That Reading Thing

I'm delighted to announce that 'A Parent's Guide to Phonics' will be published by DK Books on 5th September 2024.

I hope this will make it accessible to a wider group of parents than I have achieved by simply self-publishing.

I am so pleased with the revised book which, thanks to the talented team at DK, looks amazing.

https://www.dk.com/uk/book/9780241712634-dk-super-phonics-a-parents-guide-to-phonics/

For any visionary school districts or academy chains out there - what a fantastic idea!

🎉Novus, a prison education provider, has recently published some case studies about their learners and That Reading Thing. Couldn't be happier! 🎉

"Due to the learner's hard work and determination, he was able to increase his reading and spelling skills, enabling him to progress into joining an English class to study entry level 3 English."

Improving reading skills at HMP Risley | Novus At Novus, we go above and beyond to encourage as many learners as possible into reading. Our reading provision aims to support learners in reading and help them to obtain reading and literacy skills that will benefit them in everyday life and upon release.

I'll be doing a session on Speech to Print Phonics and Spelling!

❣️ Wishing your reading instruction were more efficient and effective?
❣️ Looking to improve literacy outcomes for your student(s)?
❣️ Curious about Speech to Print (AKA Structured Linguistic Literacy)?

Then SAVE the DATE! 🗓️ June 24-28, 2024

Join us for a FREE virtual summit….

🎯 Accelerating Outcomes with Structured Linguistic Literacy🎯 Science, Stories, & Success

Including keynotes from:

Dr. Pamela Snow - Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Education School Operations, La Trobe University
Dr. Mark Seidenberg - Research Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Language at the Speed of Sight
Lindsay Kemeny - teacher, podcast host, and author of 7 Mighty Moves,
Dr. Devin Kearns - Associate Professor of Special Education, University of Connecticut
AND other literacy experts we’ll spill the beans on later….

In this 5-day online event, among other things, we will share:

🔷 The Science of Structured Linguistic Literacy (AKA speech to print/linguistic phonics)
🔷 School, Teacher, Parent, and Student stories of this approach, and
🔷 Successes of teachers, parents, and students.

Keep an eye out for our early bird offer, launching next week.

Great news!

The Phonics for SEN training for schools has been revised and updated and the new version is now available.

The training enables schools to train as many members of staff as they wish and is sustainable with perpetual access to the videos for refresher and induction training.

For more information, head over to the website: https://www.phonicsforpupilswithspecialeducationalneeds.com/training-for-schools

All existing Phonics for SEN schools (have accessed the training previously) will receive the updates and access to the new version.

Stop saying 'sound it out' and 'break it down'.
Here's why: https://thatreadingthing.com/explicit-literacy-instruction/

People are now coming to That Reading Thing from all sorts of general literacy and specific phonics traditions which may have different ideas about phonological awareness. Here's a great article with lots of research that points towards the benefit of always combining graphemes with the phonemes. Phonemic awareness (a subcategory of phonological awareness) is embedded in TRT from the very first moment of 'building with charts'.

For many of our teen students, PA is part of the latent knowledge they bring to a TRT session and it doesn't take long for them to grasp the concept and put it to use. Of course, others do need more time and practice so we include more specific PA lessons in TRT Basic (Pre-TRT).

I think I was wrong about phonemic awareness I think I was wrong about phonemic awareness

People ask what they can add to TRT when working through the Advanced Levels. Here's a great idea from Georgina (The Reading Coach). Listening is such a key componenent of reading and spelling and this activity helps everyone avoid getting hung up on the purely visual.

A little preparation for a young person's mind that races away when mine is running too slow. We are working with complete sentences (Name and Say More) in response to short pieces of text. At times, I need to make notes or construct scrambled sentences related to the text, and my young charge is left 'mentally meandering'. Not good.

So, using magnetic words from the 'Little Magnetic Company' and recommended by my good friend Alison Hyde, I have compiled independent scrambled sentences for this young person to reconstruct (instead of fiddle) whilst I catch up.

And bearing in mind the need to keep this young person's mind moving forward, I have downloaded the 'Voicechanger' app. A student can speak and record their sentence, and in this particular situation I allow the young person 3 different 'voices' from an extensive list that reads their sentence back to them.

With another student who is not confident articulating clearly, I intend to follow the same process but for a different reason - to improve their articulation. In this instance, the sentences will be much simpler, but if the student is to have the app change their voice, then they must speak it clearly in the first place.

I know teachers can't implement the type of bespoke interventions I have the privilege to play with, but when it comes to one on one, we have better options than 'fidget spinners' to keep a rapidly active mind engaged whilst we catch up.

On the 100th anniversary of his birth, I give you my father's competely tongue in cheek but shockingly prescient view of the future, written just before his 29th birthday.
(Transcription in the comments in case you want to puzzle out his handwriting.)

After investing a significant number of hours immersed in (free) webinar training from Joan Sedita on The Writing Rope, I am reaping the rewards when working with students. It takes time to prepare individually tailored resources, but the benefits of linking comprehension and sentence work with wonderful local reading material means we read articles and books that are of interest; we can integrate decoding and tricky spellings of sounds; we can learn the meaning of words; we can develop syntax; AND we tune into sentence parts. Whether I am using it with Grade 2 students, Year 6 or early high school, I am very impressed with how it comes together. Finally, an understanding and resource that clearly reveals the relationship between comprehension and writing, and how templates, oral language and graphic organisers for one side of the coin, support development on the other. If your child needs comprehension and writing support, I would love to bring this evidence based, comprehensive work to them.

As we pause for the holidays, I leave you with this literacy gift from Mark Seidenberg. He has narrated his 'controversial' slides with great clarity. Enjoy and see you in 2024! https://videos.files.wordpress.com/CJUEjfc9/video3767746143-1.mp4

𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: How would you syllabify 'occasionally' if you were trying to build visual recognition of common affixes? I was going to syllabify it as o cca sion a lly, but then I realised I could syllabify as occ a sion a lly - which then might translate to easier recognition with occurrence, occupy, occult, occupant.

𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: How would you syllabify 'occasionally' if you were trying to build visual recognition of common affixes? I was going to syllabify it as o cca sion a lly, but then I realised I could syllabify as occ a sion a lly - which then might translate to easier recognition with occurrence, occupy, occult, occupant.

𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿: The first thing I would do is strip it back to ‘occasion’ because it allows you to deal with the tricky bits and then add the affixes which, in this case, are straightforward.

Some might suggest looking at the historic root and affixes, arguing that it's morphologically oc/cas/ion. is the spelling of 'ob' before a c and means (from the Collins Dictionary):
𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑂𝑙𝑑 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐ℎ, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑏. 𝐼𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑏- (𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑐-, 𝑜𝑓-, 𝑜𝑝-) 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠:
• 𝑡𝑜, 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 (𝑜𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡);
• 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 (𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒);
• 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒);
• 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐);
• 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 (𝑜𝑏𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡);
• 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑜𝑓 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒);
• 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑟 (𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔)

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary says:
𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛
𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑀𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ: 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑜(𝑛-) ‘𝑗𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛’, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒 ‘𝑔𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑠𝑒𝑡’, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑏- ‘𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠’ + 𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒 ‘𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙’.

When a historic affix (ob-) has multiple meanings, some of which can mean completely opposite things like ‘towards’ and ‘away from’, I'd say it’s better to teach the word as a whole.
Likewise, when the meaning of historic morphemes is hard to connect with the current meaning, like occasion coming from ‘towards’ + ‘to fall’, then it’s better to teach the word as a whole.

If our students understand what it means when we say ‘there’s a special occasion coming up’ or that, ‘on this occasion’, something is allowed, then they know enough about the meaning of the word.

So, we’ll start with spoken syllables and listening for the sounds.
Common words that start are:
occasion
occur
occupy
occupant
occupation
occult
Others?
The only common-ish word I can find with similar pattern but a single c is:
ocular, but do suggest others.

So how to remember occasion? I prefer:
o (short 'o')
cca ('kay)
sion (with the voice zh sound).

Then we have
o-ccur
o-ccult
o-ccu-py
o-ccu-pant
o-ccu-pa-tion

Now we can get to the modern affixes because these are useful and not nearly so ambiguous and hard on memory as the historic morphemes.

So, start with ‘occasion’ and now talk about ‘occasional’. Except when discussing tables (I’m old) this might not be so common. ‘I make the occasional spelling error.’ It’s hard to use ‘occasional’ without turning it into ‘occasionally’!

However, I want to pause here because there’s a trustworthy spelling pattern for you to explore. Here’s the table from That Spelling Thing that sums up my research (of the internet variety) into the spelling of what sounds like ‘le’ after a tion, sion or ssion ending. The answer was that 100% of more than 350 words with this pattern were spelt . (see photo)


0 300 0 0 0
0 32 0 0 0
0 27 0 0 0

And now we’re ready to get to ‘occasionally’. This is where I’m happy to split a grapheme because -ly is meaningful and fairly trustworthy, often added to a word with no changes. If we don’t do this, then we add another double letter to remember instead of just the one in ‘occasion’. As always, we’re deciding which strategy has the lightest burden on memory.
In this case, I think it’s:
• Syllables o/cca/sion
• Tricky bit is probably the cc
• Bundle it with occur, occult, occupy, occupant, occupation
• Then adding -al – always spelt this way after tion/sion/ssion
• Then add -ly – the friendly affix.

Sounds like a long process but it would probably take only a few minutes.
If you want to extend the lesson, go back to the occ words and look at what you can add to them. Search for ‘words containing occup’, ‘words containing occult’ or ‘words containing occur’ and see what thefreedictionary.com comes up with.
This is what it looks like when word study arises from a question about a single word and grows into a spelling and vocabulary lesson.
Enjoy!

That Spelling Thing, 3rd Edition is available from Amazon wherever you are!

EDIT: For discussion purposes, I'm only looking for research, either peer reviewed or practioner led, that discusses the outcomes of teaching historic roots. This isn't a polarised 'morphology: yea or nay' conversation and I apologise in advance for not commenting on personal experience. I'm just trying to source research on this very narrow topic. To see what I mean, read the 2016 Crosson paper listed below. Thanks!

*****
I've been on a quest for research about the outcomes of teaching historic morphemes like 're-main-ed' rather than the purely derivational 'remain-ed' and I’ve found a few papers. Dr Amy Crosson and colleagues have been doing a lot of work on this over the past few years. Most of the papers are about teaching Latin roots to English language learners, but there is one (2016) about the same activity with middle schoolers (top of the list below).
Was my question answered? I'll continue to consider all of this, and I hope others are open to conversation, but the research, though thought-provoking, doesn't present enough evidence to make me change my current advice to limit teaching to noticing roots that are as obvious and unambiguous as possible so that we can increase vocabulary a few words at a time. (i.e 'hierarchy' or 'definite' in That Spelling Thing or 'physiology' and 'psychology' in the attached photo.)

1. Crosson, A.C. and McKeown, M.G. (2016) ‘Middle school learners’ use of Latin roots to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words’, Cognition and Instruction, 34(2), pp. 148–171. doi:10.1080/07370008.2016.1145121.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED577098.pdf
2. Crosson, A.C. and Moore, D. (2017) ‘When to take up roots: The effects of morphology instruction for middle school and high school English learners’, Reading Psychology, 38(3), pp. 262–288. doi:10.1080/02702711.2016.1263699.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED598548.pdf
3. Crosson, A.C. et al. (2018) ‘Extending the bounds of morphology instruction: Teaching Latin roots facilitates academic word learning for English learner adolescents’, Reading and Writing, 32(3), pp. 689–727. doi:10.1007/s11145-018-9885-y.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED598589.pdf
4. McKeown MG. Effective Vocabulary Instruction Fosters Knowing Words, Using Words, and Understanding How Words Work. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2019 Oct 10;50(4):466-476. doi: 10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0126. Epub 2019 Oct 10. PMID: 31600467; PMCID: PMC8753997.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8753997/
5. Crosson, A.C. et al. (2020) ‘Morphological analysis skill and academic vocabulary knowledge are malleable through intervention and may contribute to reading comprehension for multilingual adolescents’, Journal of Research in Reading, 44(1), pp. 154–174. doi:10.1111/1467-9817.12323.https://ukla.org/wp-content/uploads/Crosson.pdf
Other papers
6. This one is a helpful guide to the levels of morphology teaching. About English language learners but was helpful for organising my thoughts about where I currently want to draw a line.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347274166_The_Role_of_Morphology_in_English_Vocabulary_Teaching
7. And it's good to be reminded about morphology matrices from Ng, Bowers & Bowers.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0262260

A great starting point for discussing what should and should not be included in literacy teaching that claims the be 'aligned with the science of reading'.
https://seidenbergreading.net/2023/12/08/where-does-the-science-of-reading-go-from-here/

This is why Georgina and I work so well together. Yes, TRT students become better readers, but they also often discover a sense of belonging in the world of education. Hard outcomes matter but the soft outcomes, fostered by a relational 1-1 approach and protected by The Deal, are equally life-changing.

As I walked out of DSF South Perth this morning clutching my bag of recent purchases, the crinkle of brown paper reminded me of the bag full of school stationery we would collect from our primary school in the weeks before school commenced. I was always so excited about what the year ahead would bring, the new things we would learn, the teacher I would have, and the items in the bag I hadn't come across before. That feeling stayed with me throughout primary school and also into high school.

But not all children feel this way about the forthcoming year. Unfortunately, many dread it, some of them way too early.

Whilst waiting for DSF to open, I sat in the Millpoint Caffe Bookshop, reading Talk 4 Writing material by its creator Pie Corbett. In his final paragraph a couple of phrases stuck with me. 'We need to develop greedy readers ....' and, 'if we can awaken curiosity that a writer has in noticing ....'. His article was directed at teachers and outlined all the elements that teachers need to teach in order to foster these phrases. For specialist tutors and teachers working with learners who most likely are not well endowed neurologically with language and/or memory, the magnitude of these two phrases is enormous.

Given how effortful reading is for most of our learners, developing greedy readers is very difficult. But in our sessions and with the help of others, we can develop an enjoyment of stories (read to them or with them). Awakening curiosity about how others write needs to be artfully titrated, balancing focussed effort in bringing understanding to a task that for most is overwhelming and unattainable, with success with a small chunk of writing instruction. We will never have the time to cover all the elements Pie has delineated as needing explicit instruction. Our students are not 'automatic' learners. If they were, they wouldn't be with us. For most of us, our goal is to support them to pass OLNA. This requires that we take what evidence tells needs to be explicitly taught and strategically identify which of those can make the most difference to achieving that goal for the young person before us.

It's not easy and it's not just about teaching. The relationship fostered in one on one work is a huge component of effectiveness. It takes time. It takes care, commitment, compassion and courage. Courage to test out where the line between 'competence' and 'stretch' sits. Sometimes we are working with a student when they pass OLNA and we can immediately share their success. At other times, they come back to us years later with tales of how they have progressed. And others will send stories they have written in high school years. I enjoy the instruction. I enjoy learning about how to do it better and I enjoy thinking about the nuances of using mainstream evidence based teaching with those who are simply not able to cover it all. But perhaps what I enjoy most is hearing from parents and young people whose curiosity and belief in themselves as learners, readers and writers, was restored through our work together. Resurrecting enjoyment of stories, and a belief in their ability to write something that makes sense, has paragraphs, and uses capitals and full stops, makes a difference. Personhood is restored - and usually OLNA is passed.

Make it Stick! More wisdom from Georgina Mavor.

Comprehension and Writing When working with high school students, a recurring request is for ‘tricks’ to help the young person with learning difficulties retain information and/or use it in writing. Invariably, …

This is beautiful.

Just had a wonderful meeting with teachers from Sheridan County School District #1 in Wyoming to hear how That Reading Thing is going in their middle school and high school. Kind, generous and offered good thoughts on tweaking TRT for their system. There were also echoes of recent conversations with The Reading Coach about choosing reading material that allows for 'effortful learning'. So many highlights but it's always special to hear what TRT students think of it all. This is from a 9th grader:
"I like how I know how each lesson will be organized. You’re not going to throw something at me that I don’t know...I’m seeing growth and I really appreciate that. And its not boring.”

Always grateful for 'not boring' reviews from teens! And the rest? That's The Deal in action, a borderless ethos of creating safety so a struggling reader can take a risk and learn.

Phew. Available on Amazon wherever you are. 🎉

Why yes, that is the 3rd edition of That Spelling Thing lounging on my desk. Available now from Amazon!

Inclusion is so much more than a policy document. Every school and alternative educational setting should have the training and resources to teach a teen or adult to read. That Reading Thing costs £170 and includes everything you need to help a young person feel like they belong in education.
https://thatreadingthing.com/inclusion-deep-wide-and-welcoming/

Have you seen this amazing write-up about doing That Reading Thing training? The energy and understanding are wonderful.
See the follow-up discussion to find out how it has gone.

That Reading Thing: First Notes my notes from That Reading Thing

I was rather taken with The Reading Ape's recent blog on 'Reading for Pleasure'. In this they look at Robert Stebbin's work and his suggestion that we should be thinking about developing 'committed readers' rather than focusing narrowly on reading for pleasure. The commitment is divided into three aspects: utility, pleasure and fulfilment, as briefly described below.

You can read The Reading Ape's original blog here:
https://www.thereadingape.com/single-post/there-s-nothing-like-a-good-book-the-problem-with-reading-for-pleasure

How do you nurture your own literacy? I'm an escapist reader and sometimes poet. If you live in Perth and want to explore your own writing, you couldn't do better than start here with Georgina, The Reading Coach

My love of words extends beyond tutoring those struggling with reading and writing. Mathematicians might see the world as made up of numbers and formula. I see everything as Thought - expressed via words. Everyone interprets the world via their own thoughts - whether it be children interpreting what the teacher said (and I have heard some real doozies), adults interpreting life, or authors putting words to a page. I truly love words .... reading them, how to write them better, journaling them, listening to how they are used in therapy sessions, writing stories. Words make the world go round.

So if anyone is interested in participating in one of my little side hustles - journal writing - send word to The Meeting Place in Fremantle.

Have you ever asked your dyslexic students what's going on in their heads when they get to a word they don't recognize?
Many dyslexic adults can read a lot but experience anxiety when required to read aloud, so I decided to practise reading Trivial Pursuit question cards. The difficult bit was not what I expected.
“Which musical did the Daily Express hail: A fine, four-fendered, fabulous night?”
https://thatreadingthing.com/four-floor-flour-sight-or-sound/

Two crashed websites on the first day of school, then two typos which actually looked like spelling errors on the literacy woman's out of office. 😳 It's been quite a day. But, a plan hatched 2 years ago is finally happening and tomorrow we're off to Part 1 of our Rugby World Cup experience. All that to say sorry if I don't answer emails until Monday.
(Photo from 2015 RWC. No, you're right, I'm not that young anymore.)

📢 📢 ALL FIXED. Panic over. Need a lie-down.
5 September. The trtgo training site is down due to a server issue with LCN.com Email cpd(at)thatreadingthing.com with your name and school's name for an alternative link to videos. Apologies! Fingers crossed it's fixed quickly. 🤞🏻

Since the Sounds-Write speech to print symposium, I'm getting lots of questions about how That Reading Thing compares with EBLI. Both TRT and EBLI are rooted in exactly the same phonics soil and have both been around for the same number of years so there are many conceptual similarities. Here are some of the differences I've gleaned from tutors who are familiar with both programs:
✔️ That Reading Thing costs £170 (£160 until September 30th) which comes out to just over USD$200 (+ tax & shipping and subject to Fx rates) That includes full online training, support as required and all the physical resources for working 1-1.
✔️The reason for this very low price is that everyone can afford to be properly trained and have the correct resources. Some schools buy 20 licences but a homeschooling parent can afford one licence.
✔️There is no annual subscription fee because schools tend to add tutors as and when they need them or take on new staff.
✔️TRT is only for older students (teens and adults), ideally no younger than 7th grade and is intended to be delivered 1-1 for a limited period.
✔️A tutor who uses both EBLI and TRT says, 'TRT covers more of the code (explicitly teaches more phonics) than EBLI does.'
✔️Here's some feedback (annotated by me) from an EBLI mom who tried out That Reading Thing with her 16-year-old:
🟢Mom: Both TRT and EBLI take the synthetic phonics approach and start with breaking words into syllables and into sounds.
🟣TM: TRT is ‘synthetic’ in that we synthesize words so it falls under larger umbrella of ‘structured synthetic phonics’. Within that larger phonics body, it is considered ‘speech to print’ or ‘linguistic’ phonics.
🟢Mom: EBLI approaches this by having the students draw a line for each syllable break that they hear and then they go back and make smaller lines to represent each sound that they hear in the syllable and then finally have them write letters on each of the sound lines. Then if the student misspells the word they just show the corrected spelling and have the student correct it. I like the more scaffolded approach of TRT by giving the student the letters (graphemes) that they would need to choose from to represent those sounds. In the beginning that increases the confidence and they can see how much they do know correctly.
🟣TM: We call that building with puzzle pieces with one grapheme (1, 2 3 or 4 letters) on one puzzle piece. We build and spell multisyllable words with CVC syllables in the first session. These early long words with simple code make it appropriate for older students and adults.
🟢Mom: Both programs have a portion of the teaching committed to ‘Sounds the Same-Looks Different’ and ‘Looks the Same-Sounds Different’.
🟣TM: The mom didn’t comment on this but I’m sure it’s a difference between the programs. After the single syllable and mulitsyllable initial code type words (bag/upset, tent/invest, plant/suspect, etc then sh/ch/th/ & split digraphs), we add common endings to simple code to practice reading longer words even at the early levels. They’re building and spelling words like ‘recognition’ in a few lessons. This is before we get to the concepts of many spellings of one sound (fun, stuff, photo, cough etc) and pronunciations of one grapheme (add, table, swan, about etc).
🟢Mom: One of the things I liked about the TRT approach to breaking into spoken syllables was the encouragement to break a word at a point of meaning if you could for example: "gift-ed" whereas EBLI said wherever the student heard it break, so it often would look like "gif-ted."
🟣TM: We work from naturally spoken syllables just like EBLI, but I then ask tutors to ‘nudge for meaning’ if it's obvious. This is what I now talk about as ‘everyday morphology’. The ‘gifted’ example is perfect.
🟢Mom: I did like "the deal" that you presented to your students and how helpful that could be for wary students who aren't really sure about trying something new.
🟣TM: The Deal is: ‘you never have to know anything we haven’t learned together’. It was noted as a key feature by Professor Brooks in his evaluation of the program and is part of an explicit overall ethos of giving an older learner power over their education. TRT is not something you teach; it’s something you guide carefully so the student grasps concepts and grows in knowledge. You want lots of ‘aha!’ moments from your student.
🟢Mom: In the end, I didn't find much that was really conceptually different between the two programs. Through EBLI, my son had already learned almost all of what was taught in TRT.
🟣TM: This was so helpful and I now tell parents who want to try TRT after EBLI that they are not likely to get more progress (I had given this mom a big discount because that was my suspicion.) She ended up pursuing more of a word study approach with her son.

The quickest way to contact me is through the website contact form. https://thatreadingthing.com/

It's OLNA time again. The first (optional) writing sit for current Year 9 students is 23 - 24 October, with the first one in 2024 scheduled for 27 - 28 February. Writing is my personal and professional passion. If you would like your son or daughter to have one on one support to remediate skill deficits whilst fostering enjoyment of writing, I currently have a small number of places available. Writing brings more of ourselves to life. Please feel free to contact me on 0417 949 179 to discuss.