Read3 Newsletter (November 2023)
Wow. The months are just flying by aren’t they? It’s hard to believe some schools in Queensland will soon be finishing up for the year!
A few weeks back we wrapped up our final Read3 Training for Speech Pathologists for 2023. An enthusiastic group of 30 joined us for the 4-week block, one from as far afield as Germany!
Speaking of international, just this month we’ve been zooming with one of our Read3 schools in Hong Kong and fielding an enquiry from a school in Singapore. It’s exciting to see just how far the news of Read3 is spreading.
A little closer to home, Kate and Robyn had the pleasure of visiting Kalbar State School to watch Read3 in action in the early years classrooms. The integration of Read3 and the Easy Alphabet across all three tiers of instruction was fantastic to watch. Best of all, it means consistency between classroom instruction and extra learning support for our most vulnerable young readers. Congratulations to the whole team at Kalbar - we look forward to seeing more!
Kalbar State School's Learning Support Teacher Stesha Colledge took a us on a tour of the Prep-Year 2 classrooms as well as the Read3 intervention room.
A trip to Springfield Central State School for a day-long professional development session was another highlight. The focus was on improving knowledge about the complex processing challenges that some children face and how Read3 draws on the ‘fail-to-respond’ research base to support these children. With high quality phonics instruction already in place right across the early years, it’s exciting to see the focus at the school shifting to screening and supporting the children who struggle to respond to Tier 1 and Tier 2 intervention.
Read3 to present at the DSF Conference in 2024
We are thrilled to announce we will be presenting at the DSF-SPELD Language, Literacy and Learning Conference next year.
During this joint presentation with Bernadette Yeo, SLP, findings of an extensive Action Research Project, undertaken by the Catholic Schools Office Diocese of Armidale (NSW) during 2022 and 2023, will be presented.
In an effort to support students who had failed to respond to other quality phonics intervention, Read3 was implemented in nine schools across the Diocese of Armidale as a Tier 3 intervention.
All students accessing the project had severe reading difficulties, additional diagnoses (ASD, ID, ADHD, DLD, CAS/SSD), and all had undergone Tier-2 literacy intervention with limited progress.
Over the course of the project, student progress building foundational literacy skills has been tracked using Read3’s built-in monitoring tools plus normed assessment measures.
This is our first 'formal' research into the efficacy of Read3 as a Tier 3 intervention and we thank the team at the Catholic Schools Office Armidale, and the nine schools involved, for their incredible efforts in designing and implementing this action research.
We look forward to sharing student outcomes with you at the conference next March.
If you‘re keen to join us in Perth for a great literacy conference, visit https://www.dsfconference.com.au/
40 year meta-analysis of interventions that support students with or at-risk of dyslexia
In her latest blog, Robyn shares 3 key take-aways for us to consider when designing or choosing Tier 3 intervention.
"Forty Years of Reading Intervention Research for Elementary Students with or at Risk for Dyslexia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis" (Hall et al, 2022) was published in the International Dyslexia Association’s Reading Research Quarterly in 2022.
The paper reviews the last 40 years of research and is uniquely focused on intervention studies of students with or at risk for word reading disabilities (RDs or Dyslexia).
Unlike previous meta-analyses that included studies using both researcher-created and norm-referenced assessment measures, this extensive review only included studies using norm-referenced measures of word reading, spelling, or foundational reading and spelling skills.
The fact that the results of this review did not replicate all the findings of several previous reviews may reflect the stringent standards imposed with regard to research design and methods. After sorting through thousands of intervention studies, the majority of the included studies (77%) were gold-standard randomised control trials (RCTs), and the mean sample size of the studies was above 100. Fifty-three elementary (primary) school intervention studies met the stringent criteria for review, and of those 53 studies, 45 were focused on students in Kinder to Grade 2 (US).
Want to know what the research tells us?
Article: Hall, C., Dahl-Leonard, K., Cho, E., Solari, E., Capin, P., Conner, C., Henry, A., Cook, L., Hayes, L., Vargas, I., Richmond, C., & Kehoe, K. (2022). Forty Years of Reading Intervention Research for Elementary Students with or at Risk for Dyslexia: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis. Reading Research Quarterly. 58(2), 285-312
Updated Blog
Thanks to some fancy schmancy coding, Kate has upgraded our blog so that ‘general public’ content and ‘members only’ content can both be accessed from one place.
When you visit the Read3 site as a guest you’ll find our Blog on the top menu. The blog (still in its infancy stage, so stay tuned) is the place to head for feature articles and newsletters.
For those using the Read3 program, if you log in at Read3 you’ll find ‘Blog’ is replaced with ‘Blog & News’ on your top menu. From here you will be able to access everything on our public blog plus additional articles and videos about program updates. We will continue to build out this bank of ‘goodies’ in the months to come.
Please pop over and take a look and let us know what you think.
Fun freebie for the holidays
Is your child starting school next year?
Do you have students who are still struggling to get started?
Keen to take a sneak-peek at a Read3 activity?
The very first activities in Read3 are designed to ensure a child can hear syllables in words. After all, syllables form the basis of our language. Difficulty hearing syllable boundaries and distinguishing vowel sounds are two key markers for literacy challenges which is why we take this initial introduction to sounds so seriously!
As a little thank you for your support during the year we’ve put together a new resource based on our popular Sylla-Animal Counting game. It’s a great way to get kids engaged with syllables and thinking about the larger sound units in our language which is an important ‘pre-reading’ step.
Included in the instructions are details on how to extend the game beyond the sample provided so you’ll be able to count syllables all summer long!
If you’re keen to learn a little more about how we introduce syllables, and download a copy of our new syllable resource, click below.
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⭐⭐ Special Offer ⭐⭐ Offer valid until 10 December 2023. |
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VIEW Step 1 for Parents (single user) |
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VIEW Step 1 for Professionals (Licenced for use with an unlimited number of children) Note: formal training required from Step 2 |
Curated Decodable Readers Australia titles now available
Practising phonics skills with decodable text is an important part of the Read3 routine. As the Read3 scope and sequence is a little different, we are continually sourcing and curating titles to match.
Last month Kate finished curating the Decodable Readers Australia (DRA) Early Readers collection which has been made available to all registered program users.
While there are publishers that align more closely to the Read3 scope and sequence (e.g. Dandelion Readers/Launchers and Sounds-Write), we recognise that many schools have purchased DRA books.
At this stage we have curated the Early Readers collection only. This set features shorter words, less text per page, and introduces additional code at a slower pace than the original DRA collection which makes them a good starting point for our struggling beginner readers. If you aren’t yet using Read3, but would like a copy of the curated list, please reach out.
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⭐⭐ Special Offer ⭐⭐ |
| Visit Decodable Readers Australia |
The good folk at Decodable Readers Australia are offering the Read3 community an ongoing discount of 10% on any DRA purchase. Full disclosure, this is an affiliate link which means should you choose to place an order you will also be supporting the Read3 team in a small way (🙏).
Kick off 2024 with Read3!
Our first speech pathologist training block for 2024 starts 12 January.
This four-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 practice what they learn!
REGISTER FOR SLP TRAINING
Setting your school budget for 2024?
Do you have Tier 3 covered?
Read3 intervention is ‘individualised’ but does not have to be delivered one-on-one. Our games-based approach lends itself well to a small group setting, and groups are quite popular amongst many of our Read3 schools.
Read3 training is available in a self-paced format to enable greater flexibility amongst your team members.
If you're thinking about getting started with Read3 in 2024, please reach out for a proposal outlining training and program packages.
Want to know more about Read3? Just Ask!