Hi, my name is Greg, and I’m a read-a-holic.
My story began in 2018 when I moved to a small country school in North-West Victoria called Bolinda Primary School. I had just been appointed to my first Principal role, and being the small school that it was, I was also a teaching-principal. I had a Prep-Year 3 classroom with 23 students of varying abilities. As you can imagine, 5 year olds with no schoool experience to 9 year olds is a big difference in not only learning abilities, but maturity levels and possible friendships within the classroom.
It’s safe to say, I had no idea where to start. The school had many students who had been diagnosed with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. It was quite a challenging situation to say the least. Especially when I had had no real formal training in reading instruction. I had taught a Prep class for 6 months prior, but apart from that, most students came to me already reading, or obviously struggling. Having the added responsibility of being the school principal meant I had to figure out an answer. And quick!
My first move was to hire a Speech Pathologist. They would know where to start. When our speechie began with us, even she was feeling a little overwhelmed with where our students were sitting in terms of reading skills and understanding. It was a big task for anybody. But we sat down and created an action plan going forward and made training the staff our number one priority. If we could be consistent across year levels and ensure our Tier 1 teaching was following best practice, we knew we’d be making big gains already. And that’s exactly what happened.
It didn’t take long for us to see results. It didn’t take long for word to spread. We had newspaper articles written about the school and about the Speech Pathologist, and within a few months, enrolments had doubled. We were making real differences to these students’ lives. And it wasn’t magic or some unheard of approach either. We followed the science and applied what was already known to be best practice. It’s just that not many teachers were aware of these methods and institutions weren’t sharing this research with the thousands of graduating teachers.
In 2020, I moved back to Melbourne to Clayton South Primary School. There was no way I wasn’t bringing this new knowledge and teaching methods to this new school. Results were on the low side already, so it was a good chance to show some real evidence of this in practice. It was a slow and steady change that took about 18 months to implement across the entire school. We began in the junior school (P-2) and then extended our knowledge and methods to our senior classes (3-6).
Our results went from 47% of students in the bottom 2 bands on NAPLAN in 2016 and 33% in the bottom 2 bands in 2017-18, to 6% in the bottom 2 bands in 2021 and 0% in the bottom 2 bands in 2022! Yes, that’s correct. We have left no child behind. This was our ultimate goal and we achieved that unlikely target within 3 years of making the change to the Science of Reading.
If you would like to know how to begin to make changes in your classroom or school, read on. If you would like to get me out to your school to work with leadership, teachers and/or whole staff, please visit the contact page and let me know a date that works for you. Helping schools to implement these changes has become my passion and it is now an equity issue for me. All students should be receiving the same, high-quality instruction no matter where they live and what school they attend. Make the move in 2023! Get a head start with a booking with me in Term 4 2022.