Evidence based practice

One of the most common questions asked in Facebook groups about literacy instruction is “Is this a science of reading resource?”   It’s a question that usually ends up with a variety of answers ranging from, ‘No! Don’t touch it!’ to ‘Ooooh, I love that one’.  Neither of these answers is very helpful if you are the teacher trying to wade your way through complex decision making to get the best outcomes for your students.  This week I’d like to provide a little information and some ideas to consid…

We all know that phonics is one of the 6 essential components of reading instruction and, in and of itself, is not sufficient to help children become proficient readers.  It is, however, critical that we get the teaching of phonics, starting with phoneme grapheme correspondence, right so that children have a firm foundation on which to base their reading skill development.

The title of today’s post gives away where my head has been this past week! A slew of Facebook posts and shared links revea…

Imagine going to the hardware store knowing you need to fix the mould in your bathroom. You look for ‘mould products’ and discover a wonderful looking bottle of mould killer that promises to eradicate all of your bathroom problems. You take it home, spray your bathroom liberally and regularly and the problem seems to clear up (you can forgive the bleached areas of paint on the untiled sections of your bathroom. After all, the mould is gone). Except, that it hasn’t. Your tiles look lovely and c…

There has been a lot of talk lately about the very encouraging announcement that Arkansas in the United States has banned teach children the three cueing method in reading instruction.  This means that teachers will need to find an alternative to teaching children to do any of the following:

• Look at the first letter, look at the picture and think about what makes sense
• Skip the word, read on and then come back after you think about what makes sense
• Trying a word that makes sense
• Using …

Many of us know about the science of reading. We know the importance of phonics, oral language, decodable texts and phonemic awareness and we are hungry for ways to develop our classroom practice so that we can get the best outcomes for every child.

If this is you, I want to invite you to join me on the Science of Reading Bus in 2021!  Being on the bus is an idea that really appeals to me.  The bus is the network of teachers, education assistants, parents, intervention specialists, university…

So, you have been lobbying your Principal and they have finally let you have 20 minutes of your staff meeting to share your passion for the reading science.  What do you do?  Do you hand out a journal article showing that systematic phonics is more effective than whole word reading and workshop responses? Do you share a clip explaining how balanced literacy has failed students?  You could do those things, but if you are hoping to start the seeds of conversation about changing practice in your sc…

We hear ‘Science of Reading’ and ‘evidence-based practice’ so often that it can start to feel like living up to the ideal is some kind of unattainable goal that we will never achieve in our classrooms.  After all, we are hard pressed to get to the toilet without having to  move at superhero speed. How are we supposed to have the head space and time to completely change the way we teach?  You might be thinking, “Isn’t it unrealistic to expect the super-human effort necessary to be a 6/6 in eviden…

“What’s his level?” It’s a question repeated over and over again in Australian Schools.  It seems that everywhere you look kids are being tested using a popular benchmarking kit that ends up providing an instructional and independent level for reading.  Let’s be honest. The idea of a ‘level’ is attractive. It gives us an easily measurable way to track progress in a child’s reading.  The problem with this system is that it doesn’t effectively measure a child’s reading progress at all.   This sy…

As we approach the end of the 2020 school year here in Australia you may have the good fortune to be asked what resources you would like to order for 2021. If that’s the case, here are my top suggestions for items that can pack a big punch in your class next year (not in any particular order...)

1) Decodable texts. You can never get enough decodable texts. You need enough so that every child can have a ‘perfect fit’ decodable to use in reading instruction, access to them in quiet reading time AND…