All nine weeks

Week 1: How the page looks

TAS — Woodworking

Changing the size, the typeface and where the pictures sit can change how easy a page is to read - and what helps you is not what helps the person next to you.

Nobody reads a page the way a camera photographs it. The size of the letters, the shape of them, how far apart the lines sit and where the picture goes all change how hard the words are to get hold of. This week we take one set of woodworking instructions and push it around until it suits you, then compare with someone else and find out that it suits them differently. The point is not that one setting is correct. The point is that you learn yours, and can ask for it.

What we are reading

What to do

1. First look

   5 min · core

   Read the halving joint instructions exactly as they come, with nothing changed. Do not fix anything yet. Just notice: was there a point where you slowed down, went back, or lost the line? Mark that spot or remember it.

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   Everyone reads silently from their own copy. Then go round and take one word each for how it felt - 'fine', 'crowded', 'blurry', 'too long'. One word only, so nobody has to perform.

   Watch for

   A child who finishes suspiciously fast has probably skimmed to avoid the discomfort of reading. Do not call it out. Ask what step 4 says, and let them look again without comment.

2. Make it yours

   10 min · core

   Open the text lab and change one thing at a time. Typeface first, then size, then the space between lines, then how wide the lines run. Change it, read two lines, decide. Keep going until you have the version that is easiest for you, then save it. One more thing to try that has nothing to do with the screen. Lay a ruler, or the edge of a book, under the line you are reading and slide it down as you go. It blocks out the lines below so there is only ever one line to look at, and it stops your eye jumping to the wrong line when you come back from a break. Some people find that this alone fixes the thing they thought was a reading problem. Try it on your easiest version and on your hardest one.

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   If there are enough devices, everyone builds their own. If there is one screen, take turns of ninety seconds each and let the others say what they would change. The person driving decides. Nobody overrules them.

   Watch for

   Watch for a child who picks the biggest of everything because bigger sounds better. Ask them to read a whole step at that size. Very large text means very few words per line, and losing your place at the line break is its own problem.

3. Make it horrible

   8 min · core

   Now go the other way. Use the same controls to make the passage as hard to read as you possibly can. Then say out loud what makes it hard. Naming it is the actual task - anyone can drag a slider.

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   Everyone makes their worst version and the group votes on which is most unreadable. The winner has to explain their method, which means explaining what reading needs.

   Watch for

   This one is meant to be funny, and the laughing matters - it puts the child in charge of difficulty rather than subject to it. But watch a child who makes their horrible version look like their normal school worksheet. That is worth a quiet conversation afterwards, not in front of the group.

4. Picture on, picture off

   7 min · core

   Switch to the grain paragraph, with the diagram hidden. Read it. Now turn the diagram on and read it again. Did the picture change what the words meant, or did it just make you feel better about them?

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   Split the group. Half read it with the diagram, half without, without knowing the others had something different. Then ask both halves the same question about grain direction and compare the answers.

   Watch for

   Some children will say the picture made no difference and be right. A diagram helps most when the words describe something physical you cannot picture yet. Do not push them towards saying it helped.

5. Picture in the way

   10 min

   Move the diagram so it sits in the middle of the lines, with text running past both sides of it. Read the paragraph again. Watch what your eyes do when they hit the end of a short line next to the picture.

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   Try it in all four positions - above, beside, below, in the middle - and rank them as a group. Expect disagreement about 'beside', and let the disagreement stand rather than resolving it.

   Watch for

   This is where a tracking difficulty shows up most clearly: losing the line, re-reading the same line, or skipping one entirely. Note it privately. Do not name it in front of the group, and do not diagnose it.

6. My reading card

   10 min

   Print the card that says what works for you: your typeface, your size, your spacing, where you want pictures. Write one sentence at the bottom you could actually say to a teacher. Something small and specific beats something big and vague.

   {# Teachers run this as small-group intervention, so the home variations are noise on their sheet. #}

   In a small group

   Everyone fills in a card. Then each person reads out only their one sentence, not the whole card. Practice saying it in a normal voice, because asking is the hard part, not knowing.

   Watch for

   A child who writes 'make it easier' has not finished. Push gently for something a teacher could act on this week - a font size, a printed copy instead of the board, a sheet with the picture at the top.

Things to talk about

• Did making the letters bigger help, or did it just mean less fit on the screen and you lost your place more often?
• Which typeface was easiest? Can you say what it was about it - the shape of the letters, the thickness, the spacing?
• Did more space between the lines help more than bigger letters did? Which would you pick if you could only have one?
• What happened to the technical paragraph when the diagram disappeared? Did you slow down, or did you not notice?
• When the picture sat in the middle of the lines, what did your eyes do at the end of each line?
• What worked for you that did not work for someone else here? Why do you think that is?
• What could you ask for at school, in words a teacher could actually act on this term?

Notes for the teacher

• Nobody reads aloud unless they offer. Not once, not 'just this line'. This group has almost certainly been made to read aloud badly in front of people before, and one forced turn will cost you the rest of the term.
• Do not put one child's work up against another's without asking them first, and accept no as an answer without negotiating. Comparing settings is the point of the lesson, but it has to be offered, not taken.
• No stopwatch, and no 'who finished first'. Reading speed is the one measure these children already know they lose on. Everything here is about what helped, not how fast.
• Dyslexia and EAL look different and need different responses. A child with dyslexia usually stalls on the WORD - the shape will not resolve, they lose the line, they re-read. Spacing, typeface and line width help them most. A child with English as an additional language usually decodes the word fine and stalls on the MEANING - 'pare', 'shoulder', 'flush'. Layout will not touch that; a quick word list will. If you change the layout for an EAL child and nothing improves, you have learnt something true rather than failed.
• The thirty minute run is activities one to four. That is a whole lesson with a beginning and an end, not the first half of a longer one. If you have the full hour, add 'picture in the way' and the reading card - the card is the part that changes anything outside this room, so protect its ten minutes if you can.
• On one shared screen, run it as ninety seconds each with the rest advising and the driver deciding. Say that rule out loud before you start. Without it, the most confident child ends up choosing settings for everyone, which teaches precisely the wrong lesson.
• If a child's easiest setting is a surprise - a small size, a serif, tight spacing - believe them. The research averages do not govern the individual child in front of you, and this week exists to find out what they actually need.

Next: week 2, Before you read