New Zealand

Students with Reading Difficulties

Diagnostic Testing

Currently there is no single, mandatory, comprehensive screening test that schools use to identify students with reading disabilities. Schools decide on the appropriate assessment tools to examine and monitor students’ reading progress, as well as the most appropriate remediation programs. One widely used test is An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (Six-year-Net), which is administered to children at age 6 after they have completed one year of schooling.⁵¹ The survey is a comprehensive assessment that includes a dictation exercise to see how students write and hear sounds in words and word tests to check students’ letter identification and concepts about print. A reconstructed version (though not a literal translation), He Mātai Āta Titiro Ki Te Tūtukitanga Mātātupu Pānui, Tuhi, is available for use in Māori medium settings.⁵²

Instruction for Children with Reading Difficulties

The Ministry of Education supports a range of intervention programs that focus on improving reading achievement outcomes of students. Reading Recovery® is a key early intervention program that English medium schools may use with children identified as making only limited progress in reading after one year of schooling.⁵³ The main goal of the program is to bring students to the same reading level as their peers within a 20 week period. Resource Teachers of Literacy also provide specialized literacy support to primary school students at any year level with high literacy needs.⁵⁴

Resources and other intervention programs also are available, including the services of teachers’ aides and organizations that provide assistance to children who have a specific learning disability like dyslexia.^x A number of successful research-based home school initiatives such as Pause, Prompt, Praise^y also are used for improving children’s reading at home.⁵⁵

TATA is an intervention in Māori medium settings focusing on developing oral language and phonological awareness of children who are in the prereading stage. Underpinning this intervention is the fact that, unlike English, Māori is phonologically regular, which means that learners can rely on using letter-sound relationships for most words. Tatari, Tautoko, Tauawhi reading tutoring procedures based on Pause, Prompt, Praise also are used in junior Māori medium settings, but their success is dependent on children having relatively strong oral language skills.⁵⁶