Best of luck on your worthy endeavour!

Don`t ever think logic applies and don`t ever try to have school boards do something logical.
There`s a total disconnect between the child,the adult and the outcomes.
It`s like the kids don`t matter.

Wonderful news, and it made my day on the pop-up-schools to undo the damage that the public education establishment has brought unto the students and condemning them to a lifetime of needless difficulties in their adult lives. The title, Why aren’t public schools doing this themselves?, the top researchers across the globe are wondering the same thing, as many have lying outside the public education establishment.

Instead of describing the reasons in words, I will show you the words in black and white of the justifications being used by the public education establishment from their very own papers and research stating in one form or another, that systematic prescriptive, phonics-based reading instruction is unnecessary. In this study, “Reading First has resulted in highly teacher-centered and inflexible classroom environments. By privileging these approaches, Reading First ignored the National Reading Panel’s finding that systematic phonics instruction was unrelated to reading comprehension for low-achieving and normally achieving students beyond Grade 1. Also ignored was the significant body of research suggesting that reading engagement is an important predictor of achievement.”  http://legacy.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/3609/12EDR07_564-572.pdf

So many to choose from, because they are a dime a dozen on the web where ever the public education establishment congregate on the web. So, one more to illustrate why the public schools will not do as Tom is doing starting with phonemic awareness with the older students - a quote - “Teaching reading is not like targeting and curing specific medical illnesses, Cunningham suggests. It is more like “fostering healthy human development, building a successful business, maintaining an effective military, and providing good parenting than it is like administering medical or psychological interventions. (p. 331)”  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar04/vol61/num06/Phonics-Instruction-for-Older-Students¢-Just-Say-No.aspx

The public education establishment will condemn when Tom states, ” These are really smart kids, quick learners and willing to work hard. Their school’s messy, disorganized, constructionist approach to reading didn’t work for them. But that school sure beat down their self-confidence. The students readily absorbed the corrosive insinuation that they had a disability, that they were somehow at fault, that they were stupid.”  The public education establishment will also be very quick in condemning parents for their actions and non-actions on their parenting abilities, their income sources, their street addresses, for the failure of the students who are not progressing. Not only do the public schools beat down the confidence of students, but they do a smashing job on beating down the confidence of parents in their knowledge banks and parenting abilities.

It is why the Westwood Reading Project should be on the pages of the national newspapers with follow-up articles what the public schools are no longer doing and will not bring up all students to good literacy and numeracy levels plus are quite satisfied for students to have wide knowledge gaps as they leave the K to 12 education system.  https://www.facebook.com/WestwoodReading  It would take a whole year of daily articles just to covered the reading instruction of learning to read and reading to learn, why the public education establishment just refuses to do what Tom and his volunteers of non-teachers are doing…....to understand why, “WHY JAYDON CAN’T READ:
THE TRIUMPH OF IDEOLOGY OVER EVIDENCE
IN TEACHING READING”  http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-magazine/2013-spring/29-3-13-jennifer-buckingham.pdf

Why the public education establishment rejects the top researchers and their expertise - Converging Evidence -  Reading Research What It Takes To Read - http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/lyon.htm

To,  Differentiated Curricula and Assessment
in Reading Instruction - http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/kameenui.htm

To,  The Personal and Social Implications of
Literacy and Literacy Instruction   -  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/shanahan.htm#VocabularyFluencyComprehensionWriting

To the science - The Brain Challenge -  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c6/index.htm   

The public education establishment not only rejects the reading science, but they are firmly in the 19th century knowledge mind sync, where a reading disability is an acceptable outcome in the public schools, but they take it further by ensuring 50 % of the student population have low skills in literacy and numeracy as an acceptable outcome.       

I would be really interested in organizing one in Hamilton. Any suggestions. I am a retired teacher. Teresa

My son is involved in this study and for the first time in his life, he wants to go to school. And by school, I mean the classroom that Tom and the other volunteers have see up in the legion. My son is reading more difficult books at home independently, and I am thrilled with the progress he has made so far. After all, how can he be expected to be successful in any subject at school without the ability to read at the appropriate grade level? THANK YOU Tom, for getting my son on the right track before he high school!

Thank you Melanie. But please do spread the word where ever you go, as difficult as that might be. From my experience most are either surprise that a parent would be so opened about the reading and learning difficulties of their children, or go into shock telling others the good news that all can be corrected. Then there is the educators, where some educators think the parent is seriously deluded when it comes to her child’s potential academic abilities. They, the education establishment would rather have parents mired in the shame and pretend their children are just as capable as their classmates.

The parents’ stories are powerful narratives that are change agents of measurable value. It is why some within the education establishment would rather have parents keep the secret of their success to themselves, because it lets other parents know that they do not have to accept what the educators with education degrees are insisting, their children are slow learners and will never be academic material. 

The difficult part for parents, and as I had experience over and over again - people have preconceived notions and beliefs that difficulties in the 3 Rs, there is no way of correcting it that has been reinforced by the public education and pedagogy theorists from one generation to the next. I never thought, when my daughter was 15, volunteering at the local fair, acting as cashier, she would be confronted by adults declaring she should not be cashier because she can’t do math due to her learning disability. My daughter, bit her tongue as I taught her, smile and counted back her change the old fashion way. Meanwhile, a Special Olympian overheard the exchange and came to her coach’s rescue - and let it rip. Told the adults off good and proper. It happened a few times over the course of the afternoon, and her response to them, I have you know that I am in the advance math classes,  and I don’t think your kids are in the advance math classes with a question mark, and smiling nicely at them.

As parents, we need to spread the good news by burying the misconceptions of learning that there is very little one can do to correct the learning difficulties. All started by the public education establishment mired in 19th century ideologies and knowledge sets of learning, where there was little one can do when a child was experiencing difficulties in learning to read. Not true in the 21st century, and that include so many other things across the education span including the pop-up-schools being run out of legions. Lots of legions across Canada…...it could be a game changer.

Wishing you all the best for your worthy project. I was going to say ‘best of luck’ but luck has nothing to do with it. I have been teaching for 30 years having to use reading approaches which I know don’t work. At times I’ve had to hide the fact that I use phonics. I am angry and frustrated that something which is not that difficult has been turned into rocket science, confusing both teachers and children. Common sense needs to prevail. I feel sorry for those children who have been disadvantaged because of the ridiculous syllabus. I am from Australia but we are having exactly the same problem here. What a great idea…. I am keen to follow your progress. Maybe down the track even give it a go myself. We all know that the gift of reading is life changing. Thank you for sharing your work with us.

Hi, I am an immigrant from Slovakia. All my 4 children were born in Canada- they read in 1 grade, fluently and read 10 books at least a month. still now. I used to read to them and with them. Many Canadian friends could not believe, that their kids do not read even in 6 grade/ and mine do. My children are good spellers and use handwriting artfully. I know a teacher, that could not teach her own children read or spell. The secret- I was not lazy, I had a different system and we had many books in our hands for hours. This nation is lazy and has not effective methods for teaching their own native tongue. It is unreal, how many people can’t read and spell here.Many immigrants do better. Canada is going down the hill with education and future looks bleak.
Make parents involved, teachers work properly and have higher expectation for students too. Laziness is not working as you see. It is a sad story in 21-century be illiterate in a wealthy nation.

This is an exciting project. Before I retired I ran a pullout reading program doing similar instruction with middle school kids. I felt they were the victims of the whole language curriculum that was mandated when they were younger. Now I work with adult beginning readers.
I recommend the decoding program ABeCeDarian (abcdrp.com). It’s the most efficient, systematic, intensive, phonics program I have found. The materials are inexpensive, the teachers’ guides are thorough and easy to follow—they are scripted to help the teacher get started—which makes the program very useful for home schoolers. There are lots of free support materials online, including a good placement test, and there is a listserv to ask questions, which are answered by other users as well as Michael Bend, the author.
One tip, if you decide to order, there is what I call an Adult A workbook, which would be better for your 8th graders than the regular A version, which will look babyish to them. The Adult A has the same material, but smaller print. If you don’t see it on the order form, email Michael Bend to make sure you get it.
I also recommend Crazy Cards (http://www.soundreaders.com), which actually come from Canada. There are 15 decks of cards which practice decoding. The game is like Crazy 8’s or Uno, and the cards handle like real playing cards. We play at the end of every class to have fun and relieve any tension or frustration from the day’s work, while practicing the sounds/spellings currently in the lessons. My middle school students loved playing, and so do my adult students of all ages.
What you’re doing is so needed. It is terrible how many people are unable to read well because they were not properly taught.

One of the real literacy tragedies is that the Reading Recovery Program (on which the Toronto School Board spends millions of our tax dollars and which was founded by Marie Clay a New Zealander) has after many years,  been found to be all but useless. In fact it has failed the children of New Zealand. (Why the New Zealand Literacy Strategy Has Failed and What Can Be Done About It.Massey University Institute of Education July 2013. Designed in 1970, it was produced prior to the modern research into how children learn to read.
It lacks a number of essential elements found by research to be ESSENTIAL in teaching low achieving children how to read. Not only is the program deeply flawed but within the Toronto School Board the program is offered only to the children with the lowest reading scores in Grade 1 and for only one year. There is no follow-up. An RR teacher is able to teach about 4 children one on one within a 5-6 month time frame.Hopefully they will reach a Grade 1.6 level in that time. Many do not. Almost all will fall back once the one on one support is withdrawn. Toronto studies show that most students at risk do NOT maintain or improve on their reading levels once they move out of the program. It should also be noted that one teacher will only be able help 6-8 students in one year. Statistics show that in every class ...EVERY CLASS (from Grade 1- Grade 8) in most public schools within the TDSB there are at least 3-4 students with reading difficulties. The numbers are overwhelming and the majority of students are not being given the literacy support to which they have a right. Teachers, well meaning and desperate for
a decent literacy program, cobble together a patchwork of programs and methods which are applied in a completely unsystematic way as the child with reading difficulties is pushed through “the system.” It’s a mess and as a society we pay a heavy price. Money is wasted, time is wasted, and most important the lives of our children are wasted.

Judith, as a parent I am glad to see educators reaching out discussing what is rarely discuss by educators, the questionable reading instruction. Reading Recovery has only a 30 % success rate. For dyslexics like my child, it would only teach her how to memorized words better, thus delaying her dyslexic diagnoses to the grade 5 level instead at the grade 3 level. Furthermore, she would not have been a candidate for Reading Recovery because she her strengths would have masked her low phonemic awareness. That said, my child like all dyslexics has low phonemic awareness, just like some low-income children who have not been exposed to an enriched literacy environment in their young lives.

As a parent, the current reading instruction on the go is more about preventing children from becoming good readers by forcing the educators to used ineffective reading methods. I don’t think for a moment if the primary educators had complete autonomy over reading instruction, the educators would move so fast to dump the current approaches of various names under whole language. My child’s primary teachers knew there was a problem from the get-go along with another 20 students out of 56 primary students. But were helpless because they were not permitted to used the best effective methods based on the science of reading.