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Chapter 1: What is the Ladder of Reading and Writing?
Hi and welcome to School Shorts with me, Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education. In this episode, I'm talking to Nancy Young, the creator of the letter of reading and writing. It's a bit of a different release because it's audio only, so I apologise if there are any of you who like to watch these on YouTube.
As I actually recorded this interview quite some time ago and through user error at the time I deleted the video file attached to it but I do still have the audio that happens when you try and teach yourself new editing skills. embarrassing, but it is an interesting episode for me for personal reasons and my family. So in an ideal world, I would have recorded properly again.
But in the meantime, here's the audio shortly after Nancy visited to speak with teachers. Well, Nancy, I was lucky enough to be at one of those sessions that you did with teachers and I was interested because when you took the stage, you said, I've got tears in my eyes being here and I wanted to ask why you felt that way.
Well, I have tears in my eyes again now with you saying that. I'm truly honored to be in New Zealand supporting educators, parents, anybody who's involved. There's such a huge community of people involved in literacy instruction, supporting children in learning to read and write to the best of their ability. And really, it's so exciting for me to
know that people are listening to my messages and that all my work and efforts are helping people.
Well, and helping children across a wide spectrum of ability too, because that was the message that came through really clearly for me, that you are there advocating for children of all abilities. And you've come up with this ladder of reading and writing. which shows that there is a continuum of ease. So some children find it easier than others.
As a parent, how do you know where your child sits on that continuum?
Well, as a parent, I think... And having worked with many parents, parents start to see signs. Some parents will see signs that their children are starting to read much earlier than they expected. And that was my case with my own children. But also, I didn't know what I know now back then. And I just thought, oh, this is great. They're starting to learn to read.
And I really didn't realize that they were so advanced so early. At the same time, as parents whose children... might have difficulties once they get to school, have often seen the signs too. They'll say, you know, one of my children was reading early on their own. My other child avoided books.
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Chapter 2: How can parents identify where their child sits on the reading continuum?
Wow. Can we go through some of those exceptional needs that you say can fit in various zones on the ladder, right? Dyslexia is one that is commonly spoken about, but can you just explain a little bit about what that is and does it look like the same thing for every child?
Sure.
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. And There are various reasons for this. So not all children with dyslexia are the same. And so our instruction needs to zero in on what is particular for that child, even if they have a diagnosis of dyslexia.
And it's important for parents to understand that you don't need a diagnosis of dyslexia. If your child is having difficulty, what we need is to provide what the indications are that they are struggling with because it's often hard to get a diagnosis. But we do know based on certain assessments that are very easy for a teacher to give that indications as to where that support might be needed.
And then parents, I really recommend working collaboratively with the school. So if the school finds that there's a certain need in a certain area because of difficulty learning to read, parents learn what the school is doing and then the parents can do the same thing at home. Often what happens is parents are doing something different with the best of intentions
Teachers are doing something different with the best of intentions. But for a child who's having difficulty when you do things differently, it just can compound the problem.
That consistency is important. Can you just give one example of something that a child with dyslexia might struggle with? You said the sound to symbol, but can you give an example of what that actually means?
Sure.
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Chapter 3: What role do parents play in advocating for their child's reading needs?
We give some links that people and parents could go to and look at these steps. And parents can support at home in following these steps so that the process is broken down so children feel confident and feel comfortable and comfortable.
And we've encouraged anybody using the book, teachers, parents, whoever, to use these particular recommendations because, in my opinion, they allow for flexibility and enjoyment, and they're not really rigid. And we want children to enjoy writing. We don't want them to feel like they hate it.
I would say that the book is really useful because it has chapters on each of these particular exceptionalities and more and ways in which you can think as a parent, okay, how, well, first of all, how do I identify this, but also what are the ways in which I can support and advocate for my child. To move on to DLD.
Now, DLD is an interesting one because it's developmental language disorder, which I initially thought, and I think a lot of people think, is a problem with making sounds or words, but it's not actually a speech problem, is it? Right.
There could be some who do have a speech problem as well, but DLD itself is difficulty. They may talk. People may think they're typical, but when you look at it, they have more trouble producing sentences, more trouble explaining stories. So it's a language issue that isn't specifically to do with making the sounds and words.
But there's also being found to be an overlap between dyslexia and DLD or difficulty learning to read and the language issues. So a child might have difficulties in both. And so that's where it's really important, again, for parents to be thinking, hmm, is this a red flag? And the services of a speech-language pathologist
will be, in my mind, certainly valuable in terms of assessing and trying to determine whether there is a problem because teachers are not trained in this. And it isn't something that we would expect teachers to be trained in. The book certainly gives...
recommendations for teachers, but I would say you want to bring in a speech language pathologist, and schools have access to these, and so parents would advocate, you know, can my child, you may need to, you know, be a little vocal. But again, early is important. And once you have a skilled speech-language pathologist assessed, then you know whether there's a problem.
If there isn't a problem, then you're reassured. If there is a problem, then you're ready to work collaboratively. Teacher, you know, the language therapist, I think they might be called New Zealand, and parent to work collaboratively to support the child in improving this. And And developmental language disorder is hard to address.
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