Episode 21: Phonics Interventions for High School Success with Ilona Sydney-Jones

In the twenty-first episode of The Sounds-Write Podcast, Ilona Sydney-Jones discusses the ins and outs of using Sounds-Write with high school students, the importance of supporting older learners with literacy and the specific adaptations she makes when using Sounds-Write with these learners. Enjoy!

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Transcript

Laura: 00:02
Hello and welcome to the Sounds-Write podcast. I'm the host, Laura and in this episode I'll be talking to Ilona Sydney-Jones. Ilona is a Sounds-Write trainer based in Adelaide. She works for SPELD SA and was instrumental in setting up the literacy clinic there. Ilona has over 30 years of experience as a teacher working in both classroom and intervention settings. In this episode, she discusses the ins and outs of using Sounds-Write with high school students, the importance of supporting older learners with literacy, and the specific adaptations she makes when using Sounds-Write with these learners. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello Ilona and welcome to the podcast.

Ilona: 00:45
Hi Laura and listeners.

Laura: 00:47
So would you start off by please introducing yourself to everyone?

Ilona: 00:52
Yes, certainly can. I'm Ilona and I've been a teacher based in South Australia for over 30 years, working both in classrooms and, for the past seven years, in intervention. I became a Sounds-Write practitioner in 2017 and I imagine like many of your listeners, I wish I knew how to teach reading and spelling in such a successful way much earlier in my career. More recently, I've become an online Sounds-Write trainer supporting new practitioners, as well as coaching schools and organisations who are using the programme. I love being a trainer on the six-week online course, which SPELD SA offers once every school term, and being able to share the Sounds-Write programme with other educators.

Laura: 01:32
That's lovely, thank you. So, what sorts of age groups have you worked with, and what kind of circumstances lead to a high school student needing intervention?

Ilona: 01:44
So I work with SPELD SA, a charity organisation supporting children and adults with learning difficulties. My colleagues and fellow Sounds-Write trainer Kerry Williams and I established a literacy clinic that successfully uses Sounds-Write in a face-to-face capacity and through Zoom online, to support anyone struggling with their literacy. I've worked with a wide range of students, from those starting formal schooling through to adolescents. Even some of the parents who sit on their child's intervention session have benefited, often commenting that they've learned a thing or two. I've also collaborated with and supported a range of different schools who are starting their Sounds-Write journey for whole-class teaching and intervention across all year levels, Reception to Year 9. There are several circumstances leading to high school students needing intervention to fill the gaps in their foundation literacy skills. Unfortunately, one avoidable circumstance is that students weren't taught how to read using evidence based instruction in their early years at school. The good news is that these students have the potential to make significant gains in their reading and spelling when they are provided with quality phonics instruction such as Sounds-Write. In addition, high school students needing intervention may have had disruptive schooling, be disengaged from learning, have a language or learning difficulty, or have English as an additional language or dialect.

Laura: 03:06
Okay, so how do teachers go about identifying which students need reading and spelling interventions? So, do you go off formative assessment or standardised testing?

Ilona: 03:19
Yes. So ideally, identification before transitioning to high school can eliminate wasting valuable time beginning the intervention. So this can be done by collecting data from primary schools, including writing samples. In Australia, there are assessments that align with the Australian curriculum. So for your viewers, NAPLAN, the National Assessment Programme Literacy and Numeracy, is an assessment for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and that's undertaken yearly. Additionally to that, the Australian Council for Educational Research, known as ACER, provides progressive achievement tests in reading, the PAT R, to measure students abilities in reading through to Years 9 or 10. Teachers can use the Year 5 scores received from NAPLAN and Year 6 PAT R results, together with teacher judgement in the form of curriculum grades, as an initial means to pinpoint students encountering difficulties upon entering into high school. And personally, I have also used a selection of the DIBELS battery of tests with students, mostly oral reading fluency, the ORF. The ORF scores come with an accuracy percentage, an important consideration when thinking about decoding ability. These tests come from the University of Oregon and they're really quick to administer to all students and can provide a highly efficient way to identify those students who are the furthest behind in reading. I would add here, that if high schools are finding that a large number of students between Years 6 7 to 9 are requiring additional support for their reading or spelling, then phonics instruction might need to take place in the classroom at that Tier 1 level, that's in whole-class lessons. Otherwise, in high schools we typically see students in small group sessions - Tier 2 support, and some will need Tier 3 intervention, that is, individual, targeted, intensive teaching. And just to point out, I've heard John Walker talk about the impact that could be had in the secondary setting if all English teachers were trained to incorporate Sounds-Write principles into their teaching.

Laura: 05:34
Yeah, absolutely. So you work primarily with students who have problems decoding, rather than kind of language development or the oral language side of things. But what happens when you work with students who have problems with both decoding and oral language?

Ilona: 05:54
Yes. So given the close relationship between spoken and written language, it isn't uncommon to see students who have reading difficulties, also have difficulties in their oral language. So I think it's important for teachers to be on the lookout for difficulties in both areas. We know that in order to be a skilled reader, we need to be strong at decoding and have strong language comprehension, and we see this illustrated in helpful models like Scarborough's Reading Rope and Gough and Tunmer's Simple View of Reading. As Sounds-Write practitioners our focus is on tackling the phonics component of our students literacy difficulties, to develop the accuracy and fluency of their reading and spelling. In doing so, students will develop their ability to read more difficult texts, and be exposed to a wider range of vocabulary, subjects and grammar than what they hear in day-to-day conversations. During our Sounds-Write lessons, we can check that our students understand the words and sentences they are reading and spelling and do what we can to ensure they are getting opportunities for exposure to rich oral language outside our sessions. We can also work alongside speech pathologists, who can offer more specific support to develop particular areas of oral language. And if your listeners are interested in further information on language or learning disorders, Auspeld - A U S P E L D - has some fabulous practical guides explaining how to identify these difficulties, with useful strategies to use both at home and in the school setting.

Laura: 07:29
That's great, thank you. And we can put a link in the show notes to those resources, as well, so people can access them easily. So once you've gone about identifying that a student needs that extra support, how would you kind of decide where to start that student in the Sounds-Write sequence. So, for example, do you use diagnostic tests, and what do you find that these students tend to struggle with the most?

Ilona: 07:56
Yes. So when any student needing additional support is recognised, we dive deeper with further testing to identify specific gaps in their skills. Deciding where to start with older students is really no different from deciding where to start with those in the younger years of schooling. High school students I've worked with still fall down in the same areas as younger students when they haven't been taught how to crack the English code, or developed skills specifically with adjacent consonants, so when words have two or three consonant sounds together. In John's literacy blog titled Basecamp he makes the point that it doesn't matter if a student is 6 16 or 60; if they can't read and write, there are certain fundamentals they need to learn to begin with. So, to find a starting point, we need to work out what these students already know. So to do this, we use the Sounds-Write diagnostic tool and work samples, including observations of reading from decodable text and dictation samples. Analysing the assessment data gives us an idea of where to start, and we can be responsive and adapt what we teach, and how quickly we move through the units, depending on how our student performs once we get going with the lessons. So a handy tip to remember when assessing a student is that their phonemic awareness skills always trumps their code knowledge when deciding where to start them in the programme. So you might think older students only need the Extended Code and Polysyllabic Word Lessons, but if they're blending and segmenting skills of single-syllable words with four plus sounds aren't pin sharp, this is where you need to start. So, Units 8 to 11 of the Initial Code, including lots of Lesson 3: Sound Swap with Nonsense Words, are the units that encompass this learning. Once reaching the Extended Code, the First Spellings and More Spellings of a sound can be taught together if the student is a quick learner, or has some existing Extended Code knowledge. For those who find it harder, we can start with just a few common spellings of a sound in the first few sessions of teaching a new Extended Code unit, and then add on More Spellings of that sound in following sessions. This avoids overwhelming the student, and keeps that cognitive load manageable. There are some planning and implementation guidance documents in the Trained Practitioners downloads on the Sounds-Write website that explain how this can be done in a little more detail. For those older students literacy is essential to access learning across all subjects. So when listening to Caroline Hardisty in your last podcast episode about polysyllabic words, we heard that 80% of words in the English language are made up of more than one syllable. In the secondary setting, these polysyllabic words will also be academic in nature, and this further complicates proficient literacy acquisition for those students who struggle the most. Many secondary teachers have worked hard to create adjustments for students who need assistance with reading and spelling, including audio recordings of text they need to read, and training students to use speech-to-text software. Appropriate adjustments and accommodations are important. However, teaching the foundational skills in reading and spelling, particularly for tackling those polysyllabic words, needs to take place alongside this differentiation, or these students will leave school without the ability to read and spell. We must give these students the tools for decoding printed words for themselves.

Laura: 11:25
Brilliant. Are there any particular adaptations that you would make when you're using Sounds-Write with a high school student, compared with a younger student?

Ilona: 11:37
Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, Sounds-Write is an approach to teaching reading and spelling for any age. The practitioners have a clear scope and sequence for teaching, with a cumulative structure, to ensure the learning becomes established in long-term memory through plenty of practice, interleaving spaced and retrieval practice. So many things stay the same whether we're working with primary or secondary students. Firstly, successful intervention happens when small-group sessions target the identified skills and knowledge your students have failed to grasp during their earlier years of schooling, so teach them at their point of need. Also, intervention lessons would ideally happen three to four times per week, using the elements of scaffolding and differentiation outlined by Sounds-Write. We also recommend continual monitoring of learning and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention. So Laura, you asked, what do we need to adapt? - I think is what you asked earlier. We might start the teaching of polysyllabic words earlier than usual as it is fundamental for engagement and relevance for these older learners. You would of course also be teaching morphology, the meaningful parts, and etymology, the the word origins of word history, when you felt it added value, as a way to enhance our students understanding of a word's meaning and spelling. I will add that Sounds-Write runs a very well received online course for practitioners on teaching vocabulary to primary students and beyond with a focus on morphology and etymology. No two classes are the same, so it's recommended to teach the right vocabulary to your current cohort. You might like to teach the words your students need for their curriculum, take subject-specific words and help them to read, spell and understand them. Aligning the teaching of code knowledge to adolescent friendly decodable texts and books is another important aspect to follow. So the non-fiction series of books from Sounds-Write Fact Files: Countries and Fact Files: Animals are suitably age appropriate. Frances Woodward from Forward with Phonics has written other valuable resources such as the Drop-In series and Phonics Stories for Older Learners, which aligned to the Sounds-Write sequence. Phonic books also publish a range of catch-up readers - decodable readers - which match the Sounds-Write sequence and have illustrations and topics suitable for older learners. Another thing is that the pace of teaching can also be a little quicker when working with older students. And as I previously said, once reaching Extended Code, the First Spellings and More Spellings can be taught together. However, we need to remember that if a student does not demonstrate independent application in dictation or spelling quizzes, then it hasn't been learnt and it isn't in long-term memory. So as you move forward with your student, always remember to revise what's been previously taught. Even with older students, it's common for there to be a lag of up to six weeks from the time you teach new spellings to when your students can spell them accurately in their writing. So we say revision in every session is essential to move new code knowledge into long-term memory. And finally, don't forget about that Sounds-Write Lesson 15, so the lesson analysing polysyllabic words is excellent to tackle words that are commonly misspelt and should be used a lot more with older learners. It's a powerful way to support them with their attempts to encode technical, subject specific words they come across continuously in their school day. In fact, using Lesson 15 with reference to the English code across all learning areas in every high school year level is a game changer for improving spelling.

Laura: 15:20
So you mentioned Sounds-Write a lot in that answer. So why do you use Sounds-Write with older learners? Why do you choose to use Sounds-Write with them?

Ilona: 15:30
I'm going to give you a really short answer here. There's nothing about the Sounds-Write programme that limits its use to the early years only.

Laura: 15:39
Brilliant. So what stands out in particular that you need to consider most when you're delivering phonics intervention sessions to high school students?

Ilona: 15:49
Yes, so, one of the hardest things to manage when delivering phonics intervention to high school students is the unlearning of inefficient reading strategies that students have previously used. So a lot of patience and plenty of verbal reinforcement using the correct language is required. Sounds-Write teaching through errors strategies are undoubtedly unique in any phonics instruction that I've seen, and manage this challenging scenario brilliantly, I'd say. Your listeners may be interested to know that numerous studies have shown that handwriting during phonics lessons significantly aids spelling development, so reintroducing the use of individual whiteboards and notebooks, as is done in the early years, is important in the secondary setting. The use of whiteboards also helps students have a go without creating something permanent, so encouraging that safe space to make mistakes. So computers, of course, can be used as effective tools when you're tracking progress. Platforms such as Quizlet and Kahoot offer the opportunities to progress monitor in an enhanced way with short, enjoyable and rewarding activities. Healthy competition is great to improve general motivation and engagement for adolescents. Providing specific additional support in the form of phonics intervention for those who need it is always important. However, we know that in high schools, trying to minimise disruption to student scheduled learning and timetable classes can present added challenges. Also, very few high school teachers are confident with teaching literacy from the very beginning and, as you would expect, often assume their students already know how to read and spell. So upskilling these educators with high quality training that will help them incorporate evidence-based instruction for at risk or struggling students in the classroom is really important. So this ensures consistency with the instruction students receive in intervention, and prevents that extra cognitive load when moving from one learning environment to the next. So the great thing about Sounds-Write is that it can be delivered in the whole-class setting, in small groups and with individual students. And the training includes the rationale behind the approach, the 'why' we do what we do. That's powerful for that consistency I mentioned earlier, and the theory can be transferred to any instruction carried out by our teachers and other professionals.

Laura: 18:21
Brilliant. Thank you. So, my final question. I'd imagine a lot of older students who are poor readers and spellers might experience a lot of anxiety and perhaps quite a bit of shame around reading and spelling. How do you adapt to that and how do you support them through those negative feelings around reading and spelling?

Ilona: 18:47
Yes, so students facing literacy challenges often disengage from their educational journey, frequently dropping out before reaching Year 12. And as you say, poor readers and spellers do experience a lot of anxiety and shame around reading and spelling. So consequently, maintaining engagement in school becomes a significant challenge for them, impacting not only their learning, but also their life opportunities and their mental health. The first step for these older learners is letting them know that it's never too late to improve their literacy knowledge and skills, regardless of their age or their perceived difficulty. Gaining students trust through early success and moving as quickly as possible through the intervention is really important. Remember, they'll have had lots of exposure to the words educators are teaching them. They just haven't been taught the skills, concepts or had appropriate coding practice to establish long-term memory recall. Many of them have not been shown how the alphabetic code works. So the beauty of Sounds-Write is that we can be adaptive to the speed and intensity of delivery in response to what our students are demonstrating they know and what they need next. So, for example, if I saw a student was really struggling with a lesson at a certain unit despite all of my scaffolding, then I would certainly step them down a unit or two and spend more time there before I move on to something more complex. Also, lots of specific positive feedback and non-judgmental approach to problem solving errors, a fully supported learning environment with games and competitions to keep them keen, all help to build that honest, caring relationship that's so important for these vulnerable students. Revealing our own vulnerabilities with the English language is always a successful way to connect. We all find it difficult to read some words and we will all come across words we don't know how to spell. 'Let's learn about this together,' is an expression I used a lot when I started my own Sounds-Write journey, and I still do.

Laura: 20:50
That's lovely. All right, so that brings us to a close. It's been so lovely to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared with us.

Ilona: 21:01
Thank you, Laura. And, listeners, it's been a pleasure joining you today.

Laura: 21:05
Brilliant. All right, see you next time.