Because, while a systematic and intensive multisensory phonic approach is going to work successfully without much modification for many children, there's going to be some children who don't respond as well as we might hope. And so this is where we need to think about individuals. And a term we use in English is the BOTTLENECK. What might be a bottleneck to actually accessing that help? And there's various things that might be going on. There's some interesting research by a researcher called Stephanie Al Otaiba in the States where she's really looking at whether the characteristics of students who we expect to respond to phonics, but yet are responding either very, very slowly, or sometimes not at all. And we haven't got all the answers for this yet. But there's definitely things that her research suggests we can think about, and research by others, too. So, for example, there may be some children where actually their oral language is so depressed that they're actually, because they're not understanding the words that you're using in the phonics program, it's limiting their access and their ability to learn things. So, does that, would that mean, perhaps, that you need to have some oral language, vocabulary backup, maybe a slightly more intensive level than you do with other children? It might be that a child is, say in a small group for phonics, and they're having it every day. But they could have perhaps so much tension about maybe one of the students in the group, or they may even feel that actually don't belong in this group. So they may be there in body, but they actually may be quite tuned out. And so with that kind of student, it's thinking, well, how can I actually get them to engage with the content? Can I change the composition of the groups? Will the student actually do best in a one to one situation? So is the barrier actually the emotional response, rather than the teaching approach itself? And then also students could already be telling themselves that they can't do this. So that, again, it could be another kind of psychological barrier. So you might want to think about, well can I, as well as doing the multi-sensory phonics, are there ways that I can present this that might feel like it's not just the same reading, the same sense of failure. Can you present things digitally, or using texts that a student may be particularly motivated to read? So I think one of the challenges, but also one of the kind of joys of doing this work, is this opportunity to be a detective. We're giving you the basics of best practice, but as a teacher you can never rely on one thing. You need to be having a look, collecting data; is this working? And if not, what are some of the broader factors that might be meaning that this doesn't work? Both things that the child brings to the table, their wider set of skills, things the environment brings, the other children, the teacher, particular aspects of the phonics program. So, always be kind of keeping all these thoughts in mind, and hopefully, in that way, you can best tailor your approach to the child, and help them really reach their potential.
