Jane Farrall Consulting

Phonics Implementation with People Who Need AAC: What Does the Evidence Base Say?

Apr 22, 20251 Comment

Today I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar with the awesome Nick Drover. We talked through some of what the evidence base says (and doesn’t say) about implementing phonics with people who need AAC. As promised, we recorded this session. The handout that goes with the video is below – and then the video

Writing Tools to Download, Share and Customise

Apr 5, 20255 Comments

For many of the students I work with, focusing on learning to write with traditional writing tools (pens, pencils, crayons, etc) can be a barrier in their writing development. Traditional writing tools are a physical barrier for many, due to the motor control required. For some students, having to hold pens and pencils is a

Free Online Session: Phonics Implementation with People Who Need AAC: What Does the Evidence Base Say?

Mar 31, 20258 Comments

Edited to add: This session filled up much faster than we expected! We will record the session and share it via this website afterwards. As shared back in March this year, Nick Drover and I were delighted to present a session about phonics implementation, and the evidence base with people who need AAC, at this

#AGOSCI2025 Day 3: Developing Print Concepts

Mar 15, 20252 Comments

Today was the third and final day of #AGOSCI2025. It was an outstanding conference with a very high standard of presentations – and, consequently, lots and lots of awesome information. Today’s highlight for me was Erin Sheldon and David Niemeijer‘s presentation on Aided Language Modelling. Entitled “Are we approaching AAC modelling all wrong? Lessons from

#AGOSCI2025 Day Two

Mar 14, 2025

This morning the Australian AAC Community attending the 2025 AGOSCI Conference was both educated and challenged by the fabulous Jordyn Zimmerman. Jordyn’s speech engaged us, both emotionally and intellectually – and I know that many of us fell more than a little in love with her passion, her intellect and her skills as an orator.

Phonics Implementation with People Who Need AAC: What does the Evidence Base Say? #AGOSCI2025

Mar 13, 20252 Comments

Today was the first day of the 2025 AGOSCI National Conference. This is our Australian AAC focused conference – and a “must-attend” event in my calendar. Yesterday was pre-conference workshop day. I was lucky enough to attend Erin Sheldon‘s workshop on vocabulary instruction. Erin talked us through some great resources, materials and ideas around vocabulary

2025 Literacy Intensive

Nov 18, 20241 Comment

We’re excited to announce the details of the 2025 Literacy Intensive Course. The course will be held in July next year, at Glenroy Specialist School, in Melbourne. The course is a 5 day deep dive into comprehensive literacy instruction for all students, with a focus on students with significant disabilities. The course includes units on:

The Importance of Keyboarding

Sep 15, 20241 Comment

A few weeks ago I was talking with a teacher – and she told me that she had a student whose parents didn’t want them to use a keyboard, which puzzled me. Keyboarding is a very important skill for all of us to develop. It is how we do a large part of our writing

Goodbye Tar Heel Reader….. and hello Monarch Reader

Sep 4, 20248 Comments

Today was a day with a sad ending – for me and many others. It also has a new beginning – but I will get to that later on…. The sad ending that happened today is that Tar Heel Reader, an incredible resource for many of us who work with beginning readers of all ages,

Using the Simple View of Reading for Guiding Comprehensive Literacy Instruction with Literacy Learners with Significant Disabilities

Sep 1, 2024

This is a long blog post – if you would rather read it offline or have a copy of it, you can download it as a PDF below. Literacy and Individuals with Significant Disabilities Evidence is clear that children with intellectual and developmental disability can gain meaningful literacy skills with explicit instruction (Allor et al.,