http://www.ldaustralia.org/
'Learning Difficulties Australia'
Here in England, it seems to me that many of the 'dyslexia' organisations are not as up to speed with what works really well as mainstream folk.
It used to be that the 'special needs' teachers were the ones who were wise to the need for phonics instruction - but it was (is) all based the notion of creating 'different personalised programmes' for different learners.
Well, Sir Jim Rose pointed out that it is '...the same alphabetic code and phonics skills that we all need to learn'.
Precisely.
Whilst the special needs teacher does need to ascertain what it is that the learner is struggling with, nevertheless, there is no need to create new ideas and bodies of work for each learner.
We now have very good, systematic, cumulative, phonics programmes, reading books and materials from various publishers - probably better than ever before thanks to modern publishing and thanks to the internet.
So, we need to be able to EVALUATE the resources, programmes and PRACTICES that have been used traditionally for some decades and make sure that our current practice is truly up to speed and evidence-based with our CURRENT knowledge and understanding about reading instruction.
The team at 'Learning Difficulties Australia' strikes me as leading the way in Australia - perhaps more than the 'mainstream' educationalists in Australia?
[I keep being told that Australian teachers are at least ten years behind England.]
Well, not all of them - a number of schools are wise to systematic synthetic phonics teaching - but not, it seems, are the Australian universities equally wise and evidence-based:
http://www.phonicsinternational.com/Pho ... cation.pdf
[This report above does not, apparently, reflect typical practice in Australian schools but certainly in Western Australia, a number of schools around the one above are getting wise to systematic, synthetic phonics teaching!]
And the politicians in Australia surely need to get on board with something akin to our Year One Phonics Screening Check used here in England.
In fact, why don't they use the same check as us and then teachers would know how effective their whole language and mixed methods teaching is compared to simple explicit synthetic phonics teaching and practices?
Let's bring on the 'evidence' through national objective, snapshot testing - that's a form of science - same teachers, same aged children, same timing, same test, same administrative practice.
[If only the teachers don't get tempted to cheat of course because too much 'pressure' is brought to bear....
]
