Thank you, Susan, for the links above.
I thought it would be pertinent here to include the UK Reading Reform Foundation's response to the, then, government's action (the Department for Children, Schools and Families) to promote and fund Reading Recovery as its intervention of choice. This choice was not supported by the Science and Technology select committee - but I was told by the current Department for Education (DfE) that the government was committed to funding Reading Recovery until 2014. How appalling that governments might make very unaccountable decisions and then be tied in to commitments for funding and promotion when it is shown that this is not an accountable decision:
http://www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/RRF%20re%20S&T%20Report.pdf
When the Committee asked Diana Johnson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools) what alternatives to Reading Recovery were considered, she admitted that she did not know the answer. Carol Willis, the DCSF’s Chief Scientific Adviser, referred the Committee to Greg Brooks’ publication, ‘What Works for Children with Literacy Difficulties’ (2002). Brooks does not place Reading Recovery high in the rankings of
th th and 45
The choice of Reading Recovery as the core intervention of the ECAR programme was made during the pilot phase led by the Every Child a Chance Trust. The Department saw no reason to change this when taking on the programme for national roll out. (par 35)
According to its website the Every Child a Chance Trust was set up in 2007, but ‘Every Child a Reader’ was set up by Reading Recovery in 2005. Reading Recovery was the intervention interventions: out of 77 studies, the two that used Reading Recovery appear in 30 position when comparing Ratio Gains (p. 137-141) - hardly an outstanding intervention.
The government’s response to the question about alternatives to Reading Recovery is equally unsatisfactory: because Reading Recovery was the organisation which set up the pilot. This begs the question of just who is in the driving seat here. Is it Reading Recovery or the DCSF?
It seems to me that Reading Recovery pervades everywhere and it could be considered arguably disingenuous to use titles such as 'Every Child a Reader' and 'International Literacy Centre' which is a shift away from saying outright 'Reading Recovery Intervention' or 'Reading Recovery Literacy Centre'.
I came across an advert for 'Big Cat Collins' reading books yesterday and noted that a selling point was that it was in line with Reading Recovery.
Isn't it dismaying that 'Reading Recovery' persists as an apparent ideal to be in line with when the approach to early reading and special needs has been discredited over and again by international studies -so much so that reputable researchers have collectively written about their alarm with the continuous promotion of Reading Recovery in place of other intervention alternatives based on systematic synthetic phonics practice.
When will we truly move forwards with professional development - deep knowledge and understanding about the dangers of multi-cueing for so many learners?
Despite the government in England promoting systematic synthetic phonics programmes so heavily based on its investigation into the research and leading-edge practice, subsequent to this various publishers continue to promote and sometimes develop new material and claim it is in line with Reading Recovery.
Oxford University Press's Project X reading scheme started off by claiming it was in line with both synthetic phonics and Reading Recovery (how can it be both - they are not the same approach), and then OUP got on board with Read Write Inc, and then brought me in to develop a rigorous systematic synthetic phonics programme to start off their Oxford Reading Tree reading scheme (hence, ORT Floppy's Phonics Sounds and Letters), but then they amalgamated with Nelson Thornes and now sell PM Readers which is a Reading Recovery linked scheme. This is surely a backwards step?
What messages will teachers receive about this fudged and inconsistent approach to reading instruction by governments and publishers?
Yesterday I think it might have been you, Susan, who flagged up a lovely description of a young girl's reading journey in a home-schooling context.
It was very telling about the different short and long-term 'reading profiles' developed in children/beginners through different routes of being taught to read - read about the little girl's pattern of 'reading' despite the fact she sounds as if she is amazingly able.
You and I know how even amazingly able learners can be seriously disadvantaged by multi-cueing reading strategies (features of Reading Recovery teaching) which distract children away from applying alphabetic code knowledge and blending. This probably explains why so many Year One children described as 'able' or 'fluent' readers made so many errors when reading the nonsense words in the statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check in England. It isn't that they were trying to "make sense' of the words because they had been very clearly told that they were nonsense words - it is that their reading profile, or habit, is to take quick stabs at words (guessing from a quick glance). Some children were described as 'sounding out correctly' but then could not blend the sounds to come up with a plausibly decoded word - perhaps this was lack of blending practice through distraction by the multi-cueing route to reading?
I'll find the link to the blog...