Using the playground to teach reading! with Marianne Brown
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Who is Marianne Brown and what experience does she bring to helping struggling readers?
Hi and welcome to School Shorts with me, Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education. And today we are looking at the topic of struggling readers. We're joined by Marianne Brown. Marianne has had 30 years experience in education, working as a reading intervention specialist, a literacy leader and a coach of teachers across the country as they are implementing structured literacy, which she has had a focus on for the last 11 years. So today we are looking at those readers that maybe need a little help and what are the practical strategies as a parent that you can use to help at home. Marianne, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. It's really nice to be here today.
I have heard you speak before and I saw many teachers take a lot of really practical tips out of that. So I'm really pleased to have you here because I think there were a lot of practical tips that parents can take away too. Can we just talk a little bit about your background as to what experience you bring to this chat?
Sure. Well, like you said, I've been in education for 30 plus years now. The last 11 of which I've really delved into structured literacy and really worked on my own teaching craft in that area. So last 11 years have been as an interventionist, really working with those struggling readers. those that are a couple of years behind where they need to be, or those that just really need that support in overcoming some hurdles beginning reading. So that's been the last 11 years. And lately I have been delving into the world of facilitating. So I'm running workshops around the country and really helping schools to implement structured literacy within their schools. and helping individual teachers, of course, increase their knowledge, because there's a lot that we haven't learnt ourselves when we were back in teachers' college and things like that.
So really trying to build that knowledge around the country.
Yeah, and teachers are always learning, and I have had some insight into the magnitude of what's going on at the moment. So there is a lot, and I think... This is why I think these conversations to help parents understand both the pressures that teachers are dealing with is really important, but also to know as a parent, okay, how can I support this so that if my child is struggling, I know how to reinforce that at home. When we talk about what a struggling reader is, you mentioned there that children who are kind of behind their peers or who've got barriers. Is that how you'd describe a struggling reader?
Yeah, absolutely. Certainly right at the beginning, we're concerned if students are not able to put together sounds, so sliding those sounds together, that might be the first barrier. even as simple as being able to isolate sound within a word. So that's kind of the first, when that starts happening and we see that they're not reaching those milestones within the primary school setting, then we would flag those children for intervention and start to work on that. And yeah, right through to students who are maybe, you know, have got some of that under their belt, but are really... need to work on fluency and things like that.
Just their kind of speed, expression, understanding of the words. When we talk about those really early learners, I mean, children come to school with such a vast difference in the experience they've already had or maybe just how ready they are for school as well. So is it fair to say that... you don't expect every child to be reaching the same milestones at the same time. Like, are there things that, need to be developed in children before they're ready? You know, is there a specific sequence, I guess, of skills to work through?
Right. Yeah, so a lot of teachers, of course, right from the very beginning, we take with, you know, children with whatever they come to school with. Obviously, language and reading starts with oral language. So that is the first step. that we're hoping that children come to school with some proficiency with oral language, you know, experience with talking with their parents, but not just having parents talk
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