Evolve Literacy

Thanks to family, friends and all the random kind people who helped collect over 1000 coles minis which were given to parents in community programs we ran workshops with over the last few weeks. We’ve used these minis to teach parents the fun and engaging ways they can help their children to develop:

• richer vocabularies (through semantic organisation: attributes, function, association, categorisation etc)
• syllabification and phonemic awareness

…and because- in early childhood, literacy and other learning areas are two sides of the same coin and inseparable…

• the principles of counting, matching, sorting & classifying, perceptual subitising and concrete number lines

Families were so grateful and couldn't wait to take them home and play/learn!

A very special thank you to Elena Rooney, Ryan and Bec Madin, Vicky Walden, Eileen and Emma for your especially amazing and generous contributions 😍

Hi everyone, sorry we have been MIA from Facebook for a while, we’ve been busy Evolving!
We have slightly adapted our model to incorporate Executive Processing, an area we previously included under Memory and Attention; and included two important ‘assumptions’ under our model:
1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs are met
2. A developmentally appropriate early learning environment is provided

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology that looks at what humans require from their environment and caregivers to be motivated to engage in life and/or learning. In terms of literacy development, children must have their basic needs met before they can learn, these include: rest, food, shelter and security. We also felt it was necessary to include the provision of a developmentally appropriate learning environment in our model, with the perpetually frustrating debate around play and learning continuing. See my post from 4th April (in response to ABC Perth Radio episode of ‘Focus’) on the play debate for more on how we feel about play, learning and literacy.

We have also held several workshops with families at Ngala and a Women’s Health and Development Program in the Perth Hills; focused on the Science of Early Reading & practical and fun ways to engage children in critical early literacy skills at home.

Ann attended the OmOz conference in Darwin last month focused on middle ear disease and conductive hearing loss. We know from longitudinal studies that the children at most risk of literacy difficulties as a result of conductive hearing loss are those children who experience ear disease in the 0-3 year age range, even if the disease was medically resolved. This is because 0-3 years is a critical period in the development of the speech processing system and children who experience hearing loss during this time can learn and remember sounds inaccurately. This makes identifying sounds and mapping our alphabetic code to them extremely difficult. Sometimes children compensate really well for their hearing loss and it can be difficult to detect. If there are any concerns around a child’s speech, vocabulary or learning then get a hearing test. Even babies can be tested for hearing. Parents and Families play a huge role in supporting children who have had any compromise in hearing early in life. Catching hearing difficulties and learning how to bolster early language and literacy skills can prevent literacy problems and avoid anxiety around literacy when these children start school.

We have also been working on our BOOK!
“The Story of Reading (For Adults)” which brings together the best of the longitudinal and current evidence across linguistics, anthropology, neuro-science and educational psychology to tell the story of how humans learn to read; and how understanding this process can help everyone support anyone learning to read. The idea for our book was born from our years of experience working with families who wanted to know how to best support their children’s literacy development and ultimately avoid or reverse anxiety around reading and spelling. Knowing that humans learn best through engaging multi-sensory experiences, we have incorporated a variety of elements into our Storybook for adults to make this important research accessible and help you deeply understand the complex process of becoming literate. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue working on it!

***Parent Seminars***
Do you have a group of family members and/or friends with young children that may be interested to learn how to support their childen's literacy development before and during the early years of schooling?

Do you work at or send your child to an educational setting that would like to offer its communty of parents the opportunity to learn exactly what skills our young children need, and how to support their development through rich and engaging early learning experiences?

Then please share our seminar flyer and feel free to send us a message if you would like to chat about holding a parent seminar at your location this school holidays :)

Weighing in on the play debate. I waited for ages on the phone but didn't get through so I posted on their ABCperth page.

I said:

The push down of developmentally inappropriate curriculum is getting out of control and our teachers are too time-poor and constrained by a variety of factors to combat it.
Children are more anxious than ever before and parents are similarly stressed and seeking a solution that is not available to them. An article in the West earlier this year said that children are starting school with a significant lack of skills and many parents are ill-equipped to prepare their children adequately for the transition to school; and that funding was going to be put towards parent education. So far nothing...parents deserve to be on the same page as the people educating their children and to be empowered to confidently support their children throughout early childhood. If parents are given the opportunity to understand HOW the brain learns and the evidence behind what we teach and why, then they can make informed decisions about how to prepare and support their children before and throughout schooling through rich and wonderful early learning experiences and won't be forced to turn to apps and flash cards. Teachers do not have the time to offer such in-depth PD to parents but do spend a lot of time trying to relay this critical information about early learning best-practice so that parents will see the depth of what their children are achieving through their play and trust the reasons why sight words and home-readers aren't being sent home in kindy. So the first issue is that parents have no access to what the reputable SCIENCE says children need to know and how their brains are wired to learn it:through rich social, sensory, cooperative, experiences motivated by child-interest and their biological drive to PLAY, wonder, inquire and explore. If parents cannot access this critical knowledge then how can they be expected to understand best-practice in early childhood? This is why we are seeing deservedly anxious parents either asking for more play and less structure or more formal learning.

The second issue is that the misconceptions and misunderstanding around terms associated with learning and play are so vast that we have lost focus entirely. Everyone's understanding of 'play' and 'explicit teaching/learning' are different. We need to go back to the evidence AND to the expert teachers working with our young children and look at developing a document that CLEARLY outlines what the science says about HOW children learn and WHAT this looks like in our early learning contexts. A lack of clarity around how play and learning are understood by our colleagues, parents and the community; combined with a lack of access to irrefutable empirical evidence (or time and ability to translate this evidence into practical application) is the problem. This is undoubtedly a complex and multi-faceted problem but we shouldn't need to continue complicating it by reinventing the wheel. Let's look at the neuroscience, the anthropogly and biology of early learning, the educational psychology of early childhood and the years of rich educational pedagogy. The research across these disciplines contribute to a vast body of knowledge that confirms how our children should learn and what they need to know to become resilient, skilled, confident, creative individuals.

We need to UNDERSTAND what it means to have balance in our early learning classrooms and guidance on how to strike this balance according to what we know to be fact: Children need access to uninterrupted free play, guided play, short sessions of carefully selected and well planned explicit teaching that is delivered with children as co-learners. Explicit teaching can be done WITH our children not TO them. Critical early literacy skills like phonological awareness and principles of counting, integral pragmatic, narrative, oral language and comprehension skills, scientific inquiry etc CAN be taught through motivating, fun, interactive, rich activities with teachers as guides and supporters, leading children to increasingly more complex understandings based on their existing knowledge, their interests and what learning we know children benefit from in the early years.

We must all be on the same page if we are to give our children the best start to learning, we know that the early years dictates the trajectory of a child's entire life so we MUST have people in power dedicating time and funding to bringing the community together through collective understanding and agreement. We need clarification of what terms like play, explicit teaching and balanced programs mean to our early childhood contexts here in Australia; clarification of what critical skills our young students really need and how these should be learned-as validated by the science, and we need to help families access and understand the important research that underpins best-practice in early childhood.

What are your thoughts on the issue??


https://www.facebook.com/abcperth/posts/1881860165180268

Should there be more play-based learning?

As primary school principals become more concerned about NAPLAN results, play-based learning in kindergarten and pre-primary is being cut back and replaced with structured learning, sitting at desks and "academic rigour".

Educator Sue Briggs says this is potentially damaging for children. Do you agree with her?

DETAILS | https://ab.co/2Ef6AL9

-Parent of a child under 4?
*Want to know exactly how a child's brain learns to read?
*Want to know what you can do now and in the future to prepare for literacy success?

-Parent of a child 5-8?
*Finding the transition to formal literacy stressful?
*Want to know how you can really help your child at home?

-EVOLVE LITERACY SMALL GROUP WORKSHOPS NOW OPEN FOR REGISTRATION FOR TERM 2 SCHOOL HOLIDAYS-

-LARGE PARENT GROUP SEMINARS AVAILABLE TO BOOK NOW-

***The evidence tells us that what parents do at home is a significant predictor of success in reading&spelling, but it is increasingly difficult for parents to determine exactly what works best. With 40 plus years in the research and practice of teaching early literacy, we can make the best of the science accessible to you. Understanding how a child's brain learns to read and spell can help you focus on the skills that really matter and enable you to confidently support your child throughout their entire literacy-learning journey

***VISIT EVOLVE LITERACY on Facebook for more information on our 2 new workshops, group seminars and screening services. Evolve Literacy is the only service in Perth that caters exclusively to children under 8 and offers the best of the scientific evidence in early learning and literacy to families with no hidden costs or agendas to sell products. Please like our page if you share our passion for making the science accessible to all💚

-Evolve Literacy Workshops for Families and Educators-

Learning to read can be hard on families as well as children. Practice with ‘home-readers’ can be fraught with creative avoidance tactics and tears…not the start to formal schooling we imagine. We know that what parents do at home is a significant predictor of success in reading and spelling, but in this new era of google, it is increasingly difficult for parents to determine what exactly works best. With 40 plus combined years in the research and practice of teaching early literacy, we can make the best of the science accessible to you. Our Workshops are now open for registrations for the Term 2 school holidays. Both of our workshops will run on each of the following dates:
Saturday 21st April Workshop1: 9.30-11.30, Workshop2: 12.00-2.00pm
Monday 23rd April Workshop1: 9.30-11.30, Workshop2: 12.00-2.00pm
Wednesday 25th April Workshop1: 9.30-11.30, Workshop2: 12.00-2.00pm
Saturday 28th April Workshop1: 9.30-11.30, Workshop2: 12.00-2.00pm
**maximum of 8 participants per workshop**

*Please contact us to discuss workshops tailored for educational institutions. We are flexible with venues but require a minimum of 5 participants to travel

Evolve Workshops:
• We run our workshops in small groups (max of 8 people) for 2 hours to ensure the experience is engaging and responsive
• We do not rely on power point presentations because our workshops are interactive. Participant packs include an Evolve Literacy workbook and tools

Details:
• Numbers are limited so secure a spot by sending us a message to register for your chosen workshop and you will be sent a digital invoice. Payment of $165 per workshop is payable via our Paypal (link to payment options in invoice) to guarantee your place.
• Workshops are held in our air-conditioned office in Balcatta

-Foundations of Literacy Screens-
Evolve Literacy offers clinical screening and feedback to families of children who have unique learning preferences, children with a family history of learning difficulty, and children of parents who have concerns about their readiness for school. Screens are administered using standardised and dynamic testing tools by both our speech pathologist and early childhood teacher, and the assessment process typically takes from 60-90 minutes. We analyse the data and develop a profile to help you understand where your child is tracking in relation to theoretical and developmental frameworks, the standard Australian Curriculum and individual learning preferences. The cost of $430 is claimable through private health funds under Speech Pathology services. The package includes the initial assessment appointment, integrated written feedback on the stage of development and recommendations for moving forward. Clinical appointments are currently available on Thursday’s at: 9.30am, 12pm or 2.00pm. Please private message or call if you are unsure of whether an individual assessment or workshop would be more suitable to your needs.

Please like and share to anyone you think we could assist :)

We are just getting started with our new business in Perth. This is a brief introduction to our service as we work on finishing our website. We hope you will get some sense of how interesting and exciting the science of reading can be!

Evolve Literacy is an innovative collaboration between a senior speech pathologist and an early childhood teacher specialising in early literacy. We have over 40 years of combined experience working with children, families and schools.
During this time, we have identified a significant lack of clarity around how children become literate, as well as a lack of access to the science that can inform and empower families and educators to support the development of functional reading and spelling skills in young children.

We believe that interventions that give answers are temporary solutions, but teaching parents and educators the science that lead us to those answers empowers them with the ability to create their own solutions in the future.

The body of knowledge around how the brain learns to read crosses a diverse range of disciplines (including neuro-science, psychology, linguistics, anthropology and educational pedagogy). Years of research across these disciplines combined with our experience working with children, parents and teachers has led us to developing a successful method of communicating this complex science to families and educators.

At Evolve we know that learning to read is very complex and requires an inter-relationship between the home environment, the child’s capacity; and the standard classroom environment and curriculum (See Evolve Model “A Holistic view of the factors that predict early literacy”). In our Workshop, ‘Unpacking Early Literacy’, we discuss the contribution each of these integral factors play in the development of functional literacy.

Participants will learn how children can be supported from birth to develop a strong foundation for learning to read and spell using our ‘Speech to Print’ model, and what they can do to identify and problem solve challenges along the way. We recognise the critical role of play-based learning in early childhood literacy and our workshops reflects a deep understanding of how children learn and retain skills with hands-on games and activities that are enjoyable and purposeful.

By facilitating parents and teachers to deeply understand the scientific evidence behind how children become literate, how the reading process really works, and the factors that predict early literacy success; we know we can contribute to removing the frustration around reading for parents and schools and reducing the levels of anxiety around literacy in our young children and students.
We are opening a limited series of workshops for late February and early March, details to follow.