Planning for That Reading Thing
TRT will help students who:
- can't read at all or have only a very limited sight vocabulary
- can read with some sight vocabulary plus a lot of guessing
- can read quite a lot but struggle to access long unfamiliar words required to thrive at secondary school
Those three groups of students will likely have different experiences of TRT
Group 1 students need one-to-one, moving at their own speed. They might come on quickly or they might need to work slower and for longer. It is not their starting reading age that determines this but the reason they have this reading age. Did they miss large chunks of their early education or do they have significant learning needs? It might be both.
Group 2 students understand words spoken to them but are unable to read those same words. Depending on SEN considerations, these students can make very quick progress working one-to-one.
Group 3 might need a little bit of one-to-one and then will work well in a small group and can make progress in their reading by working on spelling.
Successful TRT tutors:
- work within the ethos of The Deal
- limit explanations to keep the pace moving
- involve their students
- have a natural ability to work from sound to print or they're willing to learn that approach.
Read more about what makes a successful That Reading Thing tutor.
The length of a TRT intervention
depends on the reason a student is struggling- Plan on each student receiving a minimum of 12 hours, one-to-one, over 12 weeks and longer for those with speech and language, cognitive or other more complex difficulties.
- The 1 hour per week may be split into two or three sessions. The challenge of shorter sessions is finding enough time to read together. You can extend the length of sessions as students build stamina.
- The students who started furthest behind will probably still be reading one-to-one with a tutor even after finishing the TRT levels. A few hours of That Reading Thing will launch them into a new way of looking at words but it will not make up for years of not reading at all, so they will benefit from reading challenging text with support.
- A more confident student (one who feels safe and is unlikely to respond negatively to making an error), might be happy working with a few other TRT students. Work one-to-one until at least Level 16 to 18ish and allow the students some input into the decision to move to a group setting. In the group, they will continue with the TRT Advanced Levels and start to work more on spelling.
- The staff member who leads this ‘Advanced Levels and Beyond’ group will be confident using TRT and familiar with the strategies for making the most of memory in That Spelling Thing, including bundling by sounds, spelling and everyday morphology. TST is an approach rather than a programme so content for the ‘Beyond’ sessions will arise out of the writing needs of your students. That Spelling Thing (the book) is available from Amazon. It can be used alongside a writing programme if you choose to use one.
Assign a TRT co-ordinator
This lead contact will:- Schedule training time - 8 hrs over 3-4 weeks
- Prepare printed materials required for training
- Support note-taking for the final quiz
- Liaise with TRT on progress reports and support
Other considerations
- Do you have an assessment for pre/post testing?
- Where will the 1-1 work take place
- How will you split the 1 hour per week required?
- How many tutors will you need to train initially?
- Do you need any extra information?
