ThatReadingThing

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

One particular line of numbers caught my attention.

It’s the “Data Story” of a thirteen year old white British girl with truancy issues who struggles with reading and agreed to start meeting with a ThatReadingThing tutor.  I’m going to call her Amber.

At their first session, her reading age was 5 years and 11 months which is what we would expect of a child at some point in Year 1.

Assuming that she’s now in Year 8, she hasn’t made much progress in the intervening seven years at school.

Amber met with her tutor five times and they probably worked on reading for about 45 – 50 minutes in each of those sessions.  I wonder how many weeks it took to get in five sessions?  In my experience, a young person with a history of truanting shows up sporadically at best.

However, thanks to this thirteen year old’s willingness to risk doing the very thing that she tends to run away from and, thanks to the dedication of one TRT tutor, Amber gained six whole months on her reading age.

She needs to gain at least another four years if she is going to cope with the GCSE curriculum, but I’m hoping for the best for her.

Amber is still committed to showing up for TRT sessions and I look forward to finding out what happens in the next five hours.

Here is the same data with a few extra details.  Here are the things I notice:

• Those with the greatest gains, started with a reading age of 8 or so
• One of the girls made a 2 year gain in one week.  I would assume that her spelling age is now well behind her reading age.
• Of the three with the smallest gains, one has English as an additional language and a head injury, one is very new to the English language, but the other has simply not made much progress.
• All but two are continuing with TRT sessions.

I’ve arranged this table by gains, high to low.

These numbers come from an inner city volunteer literacy project.   The reading ages were measured using the Burt Reading Assessment which is available free from here.

I’ll add more details about the learners as I get them.  It will be interesting to see who has statemented learning needs, who speaks English as an additional language and who has particular behaviour problems. (Or all three.)

A huge thank you to all the tutors and young people for their hard work!

Both of these arrived via email recently.They both tell their stories in different ways.  I especially love how the anecdote acknowledges the importance of a tutor who won’t give up in the face of resistance.  I would like numbers so much more if they could express those crucial details.

Anecdote – from Worth Unlimited in Waltham Forest.

…the teacher of the girl I am currently supporting says that TRT, (ThatReadingThing), has had the most impact and taken this particular girl further forward with her literacy than anything else she has tried – the girl is in year 10 and has been through all sorts of systems. I think it is in part due to my rugged determination to get her through the levels when she likes to play games and try to be a bit resistant but she is also clearly getting the basic ideas down now and using it well in her reading in particular.

Data – from a tiny school for boys with emotional & behavioural disorders

6 month results:

Pupil A – improved reading by 8 months in 6 months, spelling by 17 months

Pupil B – improved reading by 12 months, spelling by 10 months in the same period

Both greatly improved in fluency and confidence with reading.

12 month results:

Pupil C – improved reading by 3 years 5 months and spelling by 8 months in 12 month period.

Pupil D – improved reading by 22 months and spelling remained unchanged in 12 months.

Don’t forget that the results can be affected by the mood of the pupil on day of testing.  I would say that Pupils B has improved more than 12 months but doesn’t like tests and probably underperforms, as do A and D.”