Support for Learning

Introduction

Dyslexia is currently regarded in the majority of cases as a verbal processing difficulty with particular problems in the area of phonological processing (Vellutino, 1979; Brown and Ellis, 1994; Snowling, 2000, Vellutino and Fletcher et al, 2004). It is the problem that at least 90 per cent of dyslexics appear to present. Dyslexia is an unexpected failure to develop reading and spelling in line with age and ability and occurs across the ability range.

Frith (1985) described a three‐stage progress in reading and spelling development and how they were divided into 6 steps with sometimes reading and sometimes spelling being the pacemaker. The phases or stages were termed logographic, alphabetic and orthographic. Frith explained that dyslexic children classically have difficulties moving from an early phase of acquisition in which reading is visually based (logographic) to the alphabetic phase when children are able to use letter‐sound associations for both reading and spelling. At a later stage some dyslexics fail to move from the alphabetic phase to the orthographic phase where reading and spelling are automatic and considered to be independent of sound.

Traditionally dyslexia is identified in the Alphabetic phase after the children have failed to learn to read and write at their age and abiliity level. Various forms of intervention ‘in class’, then ‘one to one additional support’ may have been given but an official diagnosis and Statement of Special or Additional need might only be obtained just before entry to secondary school. When it is identified in the early school years remedial teachers report that it is easier to remediate and this was also found in an extensive survey of 10,000 cases by Goldberg and Schiffman (1972).

The specialist dyslexia remedial programmes that are known to remediate many of the difficulties (Montgomery, 2007) and give the necessary uplift of two years in each year are the Hickey Multisensory Language Course, HMLC (Augur and Briggs, 1991) and Teaching Reading Through Spelling, TRTS (Cowdery et al., 1994). They are both anglicised versions of the original Gillingham and Stillman (1956, 1997) programme. These programmes specifically and initially address the dyslexics’ lack of sound‐symbol knowledge by multisensory phonogram training that is highly repetitive and exhaustive.

Thus far a system to identify and remediate dyslexia in the early years by targeting sound‐symbol correspondence development in the Logographic phase has not been developed. The Logographic phase is the literacy acquisition stage and the task of the Reception learner. It is important for decoding unknown words during reading and for encoding for spelling and this is why there has been an emphasis on 'Phonics first’ (Rose, 2006) and in the Early Years Foundation Stage guidelines (DfE, 2014).

Although dyslexia research on a vast scale has centred upon the reading difficulties, both Chomsky (1971) and Clay (1975) found that children's first impulse was to write, not read. Naidoo (1972) stressed the important role of spelling problems in dyslexic's writing but since that period reading difficulties have overcome spelling difficulties in perceived importance, although the spelling difficulties in dyslexia are usually more severe and persist into adulthood after most reading problems have been overcome.

This research concemtrates upon ‘the road less travelled’. It examines Reception year children's marks on paper, their spellings and handwriting, to find out what they reveal about the 5‐year‐olds’ knowledge about sounds and their symbols.

In the cases of normal spellers Gentry (1981) identified two steps that occured within the acquisition or Logographic phase. The first was precommunicative, in which the children made scribbles and marks to represent their messages or as they told a story. The next step was prephonetic; this was the creative or invented spelling stage, where a single letter or ‘phone’ might represent a word or a group of letters.

Researches with dyslexics showed the same characteristics (Liberman, 1973; Bryant and Bradley, 1985; Bourassa and Treiman, 2003) that there was a failure of the potential dyslexic to move into the prephonetic stage. This was more easily observable in their written work (Read, 1986; Montgomery, 2007). In addition, once they have begun on the literacy journey, the reading and spelling errors of dyslexics do not differ significantly from those of normal subjects (Montgomery, 1997a; Bourassa and Treiman, 2003).

‘The errors children make when they write are neither random nor thoughtless – examined diagnostically they reveal systematic application of the child's level of understanding’.

Rosencrans, 1998 p.10

We therefore have the situation in which normal readers and spellers learn sound‐symbol correspondence in Reception (some even arrive with that knowledge), and dyslexics do not. Their problem must surely be detectable.

The incidence of dyslexia in phonics trained ‘code emphasis’ populations is lower than for ‘meaning emphasis’ ones (Read, 1986). It is in the ratio of 1 to 1.5% for code and 4 to 10% for meaning emphasis (Chall, 1967, 1985; Clark, 1970; SED, 1978; BDA, 2017). In a Reception cohort today we can therefore expect to find at least one dyslexic amongst those disadvantaged and slower to learn the necessary basic skills.

The tendency has been for teachers to regard a lack of writing skills in these early years as non‐problematic because the children will ‘catch up’, given the time to mature and activities to develop the necessary skills. In research for the Sutton Trust, however, Jerrim (2013) found that by the end of the Reception year, children from disadvantaged backgrounds were 5 months behind their peers in reading development. It was significant that once they fell behind they remained behind and failed to catch up later. They were already consigned to underachieve at 6 years old.

Figure 1 show a dyslexic's lack of sound‐symbol knowledge. He uses letters from his name (before) but his message is not readable. He shows some knowledge of word structure and leaves spaces between his ‘words’. He has not been systematically taught phonics. However after 6 x 20 minute lessons on the dyslexia programme Teaching Reading Through Spelling (TRTS) (Cowdery et al., 1994) his new meassge is readable.

‘I went to my nannys and I went hma anB hta my pna anB I sat up Lt anB Wto tave’

‘I went to ny nanny's and I went home and had my dinner and I sat up late and watched TV’. He has ‘cracked the alphabetic code’ although as yet he does not know all the sounds and their symbols.

It is written from right to left and it says ‘ieni pieonotn u tnehi l i sn io tAolothi’

Some of the letters are also reversed and his news is unreadable. He has not yet entered the prephontic stage. There are no obvious word spaces in the series of letter forms; some letters have ligatures; the script is faint, with variations in size and pressure suggesting a mild coordination difficulty. It is difficult to understand how he has been allowed to fail for two years in school.

Free writing of news as in the above examples, sometimes called ‘free‐form’, ‘emergent’ writing or ‘creative spelling’ (Read, 1986) has the advantage over reading in that the evidence it provides is concrete and records the child's developing knowedge.

Although handwriting has been given little attention in English education in recent years (Medwell et al., 2008) it also appears to play a more important role in reading development than has hitherto been understood. For example research by James and Engelhardt (2012) found that when preliterate five‐year old children printed, typed, or traced letters and shapes, then were shown images of these stimuli while undergoing fMRI scanning, a previously documented “reading circuit” was recruited during letter perception only after handwriting, not after typing or tracing experiences.

They found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write. These were the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex. It showed that handwriting supports sound‐symbol knowledge development.

Neurological studies such as this suggest that there is a system that in normal subjects implicitly connects sounds with symbols in a structured reading‐rich environment, even in Look and Say regimes. It appears to be facilitated in phonics regimes and by particular multisensory phonogram training in remediation programmes. In dyslexics the system appears to be disrupted so that very specific and often repetitive training is needed to overcome the initial ‘phone’ barrier. Geschwind (1979) identified a dissociation in dyslexia in the left angular gyrus. This is where sounds and symbols would be connected but in dyslexics this connection appears to be broken. It therefore has to be restored by overtraining, or other areas of the brain have to be taught to take over the ‘pick‐up’ function.

A writing component in dyslexia remediation is endorsed by studies that showed spelling acquisition was greater when accompanied by writing activities as opposed to reading alone (Bosse, et al. 2014; Ouellette and Beers, 2010). Students making handwritten notes remembered more and understood better than when word processing and word reading skills were improved through the practice of writing (Ouellette and Sénéchal, 2008).

In relation to achievement, Berninger (2008) found that the two best predictors of good composition in the later years were speed in writing the letters of the alphabet and coding them (writing the symbols for the letter sounds). Silverman (2004) found that, amongst the gifted, handwriting difficulties were the major cause of underachievement; and Montgomery (2009) found that across the ability range, one third of pupils had handwriting difficulties which hampered their school achievements. This indicated that early intervention of an appropriate kind might have a transformative effect.

Suggare and Pufke et al., (2016b) tested 144 German preschoolers (kindergartners) age 6.1 years before reading instruction took place. They were tested on a wide range of cognitive and skills items. These included Fine Motor Skills, Grapho‐motor skill – a Greek letter copying task – and Writing: they wrote their names, were read 7 letter names to write, and emergent literacy was tested.

The research found that the best predictor of decoding (reading) was the ability to copy letters, grapho‐motor skill not the broader FMS. The study demonstrated not only that children who could write could read better but also that early reading went hand in hand with writing. In an earlier study (Suggate and Pufke et al. 2016a) writing letters was shown to be more effective in literacy acquisition than pointing at letters, confirming that implicit transfer from spelling to reading is higher than from reading to spelling.

The initial training of UK Reception teachers and their subsequent experiences in schools where they are exposed to the profession's custom and practice lead in a different direction:

‘Increased experiences of reading add greatly to children's visual memories of many distinctive words, as well as commonly occurring digraphs. The work of Goswami and Bryant (1990) appears to confirm this view that school instruction in reading and writing alphabetic script helps children detect and recognise phonemes and this supports their early spelling strategies. It is only at a fairly late stage in spelling development that instruction will benefit children. This conclusion – that any formal teaching of spelling should be delayed until children have started reading and are able to evolve their own strategies for understanding the nature of writing and spelling – brings the implications of research evidence for school and classroom practice into sharp focus’. (Whitehead 2004, p. 186)

This was a pervading belief in Early Years Education that spelling need not initially be taught, because pupils would evolve the principles and practices naturally for themselves from their widening contact with print. It was not evident that this practice had radically changed in the intervening period, despite ‘phonics first’ and the EYFS guidelines when a classroom observation research project was conducted (Wallace and Leyden et al., 2009) or from recent case research with gifted children from Potential Plus UK 2015‐6 (N=60). In this it was reported by parents that when gifted children ‘tick all the school's boxes’ their spelling and handwriting difficulties were ignored (personal communications). The result was some very distressed gifted underachievers.

Method

The Writing Research Project 2012‐2015

15 primary schools in a rural coastal area in East Anglia were invited to join the project. The purpose was explained and the request was for samples of ordinary writing to be collected that would not involve extra work for the teachers. The school would receive a report on each script in return. An in‐service seminar was offered to explain further if required and also a debriefing after the project ended.

Four schools replied and three agreed to join the project. In addition one private school, School D in the Midlands, offered to participate. Two schools, A and B, were in socioeconomically disadvantaged catchment areas and School C was in an owner‐occupied catchment area.

The schools agreed to collect 2 samples of the children's writing in October 2012. The first sample was a piece of their copy writing of ‘News’, as they ordinarily did this in the classroom. The second sample, also collected in October, was of the children's unaided free‐form writing of news or a story. In the four schools this involved 2 scripts from 175 Reception children in 8 classrooms.

The schools agreed to collect a second sample in March 2013 of the children's freeform writing.

The purpose of the sttudy was to find how many children on entry to Reception had ‘cracked the alphabetic code’ i.e. had moved from precommunicative to prephonetic stage, then after five months how many still had or had not done so and if they could be helped to do so.

Interventions

The reports on each child's work were sent out in November/December 2012 and May 2013. The private school withdrew from the project after the October 2012 samples were collected and reported upon.

The reports focused upon:

1. The explicit teaching of sounds by first feeling the consonants in the mouth and mouthing them and feeling them as they wrote the grapheme – MAPT (Multisensory‐Articulatory – Phonogram – Training). This was based upon previous research that found why such a system was necessary for dyslexics. They were found to have an Articulation Awareness deficit (Montgomery, 2007). This was potentially an observable sign of the neurological problem found in the ‘pick up’ system.
2. Using in‐air tracing of the letters then writing them freeform on the paper, the Fernald (1943) method. This was also based upon practices in the specialist dyslexia APSL programmes (Alphabetic‐Phonic‐Syllabic‐Linguistic) that use full cursive as the medium. and endorsed in the recent research cited above by (James and Engelhardt, 2012).

In September 2014 the 3 State schools were asked to provide a further sample of their children's writing on entry into Year 2. This time it was a 10 minute free writing test on a favourite topic of the child's choice with a few minutes to think and plan what they would write. To encourage a response the schools were offered a contribution to the school fund. Two schools now responded (N=93 scripts).

The scoring of the Reception scripts

Prior to the receipt of the first set of scripts:

• i) a spelling development rating scale and
• ii) a handwriting coordination rating scale

were developed based on Reception scripts already held.

It involved scrutinising sets of scripts and laying them out in an order of perceived increasing improvement. A set of 10 ‘piles’ was defined for spelling and a set of 11 for handwriting. Each ‘pile’ was then given a descriptive label to define the group.

The critical borderline between precommunicative and prephonetic spelling was found to be a score of 5. At this point the writer might use an initial sound to represent a whole word e.g. ‘w’ for ‘was’ or two letters to represent a word e.g. ‘wt’ for ‘went’ or ‘lt’ for ‘late’ as Steven did. These were designated as ‘phones’.

When the first set of papers was received, a class of 28 children was selected to test the rating scales and adjust them if necessary. The other 7 class sets of scripts were then marked, according to the two scales, and the pilot script was re‐marked at the end of the process.

Ranks for free‐form spelling:

• 10. Mainly correct spelling, legible, systematic word spaces.
• 9. More correct spelling, skeletal phonics, meaning clear.
• 8. Some correct words, phonics, phonetics, meaning mostly clear
• 7. Skeletal phonics, phonetics, some words, meaning apparent
• 6. Some phonic skeletons, word bits and phones, some meaning.
• 5. Word forms, letters, phone(s) evident
• 4. Letters, possible phones
• 3. Some letter shapes and letters, in a line
• 2. Marks, mandelasroundels, occasional letters, possibly in lines
• 1. Scribble, marks in some order
• 0. Random marks

Inter‐obsever reliability

20 spelling scripts were selected from the whole pack and were used as training items to teach a naïve assessor how to use the scale so that an inter‐observer reliability coefficient of the instrument could be calculated.

Checklist for handwriting

• 10. Letters all the same moderate size on a line
• 9. With clear ascenders and descenders
• 8. Spaces between words
• 7. With appropriate capitals
• 6. Bodies sit on the line, real or imaginary
• 5. Letters formed in a single fluid movement
• 4. Distinct letter shapes
• 3. Drawn letters
• 2. Mandelas/roundels and letter‐like shapes in a line
• 1. Some letter‐type marks in a line across the paper
• 0. Random scribble and faint marks

When using the scale on the March samples and as training materials with teachers it was found that the handwriting scale was scaleable up to and including item 5. After that the items 6 to 10 had to be used additively, not as a scale. E.g. 5 plus 8 and 9 = 7. It was thus better to write the items not achieved rather than give a number e.g. ‘Has not yet formed spaces between his words’.

The handwriting ranks were therefore reduced from 11 to 10 by combining in item 9 both ‘ascenders and descenders’, thus using it as a checklist rather than a scoring system. Only the spelling data is reported here although the handwriting was detailed in the reports.

The Year 2 scripts

These scripts were scored for the following:

• 1) Total number of words written and a score of words per minute.
• 2) Noticeable handwriting coordination difficulties – the clinical judgment.
• 3) Number of spelling errors

Examples of Reception scripts used to develop the marking schemes

Both these examples were collected after one month in the Reception class. This was prior to the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) when print script was prominent with no ligatures and the classes were still engaged in learning to read by the Look and Say methods.

William's script below was one of those used to develop the rating scale.

“The tree fell on top of the telephone pole wire”

On the 10‐point scale this effort would score 7 for emergent writing.

Diagnostic points and developmental suggestions:

1. Handwriting: His handwriting and letter formation is of a reasonable size and pressure. He has been taught print script so the propensity for joining all except ‘t’ and ‘e’ is poor. Without the use of lines he has little to guide his placement of letters in a straight line and nowhere to put descenders to increase the legibility.
2. Spelling: It is a readable sentence with some good phonetic equivalents. There are also some spaces between words. ‘The’ is spelt ‘teh’ showing William is using a visual strategy borrowed from reading. He needs to be taught the ‘th’ digraph and to be helped to write this word as a whole joined syllabic unit. He omits the ‘p’ in ‘top’ and so when he rereads the sentence aloud his pronunciation needs to be checked and he needs to be encouraged to write the word in full correctly.

‘Tree’ might be corrected by explaining that the long ‘e’ sound is usually signified by ‘ee’ in the middle of words. William might detect other words with this ‘ee’ pattern in his storybook. These three features would be enough to deal with until secured.

The use of ‘riu’ form for ‘wire’ is a common representation for this difficult word and can be left for a later stage, as can long vowel ‘o’ in ‘pole’ signified by silent ‘e. This can wait until short and long vowel work is systematically undertaken even though the temptation to teach ‘magic e’ instantly may be great. First the children would need some careful work on distinguishing short and then long vowel sounds. This is the critical point of the c‐v‐c exercise and leads to the four affixing rules and thousands of correct spellings. This is too soon for William.

‘My little sister is in bed because she is having her tonsils out’

On the emergent writing scale Faye would score about 8. Her handwriting is larger and less under control than William's but she has a little more spelling knowledge. If she had been given lines to write on the message would be better organised and easier to decipher etc.

Results: The Writing Research project 2012‐2014

Two example scored scripts on entry to Reception 2012

James scores 9 for spelling. The spelling is almost correct, the meaning is clear but word spaces are not well‐defined yet. In comparison with William's and Faye's scripts his shows more coordination difficulties. E.g. the script is faint, there is variation in pressure and ‘wobble and shake’ on the letter strokes. The letter bodies vary in size and some letters are ‘drawn’ rather made in monoline e.g. ‘g’ and ‘y ‘. He scored 7 on the Handwriting checklist.

‘She scores 4 on the spelling scale as she has letter‐like forms but no ‘phones’ as yet. She needs to be explicitly taught her sounds by first feeling the consonants in the mouth and mouthing them and feeling them as she writes the grapheme. Use in‐air tracing of the letter then writing it freeform on the paper. You could begin with the ‘m’ in her name.’

In Table 2, the ratio of boys to girls ‘at risk’ was 1.4 to 1 and 33.227% of the whole cohort was at risk from potential literacy difficulties in writing after 5 months in school. This was because they had not developed ‘phone’ knowledge (some sound‐symbol correspondence). This would be likely to improve by the end of a further term in Reception to around 20 per cent at risk. But the whole one third would still be 5 months or more behind the rest of their peers and subject to lower achievement.

These 3 schools were the feeder schools to the large secondary school C in a Year 7 writing research project (Montgomery, 2008). In that research 18.6 per cent of the cohort had spelling difficulties that put them in the ‘dyslexia zone’ and one third had poor spelling – they were failing the HMCI (2001) criterion and made nore than 5 misspellings per 100 words.

The follow‐up study 2014

The children in the original Reception classes were followed‐up again when they entered Year 2. This time only two schools (A & C) agreed to join in and provide samples of their Year 2 children's writing in a 10‐minute period. There were four Year 2 classes altogether, two classes with 35 subjects from School A and 58 subjects from School C who had participated in the original Reception year study.

Early identification and prediction of potential problems

It was hypothesised that the free writing test in Reception would indicate those children at risk in later years from literacy difficulties. The critical borderline of a score of 5 points was considered essential for becoming literate. A score of under 10 points when the two free writing tasks in Reception were totalled was taken as the indication that the child would be likely still to have difficulties by Year 2, as illustrated by the percentage of spelling errors. Accordingly a Sign test was applied to the data for each of the four classes in the two schools (N=87).

The emergent or free‐form writing task in the Reception year was a significant predictor of later achievement or underachievement in spelling in Year 2, e.g. a score of 10 points or more in Reception predicted a low spelling error score of under 20 per cent in Year 2 and vice versa. The +ve sign indicates the number of cases in which the prediction was correct.

The wider research data (BDA, 2017) shows that in an ordinary cohort of 100 children it can be predicted that 1 to 4 per cent would be dyslexic. In disadvantaged communities it can be as high as 10 per cent or more. When spelling difficulties without reading difficulties were added to this, the incidence rose to nearly 20 per cent seen in the Year 7 studies cited earlier. The three primary schools in the present study (A, B and C) were feeder schools to that large compehensive School C.

Their results are consistent with those found in School C, because when all the children with spelling error counts of 30 per cent or more were totalled, it came to 21 pupils or 23.1% of the cohort. These can be considered to be in the dyslexia ‘at risk’ zone, and in Year 7 it can be predicted that there will be little change and they will still be disadvantaged in writing composition by the number and range of their misspellings.

If they also have handwriting coordination difficulties, they will be in serious difficulties by then. There were 17 children out of the 21 with spelling probems who also had some coordination difficulty, that is 81%. There were 43% of the ‘at risk’ group of 21, or 9 children who wrote very slowly, that is under 5.1. words per minute when the expected speed was 7 to 8 words per minute for the peer group.

All the children in the Year 2 follow‐up were writing and spelling well enough to communicate some meaning. This indicates that none of them are likely to be diagnosed as having dyslexia in the junior years because the skills they have transfer to reading and they have four more years to develop; but they are still likely to have spelling problems that may cause difficulties in the secondary phase.

He writes: ‘wusrp. The wus a Boiy He wet to the sheoos – and He wet pust a. tugL. The to tugL bin The to hat a most The most (monster) slew + him.   . he runb and the boy got lost.   . then tat boy nev bin seen agn’

He writes at a speed of 4.9 words per minute which is significantly slower than for the age group as a whole (e.g. 7 to 8 w.p.m.).

Of all the scripts from the Year 2 classes, the one in Figure 7 above was the least decipherable and contained the most primitive spelling. It is typical of spelling seen in the scripts of children in Reception or of older (see Figure 8) or recovering dyslexics as they grapple with orthography and use what sound–symbol knowledge they can to communicate.

Transcript:

‘Chelmsford 6.26 Stratford Island Gardens Docklands light get out Island gardens river’

James's difficulties were not identified until he was 12 years old. Even then he was not given a specialist APSL remedial programme.

At the end of Year 2 the schools taking part in the Writing Research Project were entered for the national SATs and the results are shown in Table 5 below.

The percentages are of children reaching Level 2 at Key stage 1 in the 3 schools. The Project children in all three schools showed significant improvements in their results compared with the three previous years. The literacy improvements in the low SES schools were in the region of 30% and 10% in the already high scores of the middle SES school C.

After 19 months the main factors affecting the cohort's achievements were residual coordination difficulties, legibility and orthographic spelling problems. The analysis of the scripts also revealed some factors about the current teaching methods in the Reception Year and that ‘Phonics First’ and synthetic phonics were not much in evidence. Guided letter formation and the use of lines to write on would be prominent in a list of advisory points as well as removing tracing and copying from the schools’ agenda.

Discussion

The general findings of the writing research parallel earlier research in the area of reading in relation to the effects of gender and socioeconomic disadvantage. It has been shown that the disadvantages also apply to handwriting and spelling and these appear to be more seriously problematic for literacy acquisition than previously identified. Lack of attention to early handwriting and spelling skills can directly impair reading development and in dyslexics can even prevent its development.

However it would appear from the Year 2 writing test and Key Stage 1 SATs results for the three participating schools that something can be done to overcome both types of disadvantage and increase achievement. It replicated findings from the pilot study in a Hounslow school in 1997‐8. The use of ‘phones’ or lack of ‘phones’ in the children's scripts enabled the teachers to intervene and promote them. The strategy also identified the potential dyslexic who should have been put on a specialist APSL programme, preferably in the last term in Reception.

Casework‐identified dyslexics ‐falling behind in Reception, even after structured support, usually had both dysgraphia and dyslexia – more complex needs. In their, daily individual tuition using the reading and spelling packs from Hickey MLC or TRTS for the first 5 letters brought the pupil up to the level of peers (Vallence, 2006).

In this study the design and use of the spelling rating scale enabled the targeting of teachers’ attention to the need to concentrate more on developing ‘phones’ for use by particular children in both reading and writing. They were recommended to use MAPT – Multisensory‐Articulatory‐Phonogram‐Training, as initially used in the specialist dyslexia programmes, to overcome any barrier that might be preventing some of the children from easily acquiring alphabetic knowledge.

The conclusions from these studies are that Reception teachers can easily be helped to identify and promote sound–symbol knowledge for all children including dyslexics in the first two terms in Reception. In order to do this they need to learn to assess children's early free‐form marks on paper. This will show the children's level of knowledge of the literacy concepts and skills that have been learnt. Then, by incorporating MAPT and the APSL based developmental synthetic spelling programme they can speed up literacy learning.

Literacy problems appear to arise from the global approaches advocated for use in primary schools for some very specific tasks. In addition the current EYFS strategy of learning 4 to 5 new letters each week is too fast for many of the children and the first letters chosen are also not the easiest for grapheme formation for beginning writers, whereas the set i t then p n s has had a proven track record and gives many words and blends. The exposure to many other letters in the graphic shape groups (c a o d g), to the range in story books and in copy writing modes can be very confusing to disadvantaged and dyslexic pupils hence the need for a more focused approach for them.

Given three conditions: the use of MAPT plus a developmental APSL programme and remedial APSL for the dyslexic before the end of the Reception year, it can be expected that although we cannot cure dyslexia, we can fix it so that its consequences are mitigated. As the spelling programme also involves handwriting training, it will improve handwriting speed and legibility and support the dysgraphics.

A note of caution here is that although the head teacher of the Pilot Study school definitively attributed the uplift in SATs to the developmental spelling intervention, no such communication has been received from the 3 Project schools, so the inference must be treated with caution. However, similar schools in the area did not demonstrate such results. For this reason a replication Project is being set up and schools will be invited to take part.