Bringing high quality, research-supported literacy instruction to teachers and families
Welcome to Lifelong Literacy. I’m Lyn Stone:
- linguist in private practice
- author
- education consultant
- mother of diverse learners
- dyslexia advocate
You can find out more about each one of my roles on this site. We have free videos, low cost online courses, books for parents and teachers, a regular blog and a wealth of resources to help you in your journey toward lifelong literacy for all.
Lyn Stone’s books and courses
School Consultation
We have spent many years consulting to schools throughout Australia. It gives us great pleasure to watch them go from good to great.
The video below outlines our role. Do get in touch if you would like to book a consultation.
Conferences and events
Reading for Life Online Course Launch
We are so excited to be launching a brand new online course, alongside our hugely popular Spelling for Life Online and Language for Life Online.
This accessible guide bridges the gap between research and practice, translating academic findings into practical suggestions and ready-to-use techniques.
Suitable for:
- Parents
- Teachers
- Literacy professionals
Together we will:
- Look at the definition of literacy
- Discover the story of the Reading Wars
- See what it really means to be dyslexic
- Experience examples of processing speed and working memory
- Explore some practical tools to boost reading and writing
This 6 hour online course is designed to be accessible, understandable and practical. It is filled with take-home messages of positivity and usefulness, and reveals a wealth of resources worldwide to suit all levels of inquiry into this topic.
Early bird registration for $145 per person expires on October 1 enrol now to secure your place!
The Reading League Third Annual Conference, Syracuse NY
October 17-18 2019
“Each year, The Reading League gathers experts from around the globe to share their research, knowledge, and experiences in an effort to further our mission of advancing the awareness, understanding, and use of the scientific evidence base in practice. Teachers, administrators, and educators of all kinds join together to elevate their learning about reading, writing, and related topics.”
Keynote speakers: Emily Hanford and Maryanne Wolf
Lyn will be speaking in the land of giants, with others such as Pamela Snow, Lorraine Hammond, David Kilpatrick, Mary Dahlgren, Jan Wasowicz, Tanya Serry, Nancy Young, Carol Tolman, Pamela Kastner, Jan Hasbrouck and Steven Dykstra.
So no pressure there.
Lyn’s talk:
With high quality initial instruction, the majority of children can learn to read, regardless of diagnosis. But what about writing? Achievement of accurate, fluent written expression requires instruction and practice far beyond that needed for reading. Partly as a result of this, the value of high quality, early writing instruction can be neglected or downplayed in primary school. leading to large populations who fail to develop appropriate levels of written expression.
Teaching all children to write is hard. They can’t just eventually “pick it up”, regardless of instructional method, like they can with reading. For example, there doesn’t seem to be a large “Writing Recovery” industry; if there were, based on the balanced literacy belief system, it would go out of business in two seconds flat. You can’t make fake progress in writing.
In this presentation, Lyn lists the components of fluent writing and offers insights on how to maximize a child’s chances of achieving this lofty goal. Lyn also looks into ways in which current practice in schools can be geared towards getting all children to improve their writing skills, as well as where to draw the line and fall back on technology.
Orthographic Mapping with TT4L
Beaumaris Secondary College
How can we approach spelling words to make sure we’re giving the best opportunity for storage and retrieval?
Lyn talks about orthographic mapping, and how to get the most out of spaced, retrieval and interleaved practice as it relates to spelling. Using a list of tricky spelling words, Lyn demonstrates methods of teaching spelling that go beyond ‘look, say, cover, write, check’ and into the world of structured literacy.
Thursday 24th October 2019
Cheltenham East Primary School, cnr Silver St & Coolac St, Cheltenham Please arrive at 7.00pm for registration. Presentation: 7.30pm – 9.30pm
BOOKINGS ARE ESSENTIAL – Donation $20 per person To secure your place contact:
Yvonne Lynch on 9696 9333 or Email: ylynch@hotkey.net.au
Disorders of Literacy and Language Professional Development Sessions for Educators, Medical and Allied Health Professionals
Chairo Christian School, Leongatha Campus
Wednesday October 30th
Session 1: 4pm-5:30pm for educators etc.
Session 2: 7-8:30pm for parents
The pen is mightier than the sword. Use it wisely.
The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword
Exclusive to Albury/Wodonga…
Lyn Stone will be running a workshop on high impact literacy teaching strategies at St. Monica’s Primary School in Wodonga on Saturday November 30th.
The theme is “The pen is mightier than the sword” – and is the idea that like any high-precision tool, literacy needs to be taught explicitly and practised well.
Drawing from her three flagship programs, Spelling for Life, Language for Life and Reading for Life, the day will consist of tried and true strategies to help teachers deliver even higher quality literacy instruction in their classrooms right away.
SESSION 1 Let’s get our heads round grammar
A way to look at the parts of speech that follows logic. We will cover nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions that goes beyond “A noun is a naming word…a verb is a doing word…” and still makes complete sense.
SESSION 2 The Survival List
My goal is to teach all of my students to read and write fluently. To do this, I have a list of words they need to learn as a priority. It’s called the Survival List and it constitutes some of the most common words in the English language.
There are plenty of lists readily available, such as the Dolch or Fry lists, but they contain a mixture of simple and complex patterns. For instance, in the Dolch list, the word big (a simple 1:1 CVC pattern) is right there with away (a two-syllable word containing a digraph) and said (an unusual pronunciation of the digraph <ai>, which only really occurs in this word and in some accents in the word again, but which follows the grammatical/etymological pattern of lay and pay).
The amount of times I see children being given homework requiring them to learn this mishmash of random patterns astonishes me. This is whole word learning and not viable for many children.
As a solution, I have extracted the words that don’t have a simple code structure and have placed them in families containing similar patterns. I use a simple marking system that I teach to my students so that they become aware of the words’ structure and they practise the words in various ways.
This list is called the Survival List for two reasons:
- Because knowing how to read and spell the words on this list will help them become fluent readers and writers as quickly as possible and
- Because the techniques used to learn these words can extend to other words with complex patterns that students can teach themselves, thus helping them to survive the onslaught of increasing complexity and expectation as their academic career unfolds.”
SESSION 3 What about writing?
With high quality initial instruction, the majority of children can learn to read, regardless of diagnosis. But what about writing? Achievement of accurate, fluent written expression requires instruction and practice far beyond that needed for reading. Partly as a result of this, the value of high quality, early writing instruction can be neglected or downplayed in primary school. leading to large populations who fail to develop appropriate levels of written expression.
Teaching all children to write is hard. They can’t just eventually “pick it up”, regardless of instructional method, like they can with reading. For example, there doesn’t seem to be a large “Writing Recovery” industry; if there were, based on the balanced literacy belief system, it would go out of business in two seconds flat. You can’t make fake progress in writing.
In this presentation, Lyn lists the components of fluent writing and offers insights on how to maximize a child’s chances of achieving this lofty goal. Lyn also looks into ways in which current practice in schools can be geared towards getting all children to improve their writing skills, as well as where to draw the line and fall back on technology.
Time: 9:30am – 3pm
Date: Saturday November 30 2019
Venue: St Monica’s Primary School, 137 Brockley St, Wodonga VIC 3690
Cost: $245 per person (+GST for registrations after October 1 2019)
Includes: Printed handouts, digital downloads, delicious morning tea and lovely lunch (please inform us of food preferences on registration)
