Nancy Young

So if they're reading then and they're not getting what they need, then that –

In my experience, the early readers are often getting what they need at home.

So the parents are doing their reading there just because these children learn easily.

They're not formally teaching them, but they're providing an environment, going to the library, just showing that books are important.

And it could be anybody on the economic range.

But if the parents notice that when a child goes into some sort of schooling, be it preschool or the beginning of more formal schooling, if they're noticing that their child is not getting what they think their child is capable of, they should speak up.

Because often teachers...

teachers are not trained on on this continuum and right now a lot of teachers are getting a lot of training on how to support children for whom it is difficult and that's great they're you know that they're getting training on it but we need to have training on the full continuum and so we want teachers to better understand that children could be starting school reading or um

or learn very quickly.

Some children have had less exposure to books, but they leap up once they start.

And so parents can be advocates for their children because teachers just aren't getting the training on the full range of needs.

Yes, yes.

I had to become an advocate because I realized my children weren't getting what they needed.

And I'm certainly seeing and talking to families and so on with lots of changes in literacy in North America, and I know they're happening here, that the awareness of what children need based on where they are in skill development and the speed of learning is just not part of teacher training.

All right.

So first of all, just to say we refer to the ladder as it's kind of an affectionate term, but the ladder is the actual ladder of children climbing.

And then when I talk about the areas, the colored areas, I tend to say areas of the continuum.

So a child with dyslexia will be in the red area.

The research has shown that there are some children for whom learning to read is difficult.

And we're talking about learning to read words, to decode, to understand the connection between the sounds and symbols.