Podcast 415, Gene Mehigan on Literacy & Disadvantage (9-4-21)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's episode I interview my long-time colleague and fellow vice-president of Marino Institute of Education on the topics of literacy and disadvantage and more. Among the topics we discuss during the podcast are the following:

• What constitutes a struggling reader
• Identifying a struggling reader in a class setting
• Why it is important to move on from focusing on individual sounds and words to help students become fluent readers.
• The article referred to in the programme can be downloaded here: Effects of Fluency Oriented Instruction on Motivation for Reading of Struggling Readers
• Fluency oriented instruction and the work of Stephen Stahl, Kathleen Heubach and Bonnie Cramond.
• The value of repeatedly reading the same text
• Why fluency oriented instruction is particularly important around first class
• The value of teachers and parents reading to children, modelling the reading process
• Why choral reading is helpful in developing fluency – communicatively choral reading
• Echo reading, antiphonal reading,
• Why motivation may be the most important factor in learning to read
• Louise Rosenblatt and the efferent/aesthetic continuum.
• Story of “Jason” a non-reader who loved Buddy Holly songs
• How teachers believe that fluency comes after mastery of more cognitive skills of reading and that motivation is important for beginning readers
• Conducting research in schools serving disadvantaged areas in Dublin
• Looking at motivation for reading:
  • Self-efficacy for reading
  • Orientation towards reading
  • Perceived difficulty of reading
• The value for teachers of knowing the science of reading. Read Daniel Willingham’s The Reading Mind
• Our brains are not wired for reading (alphabet principle; decoding)
• How parents can promote motivation among children – reading to children and reading with children
• What it means for a child to be alliterate
• The role of education in a disadvantaged setting
• The “network gap” that children in disadvantaged settings experience
• The extent to which education can ameliorate disadvantage
• The value of teachers collaborating, especially in a disadvantaged setting (and in planting allotments and solving crossword puzzles and in teacher education too)
• Role of a principal in a disadvantaged school
• Derek Sivers’s book notes
• Ken Robinson
• Science of reading podcast and blogs (http://textproject.org/teacher-educators/science-of-reading/, https://understandingreading.home.blog/)
• Timothy Shanahan blog.
• Autobiographies: John Major, Arnold Schwarzenegger & André Agassi
• Derek Sivers's book notes and podcast interview