ThatReadingThing

This wonderful article has nothing to do with literacy but everything to do with education.  I often wonder why the UK is so negative about education that isn’t academic, especially at the secondary level.  This article is about post-secondary education but many of the ideas apply to the level below.

This one line jumped out at me:

The well-founded pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.

Sechelt: the word I’ve used for years as the decoding challenge for UK trainees.   And now there will be ThatReadingThing available to struggling readers in Sechelt and other communities on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, thanks to funding from 2010 Legacies Now through the Sunshine Coast Literacy Council.

Training will be held April 20th and 27th at Capilano University in Sechelt.

I’ll keep you posted but am very much looking forward to training in my own accent!

We’ve finally finished adapting and trialling Llywio Darllen, the Welsh adaptation of ThatReadingThing.

It doesn’t translate directly into English but roughly means “being steered into reading” – a concept that sits very well with our student centred approach.

The Year 6 pupils in Cardiff had eight hours of LLywio Darllen over two weeks and made substantial progress in both reading and spelling.

Many thanks to Eirian Lloyd-Jones and the Welsh Dyslexia Project/ Prosiect Dyslecsia Cymru for all their hard work and support.  Llywio Darllen training will be available to schools in the autumn.

I received this email from a recently trained TRT tutor.

“I had a really great thing happen today with a learner and am desperate to share it with you!

I put him on The That Reading Thing almost immediately after I got back from the training and have been trying to visit him as often as possible. He has really tried hard during the sessions and we have had some laughs along the way! He is currently on level 22 and the lessons leading up to this have given me mixed feelings…is it working…it’s not working…ooo it is working. At the end of today’s session the learner read a whole chapter independently; he was a completely different person. He was relaxed and confident; he even explained something to me about a sentence in it. That was a real boost for him!

I cannot thank you enough I have never felt such a sense of achievement like I felt today in that lesson and it’s all because of the programme you created.”

I’m in the process of putting together a new site for adult literacy practitioners.

Please feel free to ask questions and offer expertise.

Please visit my new (and developing) website phonics-for-adult-literacy.com for lots of information about using phonics with adults.

This morning in the Guardian, Peter Kingston writes about the possibilities of using phonics in adult literacy.

The NRDC report he refers to, Improving Reading: Phonics and Fluency, can be found here.
And here’s my response:

Hello,

It’s great to see that the idea of using sounds to help older struggling readers is finally being recognised.

I got into the world of literacy by accident and, not knowing that there was a reading war on, simply picked the most obvious and logical method for helping people discover how the English language works for reading and spelling. The result is that I’ve been using sound-based strategies with older struggling readers for many years now, happily ignoring the usual advice that you “can’t use phonics to teach adults”.

Phonics is a viable option for adults as long as instructors understand a few things:

• Don’t teach phonics. Instead, help adult learners to figure out for themselves how the English code works.

• Don’t teach phonics. Instead, in the context of whole words and text, help adult learners to gain the skills and knowledge necessary for reading and spelling.

• Don’t teach phonics. Ever. It’s boring. Just use phonics as a tool to open up the world of reading. Adult learners don’t need to know phonics. They need to be able to read and spell.

• And finally, get beyond the idea that it’s all about “c-a-t says cat”. Adults have much bigger spoken vocabularies than children do but they haven’t met those words in print. Here’s an example I use to explain what it feels like for an adult to use phonics to work out a word that they don’t “just know”:

ekzajirait

If the word doesn’t pop into your mind, say the sounds clearly and listen for a familiar word.

Phonics isn’t an easy answer but it’s a powerful tool when used well.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this all pans out in the world of adult education.

Sincerely,

Tricia Millar