[senco-forum] Reading Recovery

Hi Luisa  - Are you aware that Harry Cowling,who co authored Toe by Toe with his mother, wrote two other similar books? 

Word Hornet (lower level) and Word Wasp are similar in style to TbyT but incorporate writing tasks. In the writing tasks the child must repeat the stimulus (letter sound, word segment, syllable, whole word or phrase) then repeat it again as s/he writes each part. 

I have used this with several children (Y4-6), with varying degrees of success (no failures!). I have trained and supported LSAs ( and B's mum) using it to benefit their individual children. Most children found the initial stages, working with individual letter sound, tough, but the improvement in self esteem once that stage was over was fantastic! 

The tasks have the effect of making the child slow down, listen, organise his thinking leading to increased accuracy in the area being worked on and improved letter formation. The knock on effect of this tends to be general improvement in attitude/ approach to spelling. ( B's class teacher recently told me that she hadn't had any spellings right in the Annual Assessment spelling test (age related SWST) - when I suggested that she compared last year and this year's papers and bet that she'd find this year's more phonetically correct she went away - and returned beaming - last year B (Y5 now) had written what appeared to be strings of unrelated letters - this year she had written words which, in the most part could be read and understood! Next year.......)

Hornet and Wasp are about £10 and £15 respectively. It is worth looking at, but can be expensive time wise - unless you can enlist mums / nans /grandads etc to work at home. In my experience they want to help, don't really know how, haven't really got the confidence etc, but with a bit of support they can work wonders for that child - and the next!

Address (in case you 're interested - and - No I have no commercial interest! :0) )
128 Bradford Road, Stanningley, LS28 6UR
0113 2109838 (phone)  0113 2394736 
sales at wordwasp.com

Hope this useful - June 

(LEA Specialist Teacher)

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