Adapting teaching to individual needs

1
Adapting teaching to individual needs

• and to English spelling

2
Sources of reading difficulties

• Language difficulties in early childhood
• Lack of opportunity and encouragement to talk
  too much exposure to media
• Shortcuts in everyday speech
• Visual difficulties
• Issues relating to brain functioning and
  co-ordination
• Under-informed teaching

3
Issues in English spelling

• English spelling is 75-85 regular
• There are patterns in irregularity
• Most words do not have more than one irregular
  feature
• The French connection is very important
• The spelling system must be explained in terms
  children and adults can understand

4
Explanation part 2 (spelling)

• If you can hear a sound when you say a word
  carefully, you need at least one letter for it
• Sometimes letters work in groups
• Some words have an extra letter
• Sometimes the letter you need is not the one the
  sound would suggest awkward
• You only use a group, extra letter or a letter
  that is not the obvious one when youve learned
  the word needs it.

5
Explanation, Part 1 (reading)

• We use what the letters tell us, but we dont
  believe the letters tell us everything.
• Letters
• indicate sounds (but not how to pronounce
• sometimes provide information about other letters
• sometimes work in groups
• are sometimes a leftover from history, and
  particularly from the Norman conquest

6
Explaining vowels

• A vowel is a sound made with the voice, from
  French. Roi royal. Voix voyel(le). The y
  changed to w in English.
• We have over 20 voice sounds, and only these
  letters to represent them
• a e i o u (single)
• y w (double)
• Vowels often work in combination, and each may
  produce more than one sound. This implies that
  information from vowels often has to be
  interpreted in the context of individual words
  learners have to understand this and adjust to
  it.

7
Key techniques in adapting teaching

• The goal is to help the learner adjust his or her
  thinking to make sense of the system and to use
  it.
• Prompts need to be kept to the minimum the
  student needs in order to succeed
• Memory work needs to be built into the teaching
  both systematically and informally
• A reading lesson has much in common with a music
  lesson fluency comes with practice, and not on
  reading at first sight.
• Having students select words spoken by the
  teacher before they are asked to read them helps
  build bridges (with acknowledgements to Professor
  Sue Buckley)

8
Key techniques (continued)

• If a word is misread, dont teach that word, but
  one that is like it. Build up a group, then add
  the original error.
• Always keep notes of words that have been
  learned. Enter them on a blank grid, at random,
  and play speed games with them.
• Especially in secondary schools, use books and
  tasks the child meets in the normal run of
  lessons.
• After youve worked on a text, give the student
  the satisfaction of a polished, final reading,
  followed by well-considered praise.

9
Success

• Success comes when a person can read and write to
  the full extent of their intellectual capacity.
• Success needs to be agreed with the student (and
  parent in the case of school pupils).
• Success must be demonstrable in what the student
  knows he or she can do, and not just in test
  results.