1/ What goes into reading, what does it take? 2/ Why do some kids have difficulty? 3/ How can we identify kids early and prevent it? 4/ How can we remediate it? The four essential questions all who mandate programs must be able to answer.

http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/lyon.htm

‘Recent NAPLAN results show that Aussie kids aren’t improving.’ The literacy and numeracy skills of primary school students have shown little improvement over the last seven years. NAPLAN results released today show nationally student achievement has stalled since 2008 when the tests were first introduced. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/kids-not-improving-in-literacy-numeracy/story-fn3dxiwe-1227470467451 Is it any wonder when the underlying whole language approach remains the same as in 2008?

All Australian students deserve the best preventative approach to failure, they deserve an Immunisation Against Illiteracy. Miss Emma. The Reading Whisperer The main approach used across Australia for over two decades is something called the ‘whole language’ approach. We know this from reading school policy documents, and at a very basic level by analysing ‘home readers’ and reading asessment tools. PM readers and Benchmarking, Fountas and Pinnell type readers and benchmarking are all clear signs that a whole language approach takes precedence. So what has been the result? Reading and spelling achievement is pretty easy to assess. NAPLAN gives us a good idea of basic skill levels, however we can also compare the literacy results of Australian schools with those achieved in other countries . So if this ‘whole language’ approach fails students, and the whole language ‘antidote’, Reading Recovery (a way to recover something that should have been given to the students in the first place) is clearly not working, who is going to stand up to school decision makers, policy makers and even the NSW Education Departments when alternative solutions are not proactively sought and embraced? More of the same, even if cleverly re-packaged (for example the L3 program from the NSW education department) cannot surely, be allowed to continue. All children have a right to be able to read and spell by the age of 6. Within whole language approaches many teachers believe that ‘learning to spell correctly’ is not a priority in Prep/ Reception, and yet we know from looking at what DOES lead to high levels of achievement (how

far traelled) for all, is that spelling success lays the solid foundation for reading and writing skill development. My solution is to clearly show what DOES work for all students, and cutting out the ideological chat, by creating ‘Showcase Schools’ and to empower parents so that they have options other than to simply remove their child from whole language based schools. The question this time next year will not be ‘what are the merits of using a whole language approach, but how can we justify NOT using SSP in the Early Years, Prep/ Reception and Year 1 as the much needed Immunisation again Illiteracy? I am also developing the Wiring Brains Educatin ‘Learning without Teachers’ software, to show that even when students cannot attend school, and may not even have books, teachers, internet or electricity, all students (incuding ESL) are still able to learn to read write an spell in English. But in wealthy countries, with every conceivable resource there can be no excuse to keep failing students. Every child, who does not have an Intellectual Impairment, can be reading for pleasure, and with fluency and comprehension, by the age of 6. Being able to read, and choosing to read for pleasure, is an indisputably vauable gift. Why not offer this to all?

As a former UK OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) Inspector I moved to Australia in 2007 feeling optimistic that the Australian education department would be actioning the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy report recommendations. The UK education department had already proactively set things in place so that schools could transition more easily, for example by ‘fund matching’ approved phonemic awareness and phonics programs, and clearly defining best practice.

The learning to read stage was clearly defined: In the Primary National Strategy (2006a), the three cueing model (known in England as the Searchlight model) is finally and explicitly discredited. Instead, the Strategy has acknowledged the value of addressing decoding and comprehension separately in the initial stage of reading instruction.

“ … attention should be focused on decoding words rather than the use of unreliable strategies such as looking at the illustrations, rereading the sentence, saying the first sound or guessing what might ‘fit’. Although these strategies might result in intelligent guesses, none of them is sufficiently reliable and they can hinder the acquisition and application of phonic knowledge and skills, prolonging the word recognition process and lessening children’s overall understanding. Children

who routinely adopt alternative cues for reading unknown words, instead of learning to decode them, later find themselves stranded when texts become more demanding and meanings less predictable. (Primary National Strategy, 2006b, p.9).”

This means that whole language based ‘readers’ (such as PM & Fountas and Pinnell being used in Australia) should be removed from UK classrooms at least until students have the code knowledge to decode the text.

This was recently made by clear within the LDA Position Statement, relevant sections are copied below: LDA supports approaches to reading instruction that adopt an explicit structured approach to the teaching of reading and are consistent with the scientific evidence as to how children learn to read and how best to teach them. This approach is important for all children, but is particularly important for children who have difficulty in learning to read. They do not include programs that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach, which place emphasis on the three cueing system and guessing from context as acceptable strategies for identifying words. Examples of programs that follow a whole language or ‘balanced literacy’ approach include but are not limited to programs such as Reading Recovery and the literacy approaches developed by Fountas and Pinnell, including Levelled Literacy Intervention and Guided Reading. Whole language based readers are predominantly sight words with words that the students guess from the pictures. There is based on a false assumption about how to ensure that every student reads with fluency and comprehension by the age of 6 (as outlined in the UK document

‘Reading by Six. How the Best Schools Do It’) and guarantees that at least 15 – 20% of students will fail to read by 6. There is then a suggestion that they need ‘recovery’ rather than a realisation that the students are not failures, the teaching has failed them. Around 95% of students who have difficulties with reading and spelling are called ‘NBTs’ by leading reading scientists such as Dr Louisa Moats and Professor Gavin Reid Lyon. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with them. They need to be taught differently. They have Never Been Taught.

And this has serious consequences. AUSTRALIA prides itself in having literacy levels of almost 100%. According to UNESCO, literacy rates are 99%. But UNESCO doesn’t actually collect any data from first world countries such as Australia; they just assume we have almost perfect literacy levels. The reality is that more than 47% of Australians between the ages of 15 and 72 are functionally illiterate. Not just Tasmania. Not just the indigenous population. Not just migrants. Everyone. However schools at which every child (without an Intellectual Impairment) reads by 6 avoid issues by getting it right in the first place. They focus on what they gain by changing the way they teach.

SSP Showcase Schools and specific classrooms demonstrating this in 2016, with doors open to those wanting to learn how. No child is failed. Come and see what SSP teachers do to avoid failure, and how much each student gains. ‘ACARA is committed to the development of a high-quality curriculum for all Australian students that promotes excellence and equity in education. All students are entitled to rigorous, relevant and engaging learning programs drawn from a challenging curriculum that addresses their individual learning needs. The Australian Curriculum recognises that the needs of all students encompass cognitive, affective, physical, social, and aesthetic curriculum experiences.’ But how far will ACARA go to make this statement a reality?

In Australia, the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy asserted that “teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment need to be more firmly linked to findings from evidence-based research indicating effective practices, including those that are demonstrably effective for the particular learning needs of individual children” (p.9). It recommends a national program to produce evidence-based guides for effective teaching practice, the first of which is to be on reading. However ‘evidence based’ has been shown time and time again to be interpreted to suit the duck. What we should be asking is what approach fails NONE of our children. This is why I realised I had to get what I do, having never failed to teach even one child, teenager and adult to read and spell quickly (within 18 weeks) into a replicable program

So what do teachers do, when they believe that programs or approaches that are being mandated by school leaders, are NOT allowing them to address the individual learning needs of their students? What if they have already started using SSP and now know far more than those making decisions about how they should teach their own students? What happens if teachers who are now empowered, are being told to use strategies they know will fail far too many of their students, and further promote the ‘whole language’ approach? What should teachers do if their own education department is driving an approach such as L3 that rings ‘whole language’ alarm bells loud and clear to those teachers? When teachers can answer the questions posed by Professor Reid Lyon, and are then asked to teach using a ‘whole language’ approach what can a teacher do? Is the fact that such programs can be driven by an education department and have cost thousands, enough to warrant failing students?

Louisa Moats, the academic whose criticisms of Reading Recovery attracted recent media attention, is one of the leading US proponents of more evidence-based practice in literacy education. In particular, she urges that teachers be taught more about language, so that they are equipped to teach literacy in a more successful and evidence-based way.

Moats points out that reading is one of the most studied aspects of human behaviour, and we know a great deal about it. Yet the way we teach it typically doesn’t reflect the scientific consensus on what works best.

We vaccinate all children against deadly diseases, regardless of whether they are susceptible or likely to be exposed to them. The risks of not doing so are simply too great.

Likewise, we should be giving all children explicit and well-sequenced instruction about speech sounds and spelling patterns, integrated with work on vocabulary, comprehension and fluency, right from when they start school.

Practices such as guessing from context, pictures and first letters (known as “searchlights” or the “three cueing system) should be eliminated as having no basis in reading science.

Why would school leaders choose to spend money promoting these strategies, and ultimately continuing to fail students? Why not opt for best results? Why would an education department such as NSW actually promote approaches such as Reading Recovery? http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/earlyyears/reading_recovery/index.htm ‘After more than 25 years of Reading Recovery in New Zealand, there is virtually no empirical evidence to indicate that successful completion of Reading Recovery results in sustained literacy improvement.

Reading Recovery provides struggling readers in year 1 with daily individual, 30-minute lessons from a specially trained teacher.

The program was developed in New Zealand and now operates in Australia, the United States, Canada and Britain.

The Victorian Education Department's website says it has a "strong tradition of success with the lowest-achieving children". However we could challenge this statement, especially with regards to setting up any child to be a low achiever in the first place. Reading Recovery is controversial in Australia, and yet now being very much promoted in what was the first state to take action following the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. What has changed?

A 2002 evaluation of Reading Recovery by researchers from the Australian Council of Educational Research found the program's benefits for year 1 students did not last until the children reached year 3.

Professor James Chapman, from Massey University, told Fairfax Media that Reading Recovery did not work for children who had dyslexia or were really struggling to read. I agree whle heartedly. We know the number 1 issue for all students who struggle – poor phonemic awareness. This allows all children to learn to SSP ‘code map’ (an extension of phonics that allows students to ‘sound out’ all but two words in the English language.)

"I'm not saying no one benefits from Reading Recovery, I am saying that in New Zealand it is supposed to be helping the kids who struggle the most to read and the evidence shows that is absolutely not the case," he said.

Professor Chapman also insists that these children needed systematic instruction in "phonemic awareness", with children taught to sound out words.

He was also critical of Reading Recovery because it did not help children until they had been at school for a year. Within an SSP Prep/ Reception year children are able to overcome phonemic awareness issues and have been explicitly taught over half of the whole code (how speech sounds are represented on paper) and been exposed to the rest using the Spelling Clouds, thrugh carefully planned and scffolded ‘inquiry learning’ (Piagetian style) activities. They use these in meaningful context and are either reading age appropriate chapter books for pleasure by term 4 (an equivalent of PM 20+) or well on their way. They exceed the normal end of year ‘benchmark’ expectation within 2 terms (not 4) because whole language readers and spelling activities are avoided. Students then have another 4 terms to become truly fluent. No child enters Year 2 still learning to read or spell. If given a ‘PM30’ they would have no problem reading it aloud or to themselves, and answering all comprehension questions. This is so far from what teachers have experienced, because of previously using whole language based approaches that showcase schools are essential. While policy makers can choose to ignore data, or believe it ‘fabricated’ they cannot do the same when actually in classrooms and seeing it for themselves.

"We would say Reading Recovery is a wait-to-fail program … there is plenty of evidence to show you can predict with a fair degree of certainty the kids who will struggle from the outset," Professor Chapman said. Teachers using SSP know who those kids are within the first three weeks of term 1. The children, thankfully, never know. "Reading Recovery needs to clean up its act and change its approach or be ditched and replaced by a program far more contemporary than one devised in the '70s that hasn't changed," he said

Quotes taken from http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/reading-recovery-a-failed-program-20140902-10biol.html#ixzz3hr2W9lJF

Evidence that data is ignored is clear. The last time Australian children’s reading achievement was benchmarked against that of other countries in 2011, it was the lowest in the English-speaking world. Given the vital importance of literacy it is important we ask ourselves why the very strategies used to fail those kids, are still being promoted or just re-packaged. An education department (NSW) promoting the very approach that was used by those students, is unthinkable. And yet most parents (and even teachers) would not even know this. They would trust that their education department could answer the four essential questions posed at the beginning of this article. So it is important that parents can visit showcase schools and classrooms also. Parents must have the right to be told when whole language based approaches are being used, and have the right to object on the grounds that whole language based approaches have been proven to fail far too many students, and they do not wish to take any risks as far as their own child’s education is concerned. There are far better ways to approach the teaching of reading and spelling ie by preventing issues in the first place. For whole language based approaches to be supported by an education department is dangerous. Children are not being immunised against illiteracy! However it will be easier next year when parents can simply ask ‘do you use SSP in Prep and Year 1?’ Then they know their child will be ‘immunised’ again illiteracy by those teachers.

Advice from paediatrician Doctor Benjamin Spock to have infants sleep face down in their cots caused approximately 60 thousand deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in the USA, Great Britain and Australia between 1974 and 1991 according to researchers from the Institute of Child Health in London (Dobson & Elliott, 2005). His advice was not based upon any empirical evidence. The book, Baby and Child Care (Spock, 1946) sold more than 50 million copies. Yet, while the book continued to promote this practice, reviews of risk factors for SIDS by 1970 had noted the risks of infants sleeping face down. In the 1990’s, when public campaigns altered this practice, the incidence of SIDS death halved within one year. We need a public ‘Immunisation Against Illiteracy’ campaign. We must stop failing students. However there should also be legal recourse when school leaders choose to fail students, and ignore the evidence. Teachers must be allowed to object to be forced to using whole language based approaches. Parents must be allowed to fight for their own children. Taking legal action, to immunise against illiteracy, or take action when a child does not ‘recover’ from early failure might not be as far-fetched as one might think. A Melbourne parent successfully sued a private school for a breach of the Trade Practices Act (Rood & Leung, 2006). She argued that it had failed to deliver on its promise to address her son's reading problems. Her son was being taught using a whole language based approach. Elements of an LDA article are shown as follows. (Why re-write something put so eloquently?) Reading Recovery is a “child” of the Whole Language movement. In essence, this approach to teaching reading, espoused in late 1960s and 1970s by Kenneth Goodman stemmed from the attractive (though unsubstantiated) claim that children can acquire literacy skills in much the same way that they acquire oral language skills – through experiential immersion. While this idea may have had strong face validity and appeal to the educational zeitgeist, it lacked one critical ingredient – an empirically derived theoretical basis. Many aspects of Reading Recovery have long perplexed me, most notably the question of what is being “recovered” for children who had not acquired the requisite skills in the first place? Secondly, I don’t understand why any education system would adopt a reading instruction approach (whole language) that assumes a 15-20 per cent failure rate (and need for expensive and intensive intervention) by the end of the first year of school (“failure” here referring to the lowest performing students in the class – those whom Clay argued could be brought up to the norm via Reading Recovery).

The whole language Reading Recovery grip on teacher education and early years practice is doing a huge disservice to the most vulnerable and socially disadvantaged learners. These are the very learners who need school to accelerate their progress relative to more advantaged peers. The evidence presented by Tunmer and Chapman shows unequivocally that such acceleration is not occurring in NZ, and there is no evidence (of which I am aware) to indicate that it occurs here either.

In the case of reading instruction , we seem to have a terrain that has elements of religious boundary-setting around what teachers (and their educators) can and cannot be challenged over.

This is ethically indefensible and if allowed to continue will simply perpetuate the widening gap between the “haves” and “have nots” in the early years classroom and beyond. There is nothing progressive, socially or educationally, about standing by and being complicit in maintaining such an unfair status quo. Academics who have interrogated the evidence on Reading Recovery and found it to be wanting seem to have been afflicted by Cassandra’s Curse – the ability to predict the future alongside the sure knowledge that they will be ignored. (See full article https://www.ldaustralia.org/client/documents/Bulletin-OCT14.pdf)

Even if many education department decision makers do not yet know what IS effective for all learners, they can look forward to seeing this in action in 2016, in classrooms across the country. They will also be able to follow the development of software being developed to teach African villagers, with no books, teachers, electricity or internet to read and write in English within 18 months. If children can learn without teachers, and certainly without the ‘whole language’ approach will the NSW education department stop wasting money, and promoting strategies that fail far too many students?

Miss Emma will reach even more students to read write and spell, worldwide, by teaching through the Dyslexia Doctor Software.

Included are just a few comments from parents and teachers who have already discovered SSP. Do you ‘Give a Duck’ about eradicating illiteracy? Get involved! Get rid of predominantly whole language based approaches, and join our quest to get every Aussie reading for PLEASURE well before they enter Grade 2. When you see the results, there is no need for ideological discussions, or even to take notice of apparent research showing some merits. Even a 90% ‘success rate’ regarding children moving into year

2 reading chapter books for pleasure means 10% are being failed. One of those might be yours.

Miss Emma BEd Hons. MA Special Educational Needs The Reading Whisperer Dyslexia Doctor Software. www.DyslexiaDoctor.com