Literacy – 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

#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

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.,

Tools for Writing 2024 Style: A suggestion and selection guide

Jun 22, 20241 Comment

Learning to write can be really challenging – and teaching it can be really challenging too! When I started implementing Comprehensive Literacy Instruction, it was the area that I struggled most to implement. Some of the students I was working with weren’t able to hold a traditional pen or pencil – and some of them

Developmental Writing Instruction Version 2: Online Training now available

Jan 28, 2024

I’m very excited to let you know that the online training Developmental Writing Instruction v2: Writing Assessment, Development, Teaching & Learning is now available. Version 2.0 of the course uses the Writing with All Tools Continuum as a framework to support writing assessment – and also a framework for intervention helping us to teach

Writing with All Tools Continuum v1.2

Jan 15, 2024

I’m very happy to let you all know that version 1.2 of the Writing with All Tools continuum is now available. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and suggestions for the continuum – please keep them coming!! The main changes for v1.2 are: The following documents have been updated for V1.2: The updated documents are

Moving Towards a More Inclusive Model of Reading: the Active View of Reading

Dec 2, 202312 Comments

There are many different models of reading in English. Each of these has been developed in an attempt to explain the very complex skill of reading. Earlier this year I was introduced to a model of reading that I am very excited about – The Active View of Reading – and that I want to