At a recent in school training session we sat down with Cassie, Principal of Clapham Primary School, to ask about her experience with SPELD SA.
How did you first come to learn about SPELD SA?
“I’ve been in education now since about 1997, and during that time the majority of my career has been working the special options space. So, working with kids with varying disabilities, I found SPELD SA a good resource to use to help us differentiate our curriculum and get our literacy practice right for them.”
"So, SPELD has been part of my career, probably since the early 2000’s."
What benefits are you hoping to gain from DIBELS training?
"I found it difficult to find training for that so it was lovely that SPELD were able to come out to school and help us with the training."
“We are moving away from running records and so last year our Year 2’s went through the ORF trial with the Department for Education. And we found that it was easy to use, and our teachers received great results from it, and we’re able to track and monitor our kids a lot easier. So we made a decision that we wanted a consistent approach from Reception to Year 6, so our staff are being trained in the Oral Reading Fluency Test and also the Maze. We hope to do the whole suite but today we’re just starting with those two for now."
You’ve bought some SPELD SA resources, how are the teachers and students liking those?
"We use SPELD resources quite a bit. At the moment we’re using the Department for Education spelling scope and sequence and what we found is that we were aligning our readers with that scope and sequence. The SPELD website has been amazing for us to use."
"We’re using a lot of the decodable readers to top up our reading boxes for our kids. So it’s been a really nice addition and complements what we’re doing here at school, and aligns with the Department for Education too which is great."
Do you refer your parent community to SPELD SA?
"Yes we do, some of our dyslexic families, we refer for tutoring."
What would you say to other schools considering a membership or contacting SPELD SA for resources or training?
"I recommend having a membership. The best thing is when I rang up and booked the DIBELS training I got a discount, which has been good for our school, but also just having them on the end of the phone for advice, being able to refer our parents there too has been really good. And we get emails with tips and tricks so it’s great."
Thank you to Cassie and the staff at Clapham Primary School.
