The S ou n d R ea d i ng S y s t e m (SRS) is a completely evidence-based and brain-friendly, synthetic / linguistic phonics programme that teaches struggling readers of any age, including adults, how to read and spell. This one-to-one programme is based on the research and prototype of Professor Diane McGuinness (author of ‘Why Children Can’t Read’) and adapted, with her permission, by Fiona Nevola B.Ed. (Sussex) M.Sc. (Oxon)

http://www.rrf.org.uk/newsletter.php?n_ID=95 A prototype for teaching the English Alphabet Code by Professor Diane McGuinness.

SRS is amongst a mere handful of remedial programmes which are fully compliant with the recent Rose review's advice on literacy intervention; '..effective intervention work should focus on the phonic skills children have already met in their mainstream classes but may need more help and time from skilled adults to strengthen and secure those aspects they had not first understood' (Rose 2006 153) In addition, the DCSF, themselves, state that, 'High-quality (synthetic) phonic work, as defined by the Rose review, should be a key feature of literacy provision in all the ‘waves’ of intervention'.

Tutoring: The Sound Reading System works brilliantly; it's really fast, effective and fun! Unusually perhaps, parents sit in on the lessons so they understand the procedure and can support their child with the between-lesson, fail-safe homework tasks. In this way progress is maintained from one weekly session to the next. The programme works rapidly with positive advances to the child's reading skills being perceptible to all involved within a very short time.

Three page article about Sound Reading System tutoring from Exeter's Express&Echo newspaper (7/2/05) HOW SAM FOUND A WAY WITH WORDS Download the full PDF article here

If you live within reach of Exeter and are interested in remedial tuition for your child (I teach adults too) please contact me for a chat and to arrange for a free, no-obligation, low-key assessment. susan@godsland.net / Tel. 01392 438844.

The Sound Reading System in action Fiona Nevola talks about the programme.

What parents and students have said about the programme:

‘’His reading advanced more in one lesson of Sound Reading than in two whole years of school.’’ (PA)

‘’I’ve noticed that his self-confidence has improved since he started the programme, even in non-literacy areas; he’s a different boy now’’ (JG)

‘’I heard J (age10) read for the very first time, at the end of his first lesson’’ (CB)

‘’His school is amazed. They re-tested him* and his reading age had gone up a whole year’’ (TJ) *after 3 lessons of the Sound Reading programme.

“Guess what? When I first came to you I could not read. Now I can read Harry Potter books!”  (nine year old boy).

“If you know these methods that work, why doesn’t everyone know them?  Why wasn’t I taught this way at school?”  (a 17 year-old juvenile offender remanded to a probationary centre)

Fiona Nevola and Professor Diane McGuinness were speakers at the Reading Reform Foundation 2006 conference. Read summaries of their presentations:

http://www.rrf.org.uk/newsletter.php?n_ID=176

www.rrf.org.uk/newsletter.php?n_ID=173

Using SRS as a whole-class programme: In addition to the highly successful SRS programme for remedial teaching, classroom materials based on this programme have been provided to local schools, and the methods have been introduced in Reception and in Primary 1, in Northumberland, and in local schools. None of the students in these classrooms fails to learn to read, and a substantial proportion of them are reading two or more years above age level norms.

‘Things have gone from strength to strength, we were inspected by OFSTED in May (2007) who deemed us to be outstanding in every category with no key issues and our SATs results have hit an all time high with 100% of children getting level 4 or more in English, Maths and Science at the end of key stage 2 and 40% achieving Level 5 in English which is quite an achievement since 50% of the pupils had special needs. I consider your programme has been instrumental in helping us achieve these successes'. Kevin Dodd, Headmaster of Kibblesworth Primary School (Gateshead LEA)
  
The history behind the little example above:
- Whole staff training July 04
- SRS introduced into Reception and Special Needs September 04
- By July 05 Reception children at least one year ahead of Y1 (NLS taught)
- Decision to combine Literacy teaching of new Y1 and new Y2 from Sept 05-July 06 and teach Sound Reading
- Sats results June 07
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Summer 2007: Our Right to Read Announces the Opening of the Oxford Reading Centre.

The Oxford Charity, Our Right to Read, has opened a new facility: The Oxford Reading Centre – thanks to the generous support of donors.  This is a purpose-designed centre for the assessment and remediation of reading difficulties.  Teachers are trained in the highly successful Sound Reading System programme, developed by Fiona Nevola from the work of Professor Diane McGuinness (author of ‘Why Children Can’t Read’).  All Centre teachers have several years experience teaching this method. 

The Sound Reading programme provides the KEY to the English spelling code, giving students the knowledge to understand how it works.  As a result, students gain two or more years in reading and spelling skills after only 18 hours of one-to-one instruction. 

Far too many children in English speaking countries have difficulty learning to read. Recent figures show that 30% of 11 year-olds in the UK are unable to access the curriculum at school due to poor literacy skills.  Yet in many other European countries nearly all children learn to read and spell in the first term of school.  Why is this?

English has the most complex spelling system of any European language.  Many European languages have a ‘transparent’ alphabet code where sounds in the language are mainly represented by one letter, and only that letter. 

In Italian, the word for ‘train’ is written ‘t-r-e-n-o.’   One letter for each sound.

In English, the sound /ae/ in ‘train’ is written with two letters . 

Not only this, but the sound /ae/ can be spelled more than one way:      

It is spelled a-e in ‘gate’   a in ‘table’  ay in ‘play’  ‘ey’ in ‘they’   ei in vein   eigh in weigh   ea in ‘great’  a total of 8 spellings so far, plus a few rare ones like aigh in ‘straight.’       

To make matters worse, the same spelling can stand for a different sound in different words.   This means the word itself determines how sounds are spelled.   

The letter a  (table) can also stand for /a/ in / ‘cat’ and /uh/ in ‘alone.’   Several spellings for the sound /ae/ represent the sound  /ee/ in other words – such as ey in monkey and honey; ei in ceiling and weird, and ea in dream and plead.   

The Sound Reading programme provides a simple and straightforward method to teach this complexity so the learner is never confused.  A thorough analysis of our spelling code reveals that there are only 176 common spellings for the 40+ sounds in English.  If this is broken down into simple, logical steps, any child can learn to read with relative ease. 

The essence of the Sound Reading solution is this:  Know exactly how the English alphabet spelling code works. Find the simplest way to teach it. 

Unfortunately, children are not given this option in our schools.  Instead, they are told to memorize whole words “by sight” and to “guess” words from the pictures on the page.  By focusing attention on whole words, instead of the sounds in words, children misunderstand how an alphabet code works, and this forces them to use an incorrect strategy. Trying to memorize whole words by sight overloads memory and causes children to fail.  This is why so many children have problems learning to read.    

For parents in the Oxford area who are concerned about their child’s progress in learning to read and spell, and for would-be volunteer tutors anywhere in the UK interested in training in this method, see:

www.ourrighttoread.com/index.html

SRS in the news www.oxfordmail.net/news/headlines/display.var.1592597.0.sound_steps_to_reading.php

www.ourrighttoread.com/ORR%20Annual%20Report%202007.pdf

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What can a ‘non-professional’ do?

Yesterday I gave an ‘Overview’ of the Sound Reading programme on a whole school ‘inset’ day.

The school is a Primary School in West London. It has 210 pupils; it is in the top 20% of Primary Schools in the country; it has 23% of children with Special Needs that includes 12 children on full ‘statements’ and 15 that the school considers cause for concern; it has a lively motivated staff and a lively motivated open minded head teacher; it has an active and involved board of governors.

In October 2005 a non-professional (not a trained teacher) volunteer from this school came on our five day Sound Reading System programme training. She is clerk to the governors of this school and wanted to become further involved by hearing children read.  She had heard of our training and of the underpinning information that we taught on the training: i.e. the understanding of the English alphabet code that underpins SRS. She was fascinated and knew instinctively that this would help her to help the children.

She returned to the school after the training armed with the information she now had and the simple but comprehensive teaching materials that would help her to teach any child to read. Indeed such was her success as a volunteer, where she picked up those children who were getting ‘left behind’, that the Special Needs department asked what she was doing and then came in to observe her. They too became fascinated. An ‘untrained’ volunteer was unassumingly teaching these children to read and spell - and rapidly too.  What was going on?

Very simply: the children were being taught the alphabet code-that is to say the spellings that match the 44 sounds of spoken English. There are roughly 176 spellings that match our 44 spoken sounds and we have 26 letters of the alphabet. These letters are combined to make up the full range of 44 sounds- and most of the sounds in English have multiple spellings, which need to be taught. Through SRS, the children are taught the code in a simple logical format using the necessary skills to access a sound to symbol code- namely segmenting and blending. This information is not being taught in schools. It is not being taught in teacher training colleges. On a recent SRS training an NVQ just out of a three year B.Ed training for Primary School asserts that she had no useful training in the teaching of reading.

Although this advertises the SRS programme, it is more importantly a very clear statement. Our teachers need to be armed with the basic information that our children need. There is NO mystery in learning to read. None at all. Everybody that is associated with education and interested in any way with the health of our society, should be concerned with what is happening to the children and young people within our society that can not read and spell. They should be looking for the answer. We have huge ‘special needs’ departments in all our schools. The special need is to provide the children with the missing information and to do so fast before more lives are unnecessarily and scandalously ruined.

Fiona Nevola
June 12th 2007