For older students, the downside of decodables is they could slow progress. Read more in this guest post from psychologist, Georgina Mavor.
Supporting Reading in Secondary Schools
This advice about supporting reading in secondary schools is an excellent starting place for any high school wanting to help their older struggling readers.
School to Prison Pipeline (or not)
Is there really a school to prison pipeline for struggling readers?
Literacy and Behaviour
Sometimes, working with young people living chaotic lives, you only get a very short time to make a difference. Here’s what only 4 hours of That Reading Thing can do.
Phonics Results for Secondary Students
What kind of results can you expect from an age-appropriate linguistic phonics programme in a large urban secondary school?
Framework for Supporting Reading in Secondary Schools
That Reading Thing has been meeting the criteria of the Reading Framework (DfE 2021) since 2003.
Shame or Safety?
If a 13/15/20 year old can’t read very well then they have already experienced enough shame. If they’re not already angry, they soon will be.
Words ending tion
Learning to read and spell words ending tion is a powerful confidence builder in the early levels of That Reading Thing.
Bomb Comb Tomb
What can bomb, comb, tomb tell us about English and how it works as a code for reading and spelling?
How to make phonics suitable for teens and adults
If you want to check that an intervention provides grown-up phonics, ask the following questions to ensure you are tearing down barriers to literacy.
A conversation with Amy
How do you get from ‘I hate reading’ to ‘I bought a book’?
Amy was in Year 10, almost 15, very artistic, and refused to read even one multi-syllable basic code word on the TRT assessment. ‘I don’t read words like that.’
Phonics isn’t enough
I once had a call from a TRT trained teacher who told me it was going well, but the boys were getting through all of the TRT Levels without making much improvement in their reading. That’s not the most thrilling news I’d ever heard so thought I’d see if the problem was with TRT or with the way it was being delivered.
Correcting b/d reversal
The tendency to reverse b and d is a huge embarrassment for older students who struggle to get the mirror image letters straight. On dyslexia discussion boards, the question keeps coming up, ‘How do we help our dyslexic students stop reversing b and d?’
Pacing your lesson
A TRT tutor emailed with the following: “I have been working with _______ who is ______ years old.
(fill in your own student name and age) I think he has been through several literacy programs, each with their own instructional methods.”