Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

Literacy

The Scatter-Slayer Adventures: The Scarecrow and Bear Fair in the Land of Nowhere

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You can feel it in the air. You are closing in on the final battle. But. Not. Quite. Yet. 

To get to Miss Sunday, you must first outwit her henchmen – the Bear and the Scarecrow – in their scary (but silly) lair. And you’re right to be wary about that broken-down old mare who watches you from the back paddock, For, in the Land of Nowhere, things are not always as they seem… 

Set in an abandoned fairground, this is the 11th and penultimate instalment of the Scatter-Slayer’s Extended Code Decodable Adventures, focusing on reading <air> and <are> words like “hair” and “care”. Beware! Take care!

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For the first 10 Scatter-Slayer Adventures, check out:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

The Spoiled Boy: the next exciting instalment of our Scatter-Slayer decodable reader series

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Introducing The Spoiled Boy:

“The boy wears a crown, so you know he must be royal. But he looks silly sitting so importantly in his chair – like a toy doll.”

Learning to decode words using knowledge of the extended code doesn’t have to be dull.

In this, the tenth and latest of our select-your-sequel Scatter-Slayer series of adventure stories, we focus on words containing <oi> and <oy>.

We’ve added:

  • screen friendliness, so that our stories can be played on phones, iPads, other devices, laptops, and smart boards (as well as in print if you prefer);
  • simple sound effects and black-and-white animations (in Google Slides) to increase engagement without distracting readers from the text (or letting them guess from the pictures);
  • second person perspective, so readers are reading about themselves (“you”);
  • length (52 pages), so you can work on reading fluency (rate, accuracy, and expression) at the same time as word decoding;
  • text in a large, sans serif font with lots of white space and not too many words per page;
  • suspense, drama, intrigue, and silliness increases interest;
  • some Tier 2 vocabulary to help stimulate oral language development; and
  • choice, so readers (and parents, educators) are in control of which tale comes next.

We designed this inexpensive resource for students who are learning or revising the extended code, including older students with reading difficulties, and students who are interested in fantasy and adventure tales.

download now

Here’s a preview:

We hope you like it!

download now

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

For beginning readers, where should we start teaching? Phonics, sight words, or both?

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Some people think that written English is too irregular and difficult to teach in an organised way, with far too many words (520 million – 2+ billion words!), and 461 possible mappings between letters and sounds. 

This view ignores pattern and word frequencies:

  • a large proportion of written English is highly regular and can be read with knowledge of only around 64 high frequency grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs); and
  • English word usage obeys “Zipf’s Law”: a small number of words occur very often, with just 100 words accounting for about 50% of written English.

Lessons from science:

  • early literacy teaching should focus on letter-sound relationships in an explicit, organised, and sequenced manner (systematic phonics);
  • beginners should be taught to sound out each phoneme (speech sound) in a word and then to blend them together to pronounce the word (synthetic phonics);
  • for beginners, each grapheme (letter or letter combination corresponding to a speech sound) should be translated into its corresponding speech sound (phoneme) and then blended to produce the word (word decoding);
  • almost 40% of the 100 most high frequency words in written English can be read with knowledge of the 64 most common GPCs; and 
  • with knowledge of the 64 GPCs and the 100 high frequency words, students can read around 90% of monosyllabic words used in written English.

Taken together, this evidence suggests that teaching beginning readers:

  • the 64 high frequency GPCs;
  • how to decode letters and blend speech sounds together to make words; and 
  • a small set of high frequency, irregular sight words,

is a great way to help students with their early reading development.  

For more detail about the 64 GPCs and 100 high frequency words, see below.

64 Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences and 100 high frequency words

For an accessible version of this infographic, here’s our video:

Main sources: 

  • Solity, J. & Vousden, J. (2009). Real books vs reading schemes: a new perspective from instructional psychology. Education Psychology, 29(4), 469-511. 
  • Shapiro, L.R. & Solity, J. (2016). Differing effects of two synthetic phonics programs on early reading development. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 182-203.

Related articles and resources:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

New Scatter-Slayer Adventure: The Awesome Australian Gore-Boar

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Introducing The Awesome Australian Gore-Boar:

“The Awesome Australian Gore-Boar unlocked his jaws and roared. You are not sure if the awful beast is sore at you or the witch.”

Learning to decode words using knowledge of the extended code doesn’t have to be dull.

In this, the ninth and latest of our select-your-sequel Scatter-Slayer series of adventure stories, we focus on words containing the “or” sound (aw, au, or, ore, oar).

We’ve added:

  • screen friendliness, so that our stories can be played on phones, iPads, other devices, laptops, and smart boards (as well as in print if you prefer);
  • simple sound effects and black-and-white animations (in Google Slides) to increase engagement without distracting readers from the text (or letting them guess from the pictures);
  • second person perspective, so readers are reading about themselves (“you”);
  • length (53 pages), so you can work on reading fluency (rate, accuracy, and expression) at the same time as word decoding;
  • text in a large, sans serif font with lots of white space and not too many words per page;
  • suspense, drama, intrigue, and silliness increases interest;
  • some Tier 2 vocabulary to help stimulate oral language development; and
  • choice, so readers (and parents, educators) are in control of which tale comes next.

We designed this inexpensive resource for students who are learning or revising the extended code, including older students with reading difficulties, and students who are interested in fantasy and adventure tales.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Here’s a preview:

We hope you like it!

DOWNLOAD NOW

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Can technology-based interventions help children with reading difficulties?

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Yes. 

In several studies, technology-based reading programs have showed a positive effect for a variety of students with different needs and skills, and some technology-based reading interventions have had positive effects for some struggling readers (e.g. Cheung and Slavin, 2013). 

But there are hundreds of reading apps, computer programs, and other technology-based supports on the market. Many feature slick websites and other marketing materials. Some make all sorts of outlandish claims about outcomes without even a hint of supporting evidence. Some are completely incompatible with the science of reading. 

So how should we evaluate reading apps? 

The same way we look at any other reading intervention or program. We should choose apps and other technologies that are: 

We should also look for apps and other technologies that: 

What is the goal of the technology: compensation for reading difficulties or improving reading skills? 

Technology interventions for reading difficulties come in all shapes and sizes. Many teachers and others focus on simple measures that help students compensate for their reading difficulties with text-to-speech tools, audiobooks, and video resources like YouTube. 

The focus of this article is on apps and other technologies that help students to improve their reading skills. Of course, no app works for everyone and a given app’s suitability for a particular student depends on the factors that are contributing to the student’s reading difficulties. 

Apps that are worth a look 

All of the apps and other technologies cited below are supported by at least some peer-reviewed, published research. Most are cited in a review of the scientific literature from 2010 to 2020 carried out by Saaed S.Alqahtani, and published in 2020 (see citation below). The quality of the study designs and the reported outcomes vary significantly from study to study, and it’s best to approach any app review with scepticism and caution. 

As you would expect (or at least hope), many evidence-based apps contain similar activities and elements to those contained in evidence-based face-to-face interventions. Apps and face-to-face interventions are not mutually exclusive. Many of the apps, for example, might be useful to add to face-to-face reading interventions, for example, as a way of adding variety to reading sessions, or as a way to provide additional practice between face-to-face reading sessions.

Technologies evolve quickly. It’s our intention to update this article at least annually. If you know of an evidence-based reading app or other technology that is not referred to below, please get in touch!  

(A) Phonemic Awareness 

  • Reading Doctor has been shown to improve pre-schoolers’ phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and letter-sound recognition, as well as phoneme-grapheme conversion (Carson, 2020). Developed by an Australian speech pathologist, Dr Bartek Rajkowski, this collection of apps is very popular with many of my clients, especially for home practice of letter-sounds links, and early blending and segmenting tasks related to reading outcomes. 
  • Word Driver-1 has been shown to significantly improve nonword reading (e.g. Seiler et al., 2019). 
  • Lexia Reading Core5 has been shown to improve students’ phonological awareness and nonword reading (O’Callaghan et al., 2016).
  • Sound it Out has been shown to significantly increase early decoding accuracy (Donnelly et al., 2019). 

(B) Phonics 

  • GraphoGame has been shown to increase letter knowledge, reading accuracy, reading fluency, and spelling (e.g. Saine et al., 2011; Rosas et al., 2017). 
  • Tutoring Buddy has been shown to improve letter sound knowledge and fluency (e.g. Volpe et al., 2011). 

(C) Reading fluency 

  • Several Reading RACES studies have showed “a functional relation between computerised intervention and participants’ gains in fluency and comprehension” (e.g. Council et al., 2016, 2019; Bennett et al., 2017; Barber et al., 2019). 
  • Read Naturally Software has been shown to lead to “positive results for reading fluency and comprehension” (Gibson, 2011, 2014; and Keyes et al., 2016, 2017). 
  • K12 Timed Reading Practice has been shown to lead to improved oral reading fluency when combined with peer assisted instruction (Mize et al., 2019). 
  • Reading Plus has been shown to increase reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension on one test, but not another (Ruetzel et al., 2012). 

(D) Comprehension 

  • Kidspiration, an electronic graphic organising program, has been shown to improve reading comprehension (e.g. Wade et al., 2010). This app is very simple, and digitises well-known “pen and paper” strategies for helping children to learn sequencing, story grammar and other text structures, and note-taking through mind mapping and graphic organisers. 
  • Quick Reads – the software version of an intervention targeting fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, was as effective as the pen and paper version (Fenty et al., 2015). 

Watch this space! 

We know that many of our clients, including many people with developmental language disorder, dyslexia and Autism Spectrum Disorder are naturally more attracted to screens than to books. We also know that apps and other technologies have the potential to scale so that more people – including people who cannot for economic, geographical, or other reasons access quality reading interventions – can get help. 

When done well, technologies like apps and software can make reading instruction more fun, accessible and motivating for many people with reading difficulties. But we must ensure that the technologies we use with students with reading disorders are supported by evidence and consistent with what we know works. 

Universal literacy is a global education, health, and human rights priority. For people with reading difficulties, we can’t waste time on things that don’t work – even if they come in fancy packaging and were created with the best of intentions. 

Principal source: Alqahtani, S.S. (2020). Technology-based interventions for children with reading difficulties: a literature review from 2010 to 2020. Education Tech Research Dev (2020) 68:3495-3525.  

Key source for review of the Reading Doctor apps (not covered in the Alqahtani review): Carson, K.L. (2020) Can an app a day keep illiteracy away? Piloting the efficacy of Reading Doctor apps for preschoolers with developmental language disorder, International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22​:4, 454-465, DOI: 10.1080/17549507.2019.1667438. 

Special note: We wrote this article in response to several requests from clients and their families about reading apps with an evidence-base. It is for informational purposes only and is likely to get out of date pretty quickly. We don’t recommend or endorse any particular app. We make no claims that this article is up to date or comprehensive. For the avoidance of doubt, we have no relationships – financial or otherwise – with any maker of an app or other technology cited above.

Related articles:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

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