The Learning Success Blog

There was a Covid outbreak at a school near where I live.

A lot of the teachers at that school had to isolate. Added to that were the staff who hadn’t returned to school because they’re unvaccinated. This created a drain on the pool of casual teachers in the local area.

I work for LearnFast but I like to keep my hand in by doing a little casual teaching work for the department. So when all the casual teachers in my area were covering the Covid affected classes, I got a call from my old school which is also close to where I live.

Fast ForWord and MATHia have been named as Award (Gong) winners in the 2021 Best Tools for Back to School (USA). They were awarded for helping students, parents, and teachers succeed as they head back to school.

The new Awards of Excellence program is published by:
Tech&Learning (techlearning.com) TOOLS & IDEAS TO TRANSFORM EDUCATION

And is designed to help their readers find the most impressive products and solutions for their work in any learning environment.

Every minute that passes we age, and most people believe that advancing age will inevitably mean a decline in our mental abilities.

I know that at 66 years old it takes me longer to remember things that once I could bring quickly to mind.

However a recent study has found that not every mental faculty declines and that some even improve!

Now new research from Georgetown University Medical Center offers surprisingly good news.

For some folk, these words: Speling, Spieling, Spelling, Spealing,  look so similar that it’s very confusing.

Which one is the correct one? 

Good spelling is vital because it allows the writer to focus on what they want to say. It frees up brain space for their ideas to flourish.

As children learn to spell, their knowledge of words improves, and this makes reading easier.

Speaking almost sixty six years ago Professor John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of AI said at the Dartmouth University conference 1956 , “Every aspect of learning... can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” 

Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist, said “Every aspect of our lives will be transformed by AI” and it could be “the biggest event in the history of our civilisation”.

As an educator who specialised in teaching children to read, I tried lots of different methods. Some worked with some children and some worked with others but there wasn’t one that I could say was super effective.

For 3 years I ran a reading group before school which we called Early Birds for the children who needed more help with literacy. We staffed the program with parents and volunteers and every morning before school we would see up to 15 or 16 children for a twenty-minute lesson, one on one. And when we did that, we started to see the children make progress in their reading. 

Something had to be done!

So, with a vote of 92-3 the Alabama state parliament enacted the Alabama Literacy Act beginning in 2020 to ensure that every child was reading at grade level by Year 3.

They nominated a task force to recommend a comprehensive core reading program and assessments to be used by local schools and that job fell to Tim Solley.

Solley is a kindly, bespectacled, grey-haired man who looks like he could be your kid’s soccer coach. In fact, he is a leading educational advocate and the Assistant Superintendent of the Madison School District which comprises 17 different schools.

Solley takes up the story: