For some young people the main challenge they face in life is a belief that they cannot read. This is indeed a barrier to accessing training and employment but is an issue that with the right tools, youth workers and mentors can address.

“That Reading Thing” is a fantastic basic literacy programme designed by Tricia Millar for young people who struggle with reading.

People benefiting from That Reading Thing often have negative experiences of education and because of this the programme works best in an environment where both the tutor and learner come to feel comfortable sharing life experiences and learning from each other.

This programme is designed to be used by anyone with or without formal qualifications who would like to help struggling readers.

That Reading Thing works well for:

• teenagers in or out of school
• adults
• younger pupils making the transition into secondary school
• students who are complete non-readers or
• students who have large sight vocabularies but be unable to access new words
  because they don’t understand the English code and how it works.
• students with or without specific special educational needs.

The approach is based on linguistic phonics. Young people are gradually taught reading techniques such as :

• sound blending
• sound segmenting
• sound deletion
• word reading
• spelling and sound clones.

For example That Reading Thing practitioners help struggling readers discover the skill of “sound segmenting” by asking questions about what they hear.
‘What’s the first sound you hear in “splat”?’
‘How many sounds are there in “eight”?’
‘How many syllables are in “Liverpool”?’

Practitioners help students understand that the “spelling clones” appear when the same letters make different sounds such as
“ea” in “bead”, “head” and “break”

Training
To become a practitioners of “That Reading Thing” materials it is an essential requirement to take part in the two day training programme before being released to use this programme. Practitioners then receive a comprehensive range of worksheets and other support materials and benefit from ongoing support from That Reading Thing staff.

Link to www.thatreadingthing.co.uk

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Mark's Story
Having worked through 'That Reading Thing' with Worth Unlimited workers in Smethwick, Mark’s confidence has grown and his attitude in school has become more positive.

He has won a Student of the Month award on a number of occasions and the school are confident he will avoid exclusion.