DIY Reading - going it alone with Your Reading Coach Online
This website is directed to you as a parent, grandparent, teacher. I am going to speak to you via this website after all you probably don’t have the time to fly to beautiful Brisbane, Queensland Australia, especially as you may have kids!

Congratulations on beginning Behavioural Reading.

In my clinic there is not much mystery to reading. It seems a very logical and predictable medium to work in and almost all people who come to it have made really good progress within about one school term.

The program is state of the art in reading and is a culmination of 30 years work. It has been an unorthodox journey to this point and no formal research process was followed nor is BR allied with any University, but it reflects my own intuition, observation and self directed research.

Children presenting to our clinic are often the very same children who have had a lot of support at school already or even seen the very best ‘reading specialists’. Still progress remained elusive.

My intention is to make this website a place of change and not a place for gathering a list of ‘where to go’ and ‘research’ links. There are many great resources, books and websites that do this well and there is no need for yet another, just regurgitating the same material.

Somehow you have found this website and it is important that you realize that it is different. The information and techniques that are used here are almost entirely original to me. Though I am an educator, my area of formal training was not within reading and literacy and I have managed to get to this point without the ‘indoctrination of the establishment’. Actually, I have jealously guarded my individual thought and observations by being very selective with professional reading and seminars. Philosophically it is all about ‘results for effort’. BR is taking evidence based learning to a whole new level.

Briefly...
Every person follows a ‘learn to read’ process that is always unique to them. Owing to the variety of teaching strategies, the differences in teachers and the differences in each persons neurology and their instinct, the way an individual person actually learns to read will always differ. The way reading is generally taught is fine for most children, but about 30% fail to progress into quality readers and require an alternative or augmentative approach. More of the same is NOT the solution.

There are similarities between all good readers and these similarities are helpful because research studies help shed light on how good readers actually read. Even with this research though, programs that will effectively address reading deficits have only made slow progress and their efficiency of gains versus effort have been marginal despite large advertising budgets to the contrary. I hope you are getting suspicious….. You should be thinking, ‘if he is claiming results, lets see the evidence…’ Click here to find a spreadsheet containing all of our raw data.  You will be directed to our 'Tyquin' site as the data capture and updating process is quite time consuming.

There are other similarities between all readers which are more general in nature and fit more into the field of Behavioral Psychology. It is these similarities that BR has been able to exploit to great effect.

BR is a method that differs from other programs that generally work on the assumption “that learning large collections, be them sight words, phonics, or simply reading lots and frequently will lead to effective and fluent reading.” This is a gross generalization and does not respect the detail that some of these programs offer, but all of these programs focus on items and units of knowledge and not on the actual processes required for reading or trying to link the various processes together.

By example, research shows that the skill of ‘rapid naming’ – a skill of being able to read a list of words quickly, is stronger in good readers than poor readers. By extension from this idea, some programs focus on practicing word lists over and over in the hope that by being able to recall words more rapidly, the reader will then be able to make the transition from poor reader to a good fluent reader but evidence demonstrates that this concept fails many students.

A parent…
The other day a concerned parent contacted our office in an attempt to find answers. As her child was struggling to read at school, she wanted to take matters into her own hands and try to teach her child to read by herself. Her dilemma was that though she could find lots of resources like worksheets, phonics programs, fun computer programs and books, she could not actually find a step by step guide of what to actually do. I offered my own cynical statement of “that’s interesting isn’t it!” To emphasize this point the words from four eminent PhD researchers on reading Fletcher, Lyons, Fuchs and Barnes 2007,'...most interventions involve... encouraging to practice....repeated readings....guided reading and simply trying to increase the amount of time a child spends in independent reading.' The current method is to simply sit with your child and read to them, read and reread over and over, talk about what has been read and get them to read more. Sorry but when I look at that statement I have to laugh. You mean that in the 21st century, that is the best the academics can come up with! Oh dear….


Who…
BR assumes that if a person is of normal intelligence or better, has effective language, i.e. they can speak and understand what is being said to them in the course of normal daily life and know the alphabet and the sounds for it, then it should be possible to read without much difficulty. BR focuses on a concept of processes, whereby a process is a single definable unit of behaviour which has an underlying neurological sequence. BR has then sought to define the range of processes displayed in a proficient reader and where a reader deviates from this optimal definition, then the appropriate processes will be taught. The reason BR is so incredibly effective is that processes are easy and quick to teach and learn.

From this point on, think of reading as a collection of processes, either done correctly, incorrectly or not present. Whether the process is recalling five words or fifty, it does not matter. If the process is in place and correct, then the number of words will come in good time.

Next…  under construction but please come back soon
You have a couple of choices for your next step and it may depend on who you are and what you are looking for, but I shall try to help.
a) In a hurry!!! Are you a parent looking to help their child and just want to start… click here and go to ‘DIY reader quickstart’. It will quickly diagnose the type of reader and direct you to the solution. Better still, just go immediately to www.yourreadingcoach.com

b) Coming soon  Not in a hurry and you want to further your understanding of BR. You should purchase the e-book and do more reading. The e-book also contains entire individual programs for the different types of readers as in a) above, so this may be the most economical if you are looking to help more than one child. It is also reusable.

c) NEW membership site with instructional video, MP3 audio explanations and books to help you teach your own child to read.  New as of September 2011.

http://www.yourreadingcoach.com