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Some children attended only to the final sounds in words. Two left-handed writers had some persisting problems with direction, but so did several right-handed children. For some children with poor motor coordination the matching of words and spaces with speech was a very difficult task. But other children with fast speech and mature language could not achieve success either, because they could not slow down their speech to their hand speed. They needed help with coordinating their visual perception of print and their fast speech. There were unhappy children who were reticent about speaking or writing, and there were rebellious and baulky children. There were children of low intelligence who made slow progress with enthusiasm, and there were others with high intelligence who worked diligently and yet were seldom accurate. There were those who lost heart when promoted because they felt they were not able to cope, and others who lost heart because they were kept behind in a lower reading group.
A flexible programme which respects individuality at first, brings children gradually to the point where group instruction can be provided for those with common learning needs.
While sensitive observation during the first year of instruction is the responsibility of the class teachers, a survey of reading progress after one year of instruction should be programmed by a person responsible for organisation and evaluation of the first years in school. Such a survey is held to be desirable and practical, in addition to the observations made by class teachers.
A year at school will have given all children a chance to settle, to begin to engage with the literacy programme, to try several different approaches, to be forming good or bad habits. It is not hurrying children unduly to take stock of their style of progress a year after society introduces them to formal instruction. Indeed, special programmes must then be made available for those children who have been unable to learn from the standard teaching practices. This makes good psychological and administrative sense.
The timing of such a systematic survey will depend upon the policies of the education system regarding:

In New Zealand continuous entry on children's fifth birthdays is usually followed by fixed annual promotion to the third-year class level. This allows a flexible time allocation of 18 to 36 months for a child to complete the first two class levels according to an individual child's needs. A slow child who takes a year to settle into the strange environment of school may need extra help in the second year to make average progress before promotion to class or year three.
A different scenario would occur with fixed age of entry. Children entering school at one time (four-and-a-half to five-and-a-half, or five-and-a-half to six-and-a-half would be surveyed within or after their first year at school. My preference would be for them to receive individual help at the beginning of the second year. having been promoted rather than retained. An alternative would be to get help to them after six months of the first year on the assumption that they could be promoted to the second-year class rather than retained. This latter procedure may lead to some unforeseen problems in that it may identify for help children who would 'take off' without help in the second six months of that first year of school.
In school systems where entry occurs at younger ages more relaxed and less urgent policies can be adopted. In systems where entry age levels tend to be higher, formal instruction tends to proceed with more urgency and waiting for a year before identifying children may not be seen as appropriate. The key point to bear in mind is that children must not be left practising inappropriate procedures for too long, but on the other hand they cannot be pressured and hurried into learning the fundamental complexities of reading and writing. This leads us back to the child who is having difficulty with school learning towards the end of his first year at school.
Each child having difficulty will have different things he can and cannot do. Each will differ from others in what is confusing, what gaps there are in knowledge, in ways of operating on print. The failing child might respond to an intervention programme especially tailored to his needs in one-to-one instruction.

The early detection of reading difficulties
Traditionally reading difficulties have been assessed with readiness tests, intelligence tests, and tests of related skills such as language abilities or visual discrimination. These have been used to predict areas which might account for a child's reading failure. The problem with the intricate profiles that such tests produce is that while they may sketch some strengths and weaknesses in the child's behaviour repertoire, they do not provide much guidance as to what the teacher should try to teach the child about reading. The child with limited language skills must still be taught to read. although some authorities advise teachers to wait until the child can speak well. The child with visual perception difficulties can be put on a programme of drawing shapes and finding paths through mazes and puzzles, but he must still be taught to read.
Many research studies have found no benefit resulting from training programmes derived directly from such test results. The pictorial and geometrical stimuli used with young retarded readers did not produce gains in reading skill. And oral language training was no more useful. This may well be because the children were learning to analyse data which they did not require in the reading task and they were not learning anything that was directly applicable in the reading activity. Again and again research points to the egocentric, rigid and inflexible viewpoint of the younger, slower or retarded reader.

 

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