students. Since Rosemary’s death, a variety of structures has been used to maintain the LDA Consultant Services which has assisted thousands of parents over the years with qualified special education and learning difficulties trained teachers. Elaine McLeish and Ruth Jeffrey were the welcome voices at the end of the phone for several years before the forces of the economy demanded the use of the Online Tutor Service that has gradually become very successful. AREA was pulled into the age of technology by Peter Jeffrey (previously of the Australian Council for Educational

Australia was chosen as a reflection of the current educational climate. AREA/LDA has a rich history of presenting high quality learning difficulties conferences in Victoria as well as in co-operation with other interstate organisations. Many international speakers of high reputation have spoken at these conferences. Most of these conferences were followed by a hard copy book of presented papers edited and published by Council members. Although I have been a member of several educational bodies, LDA has

been an important part of my professional life. Over the years I have been an office bearer or Council member several times, holding a variety of positions, including President. In later years I have returned to be a registered LDA Consultant. My history with LDA has been a very satisfying part of my professional and personal life, as it has given me the chance to meet many like-minded colleagues, some of whom have become life-long friends. My LDA Life Membership, presented at the 50th celebration, was accepted with immense pride.

Transmogrification? Dr Daryl Greaves, past president of the organisation, presents his talk on the history of LDA and the challenges and successes that shaped its transformation and growth.

started the referral service, 1979 John Munro, 1984 Dianne Betts, 1987 Patricia Long, 1989 Anne Bishop, 1990 Anne Pringle, 1993 John Munro, 1994 Daryl Greaves, 1997 Wendy Scott, 1998 Diane Barwood, 1999 Nola Firth, 2000 Sylvia Byers, 2001 Wendy Scott, 2002 Anne Bayetto, 2003 Lyn Crosby, 2004 Sue Galletly, 2005 Sue and Sylvia Byers. The Diagnostic and Remedial Teachers’ Association of Victoria began at Glamorgan (the Toorak campus of Geelong Grammar School) with the

support of the principal, Mr Edward Butler. Its first conference was held in Camberwell with the keynote speaker being E. Wiig. The organization moved to an office in Kew where June Christenson and Val Sayers managed membership and finances while running a book shop with a focus on remedial education. During this time the organization re-named itself the Australian Remedial Education Association (AREA) to attract a wider membership in an effort to cover office, employment and publication expenses.

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t the 50 year celebration of Learning Difficulties Australia, it is worthwhile to look back and admire the accommodations made by the organization over the decades to thrive in the face of shifting social and political times. Acknowledgement is needed of those who have contributed to its success, and without whom, today’s celebration would not have been possible. Some are no longer with us. Earlier presidents are listed below. 1969 Geoff Saunders, 1971 Ken Byers, Geoff Saunders, 1972 Bob Bisdee, 1975 Angela Ridsdale, 1976 Anne Bishop

Daryl Greaves presents his talk on the history of the Diagnostic and Remedial Teachers Association of Victoria Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 25

LDA Bulletin | 50th Recollections

Research and Swinburne University) who, in the 90’s, organised an AREA email address for all office bearers and staff as well as the introduction of tele-meetings as the organisation spread across Australia. Peter co-edited several of the conference books and he and Ruth were involved in the administration of both AREA and several events such as conferences. It was about this time, in 1994, that the Australian Remedial Education Association became the Australian Resource Educator’s Association and, in 2001, the current name of Learning Difficulties

LDA Bulletin | 50th Recollections

A financial crisis loomed as membership declined and the payment of long service leave and other entitlements was required when the administrator left. The Remedial Teachers’ Association was forced to leave its premises in Kew. Anne Pringle who has been a tireless contributor to the organization found Peter and Ruth Jeffery who were kind and generous enough to volunteer their services. Peter had had extensive experience with managing and running conferences for the Australian Association for Research in Education. He brought this expertise to the development of AREA. He suggested that an approach be made to the University of Melbourne as it had a Special Education Department to explore the possibility of a cooperative relationship. This resulted in Professor Field Rickards kindly allowing AREA the use of a small room in the Old Pathology Building. Val Sayers came in a day or so each week to manage the membership and keep track of finances.

…it was a pleasure for me to look around the room at numerous high profile researchers from both Australia and New Zealand who have made a continuing contribution to the LDA publications and seminars over the years At this time, the organization was producing four journals a year. Christopher Davidson was the driving force in gathering the articles. Dick Weigal provided advice and drew the cartoons. Mim Davidson was the editor. As I remember, each edition of the journal cost around $2,500 to produce and post. The costs nearly bankrupted the organization each time, given there were less than 150 members. With each edition, we had to ask Val Sayers if there was enough money in the kitty, or when the publication account became due, whether the system of rolling subscriptions would be enough to cover the cost of its production. I was personally surprised to find that even with Val Sayers great assistance and less than 150 members, it was easy to spend an hour, each day, on the role of president. Given the growth of the organization since that time, I wish to acknowledge the 26 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

significant time commitment made by each of the presidents and committee members to the continuing growth and success of LDA. Peter Jeffery asserted that any significant organization must continue to have a conference. In consultation with the Council he chose Ormond College at the University of Melbourne for the conference. In addition, he insisted that anyone enrolling for the conference would automatically become a member of the organization as the conference fee also included a membership fee. Following the conference, membership increased to almost 300 and finances were back in good shape. Tentative steps were then taken to make it an Australia-wide organization, beginning by developing a relationship with the Learning Support Teachers Association of Queensland. Peter also recommended that a Bulletin would be useful to members. Peter chose the title to be printed on a glossy A3 single sheet. The title was written in large letters at the top. The bulletin was printed and when about to be posted, a spelling mistake was found in the word ‘Transmogrification’, a new word to me, meaning, ‘to transform in a surprising and magical manner’. At the 50th year celebration in October this year, it was a pleasure for me to look around the room at numerous high profile researchers from both Australia and New Zealand who have made a continuing contribution to the LDA publications and seminars over the years. When considering the membership of the councils and presidents, one has to acknowledge the significant and ongoing contributions of dedicated and highly competent

Val Sayers, Wendy Scott and others

professionals to the continuance and growth of LDA. Given the history and current standing of LDA today, the second meaning that can be attributed to the word transmogrification is totally inappropriate.

Kevin Wheldall

“We don’t need no education  We don’t need no thought control” (Pink Floyd, ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)’)

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have never been a fan of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another brick in the wall’, a deeply cynical song. Perhaps you “don’t need no education”* if you get lucky and become a rock star but a lack of education will not protect you against “thought control”; quite the reverse, in fact. It is by being educated that we learn to think for ourselves and this is achieved, to a very large degree, by learning to read and then reading, reading and yet more reading. In fact, I would go so far as to say that learning to read is the very essence of education; the sine qua non. It follows, then, that ensuring that all children learn to read easily and quickly must be our primary goal for the first few years of schooling. But, sadly, we know that an unacceptably large minority of children struggle to learn to read and that far too many remain as poor readers for the rest of their school careers and, indeed, subsequent adult lives. If we were able to identify those students who are likely to struggle with reading before they even begin to learn to read, we could offer additional assistance right from the start. Unfortunately, while there may be possible indicators of likely problems (such as poor reading running in the family, for example), we do not really know for sure whether children will or will not experience difficulties until they actually commence instruction in reading. The trick then is to identify, and provide additional support for, struggling students as early as possible.

This was the reasoning underpinning our development of the WARL (the Wheldall Assessment of Reading Lists) over the past six or so years, published by MultiLit in January. Essentially, the WARL is a measure of word identification fluency (WIF). Traditional reading tests are not only less suitable for very young readers whose skills are very limited but they are also very time consuming, especially when attempting to screen a whole class of children. Measures of WIF, on the other hand, like the WARL, typically take only a few minutes to administer. Students are presented with a list of 100 frequently occurring words typically found in children’s literature. The number of these words read correctly in one minute provides an index of the child’s current reading performance. Many teachers are surprised that a simple WIF measure can provide a reliable and valid measure of a child’s developing reading skills but the research clearly shows that WIF measures generally are not only highly reliable but are also found to correlate well with other more complex measures of reading, demonstrating good validity. This is also true, specifically, for the WARL that comprises 13 parallel lists of words, of very similar difficulty level. Three of these lists are used to provide an initial baseline assessment of reading skill and are used for screening purposes. By administering these three lists to whole classes of young children at, say, the beginning of Year 1, following the first full year of instruction in reading, struggling readers may readily be identified for additional support. This is done by comparing the average number of words read correctly across the three lists with the benchmarks provided in the manual that show the cut off points for the bottom 25% of young readers. These Initial Assessment Lists may also be used as a before and after measure to assess the efficacy of the reading interventions that the teacher may put in place for young struggling readers.

A more sensitive measure of progress, however, may be achieved by using the other ten lists to track progress over time. Struggling students receiving a reading intervention are tested using the lists either by giving one list per week or, alternatively, by administering two lists per fortnight and averaging the result. The scores achieved may be graphed to provide a simple visual record of each child’s progress. By using the WARL in these ways, teachers can track whether the children in their classes are making good progress in learning to read. “Hey teacher leave them kids alone.” I don’t think so. [* And, of course, if you “don’t need no education” then logically you need some, as our English teachers would have informed us when discussing double negatives!] More information about the WARL is available from http://www.multilit.com/ programs/warl/ Disclosure: As a director of MultiLit Pty Ltd, Professor Kevin Wheldall has a financial interest in the WARL and other MultiLit products. Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall, AM is Chairman of MultiLit Pty Ltd and Director of the MultiLit Research Unit. You can follow him on Twitter (@KevinWheldall) where he comments on reading and education (and anything else that takes his fancy). He also has a blog “Notes from Harefield: Reflections by Kevin Wheldall on reading, books, education, family, and life in general”: www.kevinwheldall.com Email: [email protected] Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 27

LDA Bulletin | Another brick in the WARL

Another Brick in the WARL

LDA Bulletin | Review of WARP

Assessment Review:

WARP

WARP: Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages K. Wheldall & A. Madelaine Multilit Pty. Ltd. ISB: 978-1-921363-31-3 Review by Jan Roberts

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ARP is a standardised, curriculum based measurement assessment tool of reading accuracy. The purpose of the series of thirteen 200 word passages of equal difficulty is to track individual progress of low-level readers. Students read aloud for one minute each, the 3 ‘initial passages’ and subsequently, the ‘progress’ passages. The tester records the reader’s accuracy and stops the reading at one minute then scores the number of words read correctly. The testing frequency is recommended as weekly for a term.

WARP is an excellent, thoroughly researched assessment tool The boxed pack includes a manual, a presentation booklet that includes one passage per page from which each student reads; 30 copies of initial assessment passages record form (3); and 15 copies of progress monitoring passages record form. For students reading below the WARP level, the WARL is available. Several of my students were wellsuited to this assessment tool in age and reading level (around grade 2-3). I found 28 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

that the benefits of this assessment tool are as follows: • Each test is very quick to administer and score • The initial and progress booklets are easy to use • Reading aloud can be very stressful for struggling students but one minute is bearable and becomes easy as students progress • The topics in the passages are easily accessible • Students (and I) appreciated the light humour, which is a rarity in assessment tools. • The font is very big so accommodates even those with moderate vision impairments • Progress is easily tracked • The same reading level is tested over time • Both fluency and accuracy are tested • The passages do not depend on a particular method of teaching reading The fact that these tests do not assess comprehension does not preclude asking a student about the meaning. Interestingly, one of my students who read with reasonable

accuracy, volunteered at the end, “But I haven’t got a clue what that was about”. Fortunately, as his decoding improved, so did his understanding. My only criticism is of the plastic packaging box which is very userunfriendly. However, the set was easy to repackage in a low-cost, soft plastic pack. And in the meantime, the publisher is investigating alternative packaging. WARP is an excellent, thoroughly researched assessment tool which I highly recommend to classroom teachers and other practitioners working with low level readers.

One of our members wrote recently to (then) Minister for Education Christopher Pyne to draw his attention to issues relating to good early literacy instruction and support for students with learning difficulties. If you would like to write to us, or copy us in on your advocacy work, please do so. We look for opportunities to publish stories from LDA members in the Bulletin. Thanks to Jo Rogers for sharing.

To the Hon Christopher Pyne MP 429 Magill Rd St Morris South Australia 5068 18/8/15

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ear Minister Pyne As a still practising teacher since 1968, I have written before and sent submissions to both your reviews into the National Curriculum and Teacher Training. I applaud the front page article in ‘The Australian’ newspaper, ‘Curriculum shifts focus to core skills’. The article mentioned that you will be taking the new curriculum to the COAG meeting of Education Ministers next month. I have heard so many hundreds of anecdotes about school failure from parents, children and teachers but I

would like to write one particular true account that illustrates the problems you are trying to correct. In July 2012 I began teaching an 8 year old boy named Sam. His parents told me that he was in Year 2 with a nice teacher, at a good primary school, but he couldn’t read or write and didn’t want to go to school anymore. They were very worried for his welfare, recent decline in behaviour and future. His Foundation and Year 1 teacher told his parents, “He’s just not catching on. He won’t join in any reading and writing activities. Maybe he is Autistic.” He had ‘Reading Recovery’ and by the end of the program had learned to memorize two books, “The Three Little Pigs” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”, but he couldn’t read any other books. His Year 2 teacher reported the same lack of progress and arranged a psychometric assessment which showed he had good language and intelligence. By June, his writing book contained only one line of five letters and his name, which he wrote on the first day of school. His teacher told his parents he had A.D.D and that they should take him to a paediatrician for medication. He’d been given two different diagnoses by class teachers but no-one noted that his parents had said he did not display any of these autistic or attention deficit behaviours at home and he had done well at Kindergarten. No-one noticed that on his psychological assessment that I read, his cognitive processing scores were all but one at an Average IQ. He scored lower on one processing weakness in Auditory Short Term Memory, which is a Specific Learning Difficulty, common in primary school children but not funded. I began to teach him the sequential literacy (and numeracy) skills twice a week for the next two and a half years at his level. Without these essential skills, he could not read, spell or write. In the middle of the first lesson he stopped and looked at me and said, “I know I am no good.”

I quietly replied, “I know school work is hard for you now but you can learn to be a good reader. You just need a little extra practice, that’s all.” He looked up at me and said, “It’s OK. I can cope with being no good.” The downcast look on his face, his shrugged shoulders like an old man and his anguished voice would break your heart. Unfortunately this account gets worse. His parents told me that their son had been given a soft toy cat by his teacher that he had to keep with him at all times. They showed me a photograph in which their son was holding the toy cat, saying, “We don’t know what the cat is about.” I made professional contact with the class teacher via e-mail and asked about the child. She replied that he would not join in with any class reading activities or take home any books to practice. She added that she had given him a soft toy cat and that his job was to teach the cat to read; an idea she had learned at a recent national conference on literacy. I looked up the website of an English organization and saw, on the list of topics at their recent conference, the topic “Using Soft Toys and Puppets to Teach Literacy.” This was the teacher’s legitimate PD! When I told the parents the reason for their son having the toy cat, the mother said, “Dare I ask if the cat had learned to read yet?” I thought, so much for advancing the public’s respect for the teaching profession and lowering parental angst at schools! With Sam, I began the systematic Direct Teaching of the Literacy sub skills; the recognition and correct writing formation of the alphabet letters, the phonemic awareness of listening to the 44 sound in words, (all words can be sounded out by definition of oral language), the daily practice of carefully graded PM books that he was capable of reading, the step by step synthetic (not Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 29

LDA Bulletin | Letter to Christopher Pyne

A letter to the Minister for Education

LDA Bulletin | Letter to Christopher Pyne

analytic) phonic associations of sound to letters in VC and CVC words to begin with, then CVCC words, to digraphs, tri-graphs and syllables and the copying of his words and sentences until he had practiced enough skills to be able to write himself; skills that often take 2-4 years to master. Cries of “No Rote Learning” and “No Chalk and Talk” are furphies. Adults have golf lessons and spend hours at the driving range and putting green practicing their skills so they can play golf. Systematic, Direct Teaching of Core Literacy and Numeracy skills is no different. No-one is going back to use 1950’s techniques. Since the 1970’s many of us taught primary classes to practice newly learned skills with fun, creativity and rewards, without standing in front of a class or boring children. Learning to read and write is not boring. Sam now has caught up to his peers in Year 4. He likes reading, writing funny

stories and loves going to school. He is a healthy normal child. And he smiles as he learns. He knows he ‘is good’. But what of the thousands of other Sams out there today and over the past two decades? All because the information about how primary teachers can teach all children in their classes to read, spell and write has been withheld from them by educational ideological politics. In 2005 the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in Australia (NITL) was accepted by the COAG Education Ministers. In 2008 the Melbourne Declaration was signed with great aims of successful learning for all Australian children, but it had no chance of success because the English curriculum excluded the NITL recommendations about the scientifically proven best way to teach children to read and write. Statistics with PIRLS 24% illiteracy in Year 4, OECD 18% illiteracy of 15

year olds, Auditor General Reports show 45% young adult illiteracy all involve a ‘Sam’ and his parents and primary teachers who don’t know what to do with children who don’t just ‘catch on’. Many children are under-achieving as well. In September 2015 our Education Ministers will hopefully unanimously agree to these reforms that will give all primary teachers the information they didn’t get in their training or previous curriculum to teach ALL of their students to read, spell and write during the 7 years in Primary School. And please declutter the shockingly overcrowded current curriculum that causes so much stress on primary schools, teachers and busy family life with homework overloads. Please give all children and primary teachers their chance of educational success. Mrs Jo Rogers

Why students make silly mistakes in class and what can be done This article by Greg Ashman was first published at The Conversation, and is reprinted here with kind permission. Follow Greg on Twitter @greg_ashman

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hildren often find it difficult to solve problems in the classroom, which can lead to silly errors being made. But are these mistakes made because of carelessness? Or is there another

30 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

reason to explain why this occurs? A theory of learning known as “cognitive load theory” can help shed light on why children make mistakes.

What is cognitive load theory? Imagine that I asked you to remember the random sequence of letters, “XJGTYR”. How long do you think you could remember it for? What about if I asked you to remember, “HYSIDHWGDXBU”? Clearly, this second task would be harder. It has been known for some years that the number of items that we can remember like this over a short period of time is between about five and nine. So the first sequence might be possible but the second would be difficult unless you employed some sort of memory technique. However, imagine that I now asked you to remember the sequence of letters, “INDEPENDENCE”. There are 12 letters, just like in, “HYSIDHWGDXBU”.

However, your chances of remembering the sequence are far greater. This is due to the fact that you have a concept of what “independence” means that is stored in your long-term memory. You can therefore assign meaning to the sequence of letters so that it becomes effectively one single item rather than 12.

Why does this matter? The limit on the number of items that we can remember over a short period of time is effectively a limit on our processing power. If we want to manipulate these items in any way then it is likely that we can handle even fewer (some of the five to nine

The long-term solution is to practise to the point where many of the procedures become automatic and don’t require conscious thought This effect is important and not just limited to mental arithmetic. Many maths questions that students are asked to solve come in the form of word problems. The key to such problems is to figure out what calculations need to be performed and to monitor your progress against this. This is far easier to achieve if your processing power is freed up from having to work out basic, singledigit multiplication and addition. This is also why the standard procedures for performing mathematical operations, such as column addition, work so well. They record the intermediate steps in any calculation so that you do not have to hold these in your short-term memory. They reduce the cognitive load. But this isn’t just about maths.

It’s time to start thinking Indeed, thrown in at the deep end with any kind of complex problem to solve, many novice learners will have too much to think about, become overloaded and will struggle to find a solution. This

is a key reason why approaches such as problem and inquiry-based learning – posing questions, problems or scenarios, rather than simply presenting facts – have promised so much but delivered so little. Yet such methods remain highly popular. You may have heard the argument that knowledge is now available at the click of a mouse and so there is no longer any need to commit this to memory. The problem is that you cannot think with information that is lying around on the internet. Knowledge that is in our longterm memory can be effortlessly brought to mind when required. In fact, this is what tends to happen when we critically analyse sources; we bring our own knowledge to bear on what is being presented. If there is a mismatch between the two then we take a sceptical stance or request more information.

Students make silly mistakes for a reason I used to think that my students were sometimes careless and made silly mistakes in their work. Often, in mathematics, this might result in a failure to properly finish a problem; they might solve for x but then forget to solve for y. In physics, a student might write an answer without giving the unit. In English, a student who can correct spelling mistakes in a sample of text might make the very same mistakes in her own writing. However, when we realise that human processing power is limited, then these errors are exactly what we would predict from students who are not yet experts. The demands of solving a problem or constructing a text draw upon the student’s attention in such a way that there is no room

left to remember to solve for y or to check spellings. The short-term solution might be to separate these processes in time by suitably structuring and sequencing the instruction; breaking it down into smaller parts such as a discrete writing phase followed by a discrete checking phase. The long-term solution is to practise to the point where many of the procedures become automatic and don’t require conscious thought, leaving room to attend to the details. Greg is a teacher, originally from England but now living and working in Ballarat, Victoria. He was the deputy head of a London comprehensive and is currently head of maths and head of research at Ballarat Clarendon College whilst also completing his PhD. Greg can be found on Twitter at @greg_ashman Read Greg’s article and follow discussions at http://theconversation. com/why-students-make-silly-mistakesin-class-and-what-can-be-done-48826

Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015 | 31

LDA Bulletin | Conversation piece – Cognitive load theory

items will be used up in performing the manipulation). However, as the example of “independence” shows, we can reduce the demands on our processing power – or the cognitive load of a problem – by being able to draw upon concepts that we have stored in our long-term memory. For example, imagine that you wished to work out 43 x 7 in your head. A typical approach would be to find 4 x 7 = 28, multiply this by 10 to get 280, find 3 x 7 = 21 and add this to 280 to get 301. This requires you to hold the value of 280 in short-term memory while calculating 21. This is pretty easy to do if you simply know that 3 x 7 = 21. However, if you also have to work this part out from scratch by repeated addition or some other strategy then you might forget the 280 figure. This is one reason why it is important to memorise multiplication tables; a reason not accounted for by those who argue that knowing your tables is not necessary. If we commit more knowledge to our long-term memory it can help with problem solving. 

LDA Bulletin | Consultants Corner

Consultants Corner Sue Spencer, Convenor of the Consultants’ Committee.

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he 17th October 2015 marked the end of LDA’s 50th Anniversary year with a special afternoon tea for our members past and present. And what a great day it was! It was a day to catch up with friends and colleagues, old and new, and to share some happy memories. What a remarkable achievement for a small, largely voluntary organisation, to celebrate fifty years. I wonder if we’ll still be existence in 2065, fifty years from now. Maybe, just maybe, by 2065, teacher training will be far superior and based on scientific research, technology more advanced and accessible to all, and education programmes differentiated for individual children’s learning needs. Perhaps the school system, across the board, will be able to provide the type of education which enables each child to be successful, at least in the basic skills of reading, writing, spelling and maths. How good would that be? Then there would be no need for consultants to pick up the pieces and offer supplementary support - or sometimes the only support to children who are bright but find it hard to learn the basic skills. I am astounded by the number of children needing additional support to learn the basics from outside of the school environment. It was never my intention to become a full time consultant offering support to children with learning difficulties. However, I became hooked once I saw the huge benefits that one-on-one support, using evidence based strategies, brought to the students; not only in academic advancement, but also in their confidence and self-belief that they too could succeed. 32 | Volume 47, No 3, Summer 2015

One of the best parts of my job is the relationships developed not only with students, but their families as well, and sometimes even pets! One of my students brings his dog every week to say “Hello,” to my dog and there’s always a bit of fun and laughter before the lesson commences. Sometimes parents become anxious when given the diagnosis that their child has a learning difficulty. On more than one occasion a parent has become teary on visiting me for the initial meeting to discuss their child’s needs. However, there is a more positive feeling all-round once the tutoring commences, and the parent sees the child becoming stronger and more confident in their learning as strategies are put into place and the correct support is given. Thus, the job of a consultant is an important one to the children we support and their families, and it is vital that we attract practitioners of a high calibre; practitioners who as lifelong learners are committed to professional development which keeps them up to date with new evidenced-based knowledge and research into the area of learning difficulties. LDA certainly assists consultants in their professional development. LDA members have experienced first class professional development this year offered by Louisa Moats as she toured Australia and impressed upon us the need to ditch whole word reading strategies and embrace synthetic phonics. We also hosted the thought provoking, and somewhat controversial, Julian Elliot tour on the debate about the term dyslexia. By the time this article goes to press, we will also have hosted a Maths workshop by Paul Swan titled ‘Typical Mathematics Learning Difficulties and what we might do about them.’ Hopefully, we can provide more Maths PD in the near future, as this area has been somewhat overshadowed in recent years with the huge focus on synthetic phonics. For details about the process and requirements for becoming an LDA Consultant, please refer to the website www.ldaustralia.org

As 2015 comes to a close, consultants will be reflecting on the professional development required to fulfil the renewal process as a consultant. There are no changes or surprises this year as last year’s renewal process worked well. We hope to bring you a more automated system in 2016, so that consultants can keep a record of their PD attendance as they go, instead of the last minute rush to try to fill in the details retrospectively! Meanwhile, enjoy the festive season and a well-earned break.

We welcome the submission of articles from LDA members and others with an interest in learning difficulties for possible inclusion in upcoming editions of this Bulletin. Please submit articles, correspondence about the Bulletin, or letters for publication to the editor. For questions about content, deadlines, length or style, please contact the editor. (Email: [email protected]) Articles in the Bulletin do not necessarily reflect the opinions nor carry the endorsement of Learning Difficulties Australia. Requests to reprint articles from the Bulletin should be addressed to the editor.