Introducing Children to the Magical World of Reading and Spelling

‘Introducing Children to the Magical World of Reading and Spelling’

A Message from ‘The Child Listener™’
Emma Hartnell-Baker BEd Hons. MA Special Educational Needs. Cert Life Coaching


“Reading competence is foundational, not only for school-based learning, but also for children’s behavioural and psychosocial wellbeing, further education and training, occupational success, productive and fulfilling participation in social and economic activity, as well as for the nation’s social and economic future”
AU National Inquiry into the Teaching of Reading 2005.
(View Summary on the Read Australia™ website)



When I first began specialising in child behaviour management over a decade ago I quickly recognised a correlation between poor literacy achievement and delinquency. I was not surprised therefore, in recent years, to read of some US states actually predicting future prison populations based on year 3 and 4 reading scores.
And yet when I have suggested to Head Teachers that they should re-consider how reading is being taught within their schools- as a way to not only improve literacy achievement, but also see improved behaviour throughout the school, you would think, by their reaction, that I was suggesting something really bizarre. Despite the lack of accurate estimates
on the overlap between literacy under-achievement and crime, the associated links however are well documented (e.g. McNee, 2004; Mayhew, 2003). So teaching all children to read early on has wide reaching benefits within society.


For the purposes of this letter I will presume that parents are interested in the initial stage of learning to read- however systematic phonics instruction is critical if children
are to be taught to read well, whether or not they are beginning to learn to read, or experiencing reading difficulties.
You might be interested to know of my experiences and qualifications within this field - as much of my work in recent years has been within 'behaviour management'.
In addition to being an Early Years trained teacher (with a Bachelor of Education with Honours) I also chose to undertake a Masters Degree that combined behaviour management with dyslexia. I have always taken a keen interest in what clinical studies and research show us about why children fail to read- however I have also actually taught young children to read- and this practical experience is invaluable to any litereacy specialist. I taught full time within primary schools (mainly within the 4-7 year old range) and was Head Teacher of two nursery schools for eight years- preparing the education programs and teaching the 2-5 year olds to read. This direct experience - combined with my understanding of research fndings- has resulted in the creation of the 'Parents Aboard' Program for parents of young children, and also the 'Fresh Start to Literacy' strand- with a focus on parents of children who are failing
at school- and particularly the 8+ age range. Even since first qualifiying as a teacher I have always felt that the involvement with parents has not been fully utilitsed- and this is especially important within literacy and behaviour management!


Within our current education system we are often so focussed on 'child based learning' and on constructivism (an established theory of knowing and learning rather than a theory of teaching) and teachers often do not realise that there is a serious lack of supporting evidence for its effectiveness in teaching children to read. Unfortunately one 'method' of
teaching reading- the 'whole-language' approach to teaching and learning - reflects this philosophy of learning, and has been the predominant approach for early literacy teaching and learning throughout English - speaking countries (Pearson, 2000; Westwood, 1999, 2004).
This approach assumes that children are inherently active, self-regulating learners who construct knowledge for themselves, with teachers needing to give little or no explicit decoding instruction. While this may be ok for many children, the ones we focus on at Read Australia™ are those who struggle - and on creating a new culture within Australia whereby these children do not need to struggle for long before receiving specific 1:1 help. Furthermore, I believe that if we change the way we teach, these children won't need that additional 1:1 help in any case! Reading Recovery has been scrapped- why not scrap the reason for needing it in the first place as well? This group can also include children who are from disadvantaged backgrounds who often do not have rich phonological knowledge and phonemic awareness upon which to base new learning.

Being taught using this 'whole language' method has the effect of compounding their disadvantage once they begin school. This is particularly the case for children from non-English speaking backgrounds, including Indigenous children where English may be their second or third language.
So why do so many people advocate their method- and use it? Results show over and over again that this does not facilitate literacy development and achievement for ALL children. Through Read Australia™ I am speaking out on behalf of the children being left behind.

The sounds in our language existed long before the letters. The written symbols of our language were invented to represent the sounds we have been speaking for centuries. Teaching children these sounds is easy when they are speaking- as they know those sounds- they are using them in words pretty much all day (don't we know it!) So we
need to teach them how the sounds we use (when we speak) are represented on paper ie how to de-code the written word. This is more commonly known as
‘reading’. In order for young children- who are very literal- to understand this concept we prefer to say that letters are pictures of sounds. We teach children
a horse makes a sound- 'nay'- so its difficult for them to understand what we mean when we say, for example, 'whats the sound 'a' makes'. A letter on the page doesnt
make a sound:-) So really think about how you are explaining things - so that they are understanding and not just repeating and memorising.
Everything we do is about keeping concepts simple- so we try to analyse everything we say and do with children, to check we are putting the message across effectively. .

While in Australia I have been astounded by how often children are sent home during their first year with 'sight words' and also with 'readers' that they cant possible de-code. If they were asked to come home and practice fine motor skills by painting a Mona Lisa we would think the teachers mad- they arent ready for that yet? So why are we doing it with
'readers'? Also, if we teach children 'whole words' (by asking them to learn sight words) we aren't teaching children that these words are based on the 'sounds' in words- but rather, we are relying on memory.
Let me put this into perspective- a typical person can only retain around 2000 - 3000 words- enough to perform at year 1 level. However by memorising children will soon start forgetting those words, and run out of ways to guess and memorise. It will become harder for them to distinguish 'horse' from 'house' etc because they are trying to remember
the whole word and it's becoming more difficult as more words are introduced and used. So instead we should ‘keep it simple’ and teach children the individual sounds that make up words- of which there are just 134.
If they are going to be given 'sight' words to learn we'd rather it be the handful of words that can't be de-coded eg yacht'. There are 55 words in the English language that they won't be able to de-code. The other 19,950 that we use daily are predictable and decodable however! - if the 'code' is understood. So it's important we teach children that way round.

We need teachers to understand why this method (teaching children to actually crack the written code) is most effective for the highest number of children so that they more proactively create opportunities- both direct teaching and also through play. They need to offer children opportunities to focus on the words they form verbally, and how they create these words- through rich play opportunities encouraging dialogue, and increasing verbal intelligence. Children need to begin to recognise the link between their verbal dialogue, with the words and particularly the letters (pictures of sounds we use within our verbal language) that are used to create these whole words. Through Read Australia™ we will be sharing this information with parents- as there is much to be done in every day life at home in those early formative years. Exciting work is currently being undertaken, for example to discover how simply increasing the attention to environmental text can affect literacy development. At Read Australia™ we plan to research yet more aspects of the fascinating field of early literacy development- we hope you will join us in our journey of discovery!


There needs to be a focus on explicit teaching of the structure and function of written and oral language in ways that allow children, regardless of their backgrounds, to reflect on and consciously manipulate the language. This involves an awareness of phonemes, syllables and morphology- and this requires a high degree of teacher-centred presentation of learning material, with an emphasis on explicit instruction, scheduled practice and feedback (e.g. Center, 2005; Westwood, 2003, 2004). This method asks more of our teachers- and provides children with a greater chance of success. A great learning environment for young children is one where the focus is on the picture of sounds - and not the letter names. It is one in which children are taught to understand how words are built up using pictures of sounds (spelling) and also how we can put on paper the sound we use in words (in order) to create a record of that word (spelling) To make this even easier we recommend writing whole words using bold and non bold type face - even when parents and teaching are at level 1 and only using single pictures of sounds, and the words that can be created from them- eg cat. pin, hot etc The parts of words that are in bold are where the sounds in the words we are speaking are represented by two or more sounds (that change when put together) eg this - the th is in bold as the 't' and 'h' together are how we represent the 'th' sound. 'i' and 's' are separate. So teachers will discuss with the children how we ‘spell’ the word ‘this- ie that the whole word has been created using 3 pictures of sounds- because the picture for the sound ‘th’ we create verbally is written as ‘th’. So they would ‘read’ the word this as ‘this’ ie th + i + s.


You will notice as above, and in the program that the focus is on lower case letters as these make up most of the text children see- and for the purposes of teaching them to de-code we have to focus on lower case letters. We dont completely ignore upper case/ capital letters- children will see lower and upper case letters together on wall displays etc and use them in 'important' words- like their names. We prefer to initially make sure they have learned the pictures used to represent the sounds we use within the spoken word in lower case letters. Some children learn the names of letters quickly- and the corresponding 'sound' they represent - but some dont, particularly boys. So if they do then run with it-
if not, then let's make sure they are learning the most important aspects- the rest we can take case of when the child has grasped the most important concepts. So other than writing names using capitals, focus on lower case letters even within simple sentences.


I plan on undertaking clinical studies - researching how the use of bold typeface, or even using colour or multiple fonts, can help children more easily recognise how words are created (spelling) or broken down (reading) in the English language. I believe that this will be especially helpful to children of whom English is a second language, and also children with learning challenges such as dyslexia- however I think it can help all new readers understand concepts more easily. This helps children focus on how the pictures of sounds (letters) sit together to create a word and moves them away from only seeing the word as a 'whole' word during the initial stages of learning to read. We would opt to do it for all - not just those who are failing.
We will also create 'readers' using words that are written with the same spacing, but split into chunks- with letters (pictures of sounds) in bold when they become changed when put them together with other pictures of sounds. For example the word ‘out’ would be written out with the ‘ou’ in bold as the o+u lead us to say a different sound (ow). As this is a
fairly difficult aspect to describe in text, please refer to the DVD and YouTube video (available shortly) We will be doing this within 'readers' so that we can put the concepts intruduced within actual books. Comprehension (understanding) is a big part of reading - and so we try to ensure that words are being ' read' or 'written' within the context of something of meaningingful.

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When the children have learned to recognise even a few pictures of sounds they can start to read and spell words! Initial 'readers' would be books that have text that doesn't have many words that have bolded text- eg 'a fat rat ran past' (which as you will see is a sentence created using just 7 sounds). All words other than 'the' should be de-coded in these early 'readers- so the children are actually reading the text. We do strongly believe that early readers find this way of viewing text much easier- it makes sense to them! -so please do try this at home and in your classroom if you are a teacher or early years educator and let us know what you think. Make them yourselves or order them from our online resources page. Ideally resources created are also personal to the children- making them more meaningful- starting from a selection of 7 sounds and working on the concepts required so that they can start to crack the 'written code'. It doesnt really matter which you start with - but use seven that enable you to create the most words. Also create nonsense words- so that children understand that these
pictures of sounds can be manipulated to make a range of words- even new ones!


When confident within Level 1 (available soon) children would be given a mixture of books as 'readers'- because their success rate (de-coding, not guessing) will still be good. Initially however children in these 'ideal classrooms' would only be given 'readers' that they can de-code. They should of course share 'real' books - or books that have not been
developed using phonics- with older children, parents etc- however to learn to actually read children would be taught the skills to do so- and part of that is actually understanding why we write words as we do, and why we spell them as we do. We absolutely believe that parents should be reading books to children- as many as possible- and that there are
skills that should be taught to you as parents (also available shortly online) to ensure that they are being as helpful to children as possible- however there is no evidence to suggest that reading to your child will actually result in them learning to read purely because of this. If you were given thousands of books with chinese symbols and someone told the stories of these books, would you think you would learn to decipher the exact meaning of each of those symbols? And even if you could- wouldn’t you prefer to actually be taught those symbols in a systematic, and meaningful way?
Keep it simple!


If we look at the AU Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy 2005 (or Rose Report, UK etc) we see that recommendations support this. Much of how literacy is currently taught within the UK was as a result of the Rose Report - and as a former OFSTED Inspector and Early Years educator within UK I can see huge differences between the UK and Australia
- and especially Queensland.
A school in Scotland used the Jolly Phonics program as part of a 7 year study and their results, compared to the national average, were staggering. This led to the government taking a closer look into how children were being taught to read, so that recommendations could be given based on observations, results, and research. The Rose Report was born! Since then an Inquiry was also undertaken within AU- with virtually identical results and recommendations made- and educators began to more proactively embrace the use of synthetic phonics. For some reason this document seem to have been ignored- and at Read Australia™ we are not really sure why? Parents can still use the summaries however, to get the idea of what teachers should be doing.


'Read Australia™' was created to empower parents so that they can be more effectively and proactively involved in their children's literacy development regardless of where they live or which teacher their child has the fortune or misfortunate to have in the first few years.
Governments have been researching this topic because children were (and still are) failing- and teachers needed clearer direction. Teachers should no longer be allowed to get away with using their own preferred method, or systems they've been using for years because research and clinical studies show us these aren't meeting the needs of our children. Some teachers of course ARE providing opportunities for children - and ensuring that all children are being taught phonics explicitly- however many still aren't- and children shouldn’t suffer because of this.

If children in the early years see letters and say the name instead of the sound even when asked what it is a picture of (ie what 'sound') then I become concerned. Why? We don't say see-aye-tee when we say cat! They need to know the sounds of the alphabet - not their names- as their names are meaningless with regards to spelling and reading the English language. Keep it simple!

Good readers understand the code so that when they come across words they have never seen before they actually break them down. If adult readers are given unfamiliar text that is what they will find themselves doing also. Some children ‘crack the code’ quickly even if not being taught well- however there are many others that don't- especially boys.
These are the ones we are concerned about- and need to be identified as early as possible. If children are great at spelling words- not just for a test ie from memory- it’s because they understand how words are broken down and also understand how the sounds we use to speak- to form words- are created. For example they will give you all the versions when asked to spell the word 'brown'. They wont just give the 'correct' spelling- they will also tell you that it could have been written 'broun' if we were to put the other 'ow' sounds within the word- or if asked to write 'same' they would give 'saym, sayme, saim, saime,' etc - or 'fur' would also be written 'fir or fer'.
I have always done lots of work with children using 'real' and also nonsense words as I want to know they really do 'get' the code.


The written word relates to our spoken word- so children must become aware of the sounds in words verbalised- as they hear them. Many children we assess for example
will have difficulty hearing that there are 4 sounds in 'frog'-or knowing what the word would be if we said 'frog' without the 'r'. They haven't practised listening to the words
we are speaking- and knowing how to written them down, with the individual pictures of sounds in the correct order.

Something many teachers do unfortunately- not realising this makes it really difficult for children who aren't picking this up quickly- is that they put two sounds together that should stay separate. So children put for example 'fr' instead of 'f' and 'r'. We need to keep it simple - if the two sounds change when put together then that's fine - if not keep them separate.
So 'shop' has 3 sounds - sh o p - but frog has 4 sounds ie f + r +o + g


At this point Id like to again raise the issue of how you use the word 'sounds' with young children- eg here’s the ‘a’ and he makes an ‘a’ ('ah!) sound. It actually doesn’t. A cow makes a ‘moo’ sound – a letter in print doesn’t make a sound. Teacher’s working with young children will understand my point- it’s the same as trying
to count young children sitting in a circle. Many get very annoyed if they are the number ‘4’ because they aren’t 4. As much as you say we are counting, and in this situation you are number 4, all she knows is that she’s not 4! Pre-school and Prep aged children in particular are so literal. So when we say that something on paper makes a sound
they can find this difficult to understand and will recite, parrot fasion that ‘a' (ay) makes an‘a’ sound - but have no idea what that means. They are memorising something
- like a song- with no understanding of the meaning of it. As we are all about ‘keeping it simple’ we’d prefer to keep the way in which we talk to children accurate, and simple.
So we prefer to say that this is the picture of the sound (put whatever you want here) and this it the letter name. So ‘ay’ could be shown as the name of the letter – ‘ay’ is used as a picture for us to draw/ record the sound ‘a’. Please see DVD/ YouTube Video explaining this – it’s easier to understand when you hear me explain it than on paper.)

We also take time talking to children about why we have text- its to put on paper to record what we are saying. The words come first though- so focus on language, and its logical then when we are explaining how to record it on paper. We are using pictures for the sounds! The code is made up of lots of pictures of sounds. Some are single pictures- ‘a’ – some pictures have two or more of these letters ‘ou’ ‘igh’ etc. We start from single pictures and build up- simple! The suggested progessions are given within our new guide- released shortly- entitled 'Parents Aboard'. This is because we want parents to do as much as they can before children start school- we want you to climb aboard and practively embrace the learning journey.

Looking for letters, and learning how to form them, can happen virtually everywhere- use environmental print, and search for words in the world around us. A section relating to
letter formation alongside letter recognition is being created as a separate document and also available within the Parents Aboard Program.


Children should be tested when they start school- and this should be on-going, to assess individual progress. Objective, standardised diagnostic tests that assess the essential alphabetic, decoding skills required for reading proficiency are available to teachers- however seem not to be fully utilised. In order to meet the needs of all children we need to use methods that meet the needs of all children from the beginning - not give them phonics instruction when they are failing at 7 or 8 as a way to help them ‘recover’.
We KNOW what to do- research relating to how children learn to read, why some fail and what we can do about it, is readily available. So within the Parents Aboard Program we
also share this information- information how to assess your child's level of understanding and know how to look for the signs that they are likely to struggle.

In addition to actually putting this knowledge into place we need to pay much more attention to individual children. Teachers should know how each child is developing in all aspects of reading and spelling, from their first day at Prep and should be sharing this with parents. We at Read Australia™ believe that it is not fair for children to be at the mercy of ‘luck’ – or that parents should be in a position of hoping their child’s teacher understands why some children fail, how to recognise these children early on, and what to do about it. This is why Read Australia™ are creating the ‘parents Aboard’ Program- to empower parents and arm them with the tools required to teach their own child to read, and the knowledge that will enable them to demand that their children receive reading instruction that will meet their needs.


So please join us and ensure all children are able to read and spell quickly - we owe them this as parents and educators.

Read Australia™ will soon fully launch the ‘Parents Aboard’ Program- linked with what we affectionately call Kiss PhoniX – our focus being on‘keeping it simple’. In the meantime please do add your comments and ask questions within this 'Parents Aboard' chat group!
Parents will be able to start the program at any age- however we have found that when children reach the age of 2 this is when they are most receptive - in the same way that they are able to learn two languages at home, and not be confused. As mentioned previously, think of ‘reading’ and ‘spelling’ as being directly linked to language- so if you child is speaking,
he is ready to start understanding how we record what sounds he is making. This also leads on to the idea that the richer the language is at home- and the more practive parents are with regards to developing verbal intelligence,the easier it is to develop all literacy skills.


As ‘The Child Listener™’ I am passionate about children- and in helping them develop to their potential in all areas. Reading and spelling is not something ALL children can do alone. Put children on an island together – from different countries- and they will develop their own language. They will never develop a written code however. We need to change our approach to the teaching of reading, writing and spelling and be more aggressive in our approach to demanding that all children are given the best opportunities to learn. Parents/ carers are the best resource for children- and so rather than focus on the education system- the focus at Read Australia™ are parents. So come aboard- and let’s start making real changes across Australia- eventually the education system will catch on, and alongside parents will start meeting the needs of every individual child within Australia.


Keep supporting and loving our children, and we will support you- welcome to our community!- a Fresh Start to Literacy!


Emma

Also known as The Child Listener™
http://www.ReadAustralia.com 'Raising Literacy Standards- Empowering Parents' http://www.The-Child-Listener.com 'Learning to Listen and to Lead'