Read3 Newsletter (March 24)
Greetings everyone. We’ve been a bit slow off the mark with our updates this year because so much has been happening!!
Much of our recent activity has been ‘behind the scenes’ with updates to program content, training and the website interface but our next exciting adventure is a trip to Perth later this week for the Language Literacy and Learning Conference ✈️📊where we will be presenting data from exciting new research using Read3 (see details below).
We continue to receive messages daily from our families, speechies and teachers about their progress with Read3 or early screening endeavours. Here’s a lovely example from Leighland Christian School in Tasmania who have introduced the Easy Alphabet embedded picture mnemonics in the early years classrooms to supplement their own phonics approach (with cards listed in the order of introduction). We love how they have reduced the A5 Display Cards to an A6 portable format. 😍
With Easter just around the corner, you may already be counting down to that holiday break. If your Term 1 has been anything like ours, I think we’re all ready for a bit of R&R!
Read3 Action Research outcomes to be presented at DSF Conference
We are thrilled to be co-presenting findings from the Armidale Catholic Schools Action Research project with Bernadette Yeo, research leader, at the upcoming DSF Language Literacy and Learning conference.
In an effort to support students who had failed to respond well to other quality phonics intervention, Read3 was implemented in six schools across the Diocese of Armidale as a Tier 3 intervention. All participating students had severe reading difficulties, additional diagnoses (ASD, ID, ADHD, DLD, CAS/SSD), and all had undergone instruction / intervention using InitiaLit / MultiLit with limited gains.
Student progress was tracked using normed assessments and we are thrilled to report a positive response to intervention this significantly reading-impaired Tier 3 cohort, with a shift in standard scores. 🎉
If you are attending the conference in Perth and want to chat, please send us a text on 0473 233 800 and we’ll organise a catch up at the conference venue. Better still, pop along to our session and hear all the details:
Session S-19
Saturday 23 March
3:10 - 4:00pm
We anticipate Armidale Catholic Schools will release a report on the research outcomes shortly so stay tuned!
Fluency screener for older students coming soon!
Register now for early bird pricing
We’re excited to share that our new FISH Screener is just weeks away!. Building reading fluency is one of the greatest challenges for older struggling readers, but determining exactly where fluency breaks down is not always easy! FISH was designed for this purpose.
FISH stands for Fluency Indicators in a Story Hierarchy. Ideal for students aged 8 years and over, FISH offers a unique series of short, decodable passages that are designed to pinpoint where a student's reading skills begin to decline. In around 5 - 10 minutes of testing, FISH will provide essential insights into both their reading fluency and phonics skills, allowing you to identify an appropriate starting point to focus your literacy intervention with these older students.
The FISH story content is thoughtfully designed to engage older struggling readers, and quick and easy to administer. In fact, when we sent our draft out for feedback, here’s was what our first tester had to say:
“Kate, this is amazing! Such a terrific resource.
Instructions are very clear - the process is easy to follow.”
If you haven’t registered already, but are keen to add FISH to your screening ‘toolkit’, click below for early notification and our early-bird pricing.
Fluency and Automaticity: same, same or different?
The more we work in schools, the more we’ve realised there is some confusion around the term ‘fluency’ when applied at a word (or sub-word) level. As a result, we have made an adjustment to the wording in our daily Chunk Check activity. Where previously skills were monitored for Accuracy (Stage 1) and Fluency (Stage 2) we will now refer to Accurate (Stage 1) and Automatic (Stage 2). Although intervention researchers often refer to the development of fluency skills from subword to paragraph level, we will limit the use of the term 'fluency' to refer to text-level reading skills to reduce any confusion.
This small change is purely to prevent people bogging down – we don’t want semantics to be adding to anyone’s cognitive load!
If you’d like to dive a little deeper into the automaticity versus fluency discussion, check out Robyn’s latest blog post.
Update to CHIP Screeners
Have you downloaded the new 7-8 Years CHIP screener?
CHIPS is our free literacy screener that checks on four processing areas that can inhibit a child’s ability to develop strong literacy skills. In late 2023, some adjustments were made to all CHIP Screeners. The most significant change was to Form B (7-10 Years) which was replaced with a new 7-8 Years Screener. The updated form includes changes to some test items for this revised age range, as well as new cut-off scores for RAN risk.
If you haven’t done so already, please download the new and updated CHIPS Forms. Updated versions of all three forms are included in the download. Remember, if you are currently using Read3 you can download the latest copy of CHIPS at any time under the monitoring tab - no need to visit the store :)
Training Block #2 for Speech Pathologists starts 19 April!
Block #1 saw another 30 speechies complete Read3 training and now it’s time for Block #2! Training starts 14 April, 2024. The 4-week block consists of four x 1.5 hr sessions. Each participant will have access to Module 1 Step 1 of the Read3 program throughout the training block so they can practise what they learn!
Updated Staff Training for Schools
You asked, we listened.😊
Some adjustments have been made to the Read3 training for schools to ensure staff can be upskilled in how to run a session as quickly as possible.
Our self-paced format enables staff to get started following a few hours of training. Once they have some experience in using the program, they then continue learning about progress monitoring and further adjustments to meet individual student needs.
Read3 intervention is ‘individualised’ but it does not have to be one-on-one. Our games-based approach lends itself well to a small group setting. You’ll learn more about how to run Read3 in groups during staff training.
If you're thinking about getting started with Read3, need a refresher, or have new staff who have joined your team, please reach out for a training proposal.
Capital letter resources added to Read3 program
In keeping with our commitment to ensuring the Read3 program is dynamic and responsive, Read3 released a Module 1 Capital Letters add-on earlier this month.
For children who have difficulty pairing sounds with letters, we recommend capitals only be introduced once lowercase letters are automatic. If you’re already using Read3, this would be at the completion of Module 1 Step 3 when alphabetic code has been mastered. If your child really struggled to learn lowercase letters, it is appropriate to leave the introduction of capital letters a little longer (e.g. the end of Module 1).
This collection of resources is designed to help children learn to link capital letters to their corresponding lowercase letter. If you’d like more information on these additions and why we don’t use an additional embedded picture mnemonic for capital letters, check out our latest blog post.
For all our lovely teachers who may be wondering, the explicit teaching of capital letters supports ACARA Achievement Standards AC9EFLY08 and AC9EFLY11 for foundation year.
Want to know more about Read3? Just Ask!
If you are not yet using Read3 but are keen to know more, reach out any time via email or phone 0473 233 800. We're always happy to help.
Cheers for now,
Kate & Robyn