Quick 60

Teacher:

Mrs Irene Wilson

The Quick60 Small Group Intervention Programme is designed to bring groups of up to five struggling students to year-level in reading and spelling in 60 quick lessons or fewer. Each Quick60 lesson plan is set out explicitly for teachers but also allows for flexibility and needs based teaching and learning. Print and digital resources are sequential and levelled covering reading accuracy, spelling, fluency practice, comprehension, vocabulary instruction and writing, as well as revision and consolidation. There was a significant purchase of resources made at the beginning of last year to ensure that this programme was resourced.

The children are selected using both data gathered throughout the year; the 6yr Net testing or “Observational Survey” which tests children close to their 6th birthday on Reading, Writing, Spelling and Alphabet knowledge, and previous years end of year PM testing which uses an unseen text, and also using teachers referrals at our Special Needs Meetings.

The Quick 60 programme allows for children to enter at any age, and at any stage of the programme, be grouped according to their learning needs, and be taught at a pace that suits them. The children are working in small groups. This differs greatly from the Reading Recovery Programme which restricts entry to those below the age of 7, insists on 1-1 and encourages the children to be removed from the programme after 20 weeks with no further help in class. Children were found to struggle once back in a group teaching setting and without the support of the 1-1 lesson framework they often failed to progress or maintain their rate of progress. End of year testing using the PM Benchmark kits has shown that the majority of the children on Quick 60 this year have either maintained or gained on their progress throughout the year.

Many of the children on Quick 60 are there due to continued absences from school. Their progress has been greatly hindered by this. However, being able to schedule a lesson slot for them at least 4 days a week has meant that when they are at school they get a full instructional lesson. I do feel it is a critical reason for progress or lack of and must be addressed in detail next year.

The programme has also catered well for the ESOL children’s needs. Quick 60 uses non- fiction content. Non-fiction offers topics that tie in with their personal interests and gives them a broader vocabulary base. There is much room for discussion and the comprehension elements of this programme mean that the children are engaging in thinking around the context and have many opportunities to acquire new vocabulary in a carefully scaffolded manner.

This Programme is essential, catering for some of our hardest to teach children and yet once again in 2019 we have seen some significant gains.

As part of my inquiry this year I looked at oral language and used the Record of Oral Language test at the beginning of the programme. The children who made the most gains this year on Q60 had good oral language scores on this test. I was able to extend the children on Q60 this year using the texts and adapting the comprehension tasks to improve their oral language. I hope to work more in this area next year as I saw good results from the children who improved in oral language as well as in their reading level.

Recommendations for 2020

Explore options for expanding this resource

A more transparent process around referral and selection for this Programme, including kids who are not accessing the Programme due to absences.

The Quick 60 Space has a site that can help to be a connect between Classroom the Specialist Programme and Whanau - I have adapted the programme to include comprehension follow up tasks - for 2020 I would like to work on adapting these once more to be more iPad friendly by using EE and to encourage more use of the site.

All PCT’s observe this Programme in action

Irene Wilson and Toni Nua