Dear CENMAC Community,

As the term comes to an end we would like to thank you for making us so welcome within your schools over the last year. It has been a pleasure working with your students, their families and school staff.  Please don’t forget to tell us if any changes are happening for the students we support. We will be very happy to train and update any new members of staff or support any transitions.

We have upgraded much of our equipment over the last year, but please let us know if you have any problems with any of the technology and we will make sure it’s replaced or fixed quickly.    

For those of you with students moving on we will collect any equipment and then deliver to the new school in September. If anyone has been missed please keep the equipment safe and we will make arrangements to collect in the new term.

Have a lovely relaxing and enjoyable Summer break and see you in September.

Kathryn Stowell
Team Leader

(c) Widgit Symbol 'Pleasure' and 'Holiday'

Companies attended include: CENMAC, Commtap, Crick Software, Inclusive Technology, Inspiration, iSand, Kaz-type, Liberator, Meru, No Isolation, PCBY Voice, Rix Media, Sensory Guru, Skoog, SmartboxAT, Speaks4Me, Spellementary,Soundbeam, TobiiDynavox and Widgit.

Reading Wise

 
Students working with Communication Team member to test reading levels
 

Reading is an essential life skill and a source of great pleasure for many. Sadly, for a number of reasons, some students reach secondary school age without acquiring a secure foundation in reading. They may have undiagnosed dyslexia or gaps in their phonic knowledge which have not been picked up or addressed in previous years of education. Consequently, far from being a pleasurable experience, reading is simply an exercise in frustration and a chore.

It also causes many older pupils huge embarrassment and they often go out of their way to cover up their lack of confidence and knowledge. As they get older, this worsens and the shame factor increases. At Charlton Park Academy, CENMAC is trialling a new IT reading intervention programme called Reading Wise to support those learners who have fallen behind in phonics/decoding.

So far, feedback from students indicates that they are really enjoying and engaged by the animated lessons and multi-sensory learning

The professionals behind the programme claim that students can make 9 months reading progress in 20 hours. We hope to see the same impact in our trial here, and if successful, we will roll out the programme to the whole school for any pupil with a need to access it. So far, CENMAC staff, our school librarian and a number of class teachers and teaching assistants have been trained in the programme and are working with a selection of students for two or three 30 minute sessions a week until October. Next term, we will review their progress and consult the staff and pupils involved to see what they think of the programme.

The students involved in the trial have taken a reading test to give us an idea of their starting point from which we can measure their progress over the coming weeks and also ensure we place pupils on the right unit of work.

So far, feedback from students indicates that they are really enjoying and engaged by the animated lessons and multi-sensory learning as well as the numerous (virtual) gold tokens they regularly receive as rewards. Once set up, they are able to interact with Reading Wise independently and each pupil can work comfortably at their own pace with little adult support required. Another advantage is that, despite being a phonic-focussed early reading intervention, the programme is not babyish or patronising to the students which is not the case with all reading catch-up programmes.

If the trial goes well (which we fully expect it to) and we purchase a licence for the whole programme, we will have the added benefit of access to the reading comprehension aspect of the programme too. This builds on the technical phonics aspect and ensures that students not only read the words and sentences but also have an in-depth understanding of what they are reading too. This is where reading for pleasure really begins!