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Waddington Diagnostic Standard and Advanced Reading and Spelling Tests 1 & 2

Make 2025 count by administering the most important testing a teacher can do to efficiently define student abilities and quickly establish structured programs to reduce student failure

Australia's most reliable reading and spelling tests for quickly and efficiently pin-pointing a student's critical reading and spelling age as well as diagnosing foundation skills and highlighting phases to be targeted for teaching and learning programs. Proven across three decades, this Third Edition holds data well established before the pandemic disrupted student learning. There's no other classroom teacher-based testing device more efficient, or more detailed in diagnosis of reading and spelling, so easily administered in under one hour. These tests put teachers back in control of student testing and diagnosis where individual student ability is assessed by the professional classroom practitioner and not left to computers with unknown/detached construction or methodologies devoid of valid standardized processes.

Includes advanced reading tests and advanced spelling test sections with references to explicit teaching strategies and follow-up student learning resource materials.

NEWS UPDATES:

- 14th August 2024, national NAPLAN scores show one in three school students, almost 500,000, are struggling with their literacy and numeracy, failing to attain basic benchmarks. Follow-up reports on ABC News television suggested more students today are at lower levels compared to when their parents were educated. Whether or not this is entirely accurate is questionable given how NAPLAN tests are constructed and how dangerous it can be to compare decades unless you have the exact same standardized tests. Reports also mentioned the 2024 tests were deliberately made harder, compared to those presented in 2023. What a mess this can create and how bizarre it would be to attempt comparisons to past tests.

One thing is for sure, the very accurately standardized Waddington Diagnostic Reading and Spelling Tests 1 and 2 can be used to compare today's student performances with those of their parents from two and three decades ago. If only an education department would take the challenge and see if we really are experiencing lower basic generational standards. However, your class or school can do it now and see if your students are actually performing better compared to those sampled over two decades ago (Waddington's Diagnostic Reading and Spelling Tests 1 & 2 Second Edition 2000 standards) and over three decades ago (Waddington's Diagnostic Reading and Spelling Tests First Edition 1988 standards). Simply use student raw test scores, or their reading/spelling ages achieved by using the current equivalent Third Edition Tests, and compare their scores to the standardized reading and spelling ages in the first and second editions (your school probably has all three editions, if not, they are all available here). You might be surprised, but better still, you'll have a high degree of accuracy discovering some merit in whether today's students actually have poorer or better literacy skills than their parents from the 1990s (Second Edition) or even their grandparents from the 1970/80s (First Edition).

Finally, please read Chapter 7 - Trends from the Sampling Across Three decades on p106 of the current Third Edition, including the graphing of reading and spelling results, and you will quickly see where past generational shifts occurred for particular age groups. As mentioned in bold below, now is not the right time to resample the safe 2012 standards given the massive disruption to student learning caused by the pandemic and other research detailing Students flat-lining and going backwards since 2011.

- From August 2024, all schools across Nauru are using the Waddington Diagnostic Reading, Spelling and Math Tests after seeing how well they have been used across Fiji. Since 2023, all schools in Fiji started using Waddington tests on the recommendations of senior joint governmental and educational support specialists.

- 13th June 2024 All Victorian state schools will use phonics to teach reading from 2025. 25 minutes per day of explicit phonics and phonemic awareness teaching and learning. Waddington Reading and Spelling Tests have a proven 3+ decades foundation covering the three most important cueing systems, the foremost being grapho-phonic knowledge and phonemic awareness, along with syntactic/grammatical and semantic knowledge. Waddington's strong explicit teaching strategies and follow-up resources will never leave teachers in the lurch or students slipping through the system. "As I always say, there's no magic pot of gold at the end of a learning rainbow, usually it is hard work following a well planned program but it's also rewarding work when you can see the students in your class make progress without being labelled or made to feel they are in some way different or inadequate compared to their peers. Cheers to the Victorian teachers and kind regards," Neil Waddington.

- 11th February 2024 A Grattan Institute report says one third of Australia's 4 million school children are being failed by an education system that persists with discredited theories to teach reading. Governments and school systems are being urged to commit to what's known as "structured literacy", a mix of direct instruction and phonics. Report from an example school.

- 26th January 2024 Newsweek Report - "Students Who Still Take Notes by Hand Better Off, Say Neurologists." Further evidence in support of my belief that student handwriting is extraordinarily important, especially in the learning to read and write stages, and must never be replaced only by electronic devices.

Given the massive disruption to student learning across Australia due to the pandemic, as evidenced by;
- 2024 and 2023 NAPLAN results highlighting one in three school children are not meeting literacy and numeracy expectations
- Early 2023 reports showing schools going backwards nationally and that the 2018 national education strategy doing little to improve student learning outcomes in literacy and mathematics
- Students flat-lining and going backwards since 2011 
- Other recent NAPLAN reports showing the gap in results had widened over time between metropolitan, regional and remote students including high and low socio-educational groups. 

Waddington reliable classroom-based, teacher-driven testing is more important than ever before. Experienced teachers know how well they quickly and efficiently identify and diagnose student skill foundations, without solely labelling children, ranking schools or leaving teachers in the lurch when difficult student cases emerge.

FREE eBOOKS
  Base Words Level A 
A straight-forward, easy to implement spelling program containing 34 units of spelling work covering the first 400 commonly used words, in order of frequency. Uses an easy instruction format and incorporates low-level essential grammar tasks for key words and concepts covered. Not only is this resource currently free, the information page contains key planning tips for remote learning. There has never been a better time to make sure all students in need of spelling practise, know the first 400 commonly used words in the English language.
 Instant Classroom Posters 
Essential classroom posters and ideas for making your own.

  Instant Maths Paper 
Packed with classroom posters and other aids for efficient mathematics teaching and learning, 

FREE  c21 Communication eBooks For all Australian states - fully editable with MS Word. 2024 UPDATE NOW AVAILABLE! This resource teaches students how to plan and use a diary, which they control and share with parents, whilst also documenting their own reading, tests, work examples and progress evidence through-out any given school year. FREE to all buyers of the Waddington Diagnostic Standard and Adsvanced Reading & Spelling Tests Third Edition (ONE teacher or SITE registration) - Download link is on page 128/130. Our Communication eBook updates have currently assisted over 2,200 schools/teachers alone!

FREE   Basic First Aid Notes - 4th August 2023 **UPDATE COMING JANUARY 2025**
4th August 2023 update is essentially the same as 1st June 2023 update and includes recent ARC updates for Burns, Fainting (referred to as Presyncope) and Hyperventilation (Rapid Breathing). Also includes January 2023 first aid inclusions for earache, ear injury (such as bug in ear) and wax removal. Strategies covered are safe and very effective, without poking anything into the ear canal.
- First Aid references and further information:  The ANZCOR (Australian and New Zealand Committee on Resuscitation) guidelines website. Second half of 2024 involved the review release of all ANZCOR Guidelines.

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First Aid has moved to Trusted First Aid (Incorporating School First Aid)
Please go to: https://www.trustedfirstaid.com.au/ 

We've minimised disruption for all first aid customers because you can log into your account there with your same username and password. Products and codes are the same. Existing Reward Points preserved here (for our educational supplies) and also transferred to Trusted First Aid. Only main change will be the new Trusted First Aid (Incorporating School First Aid) contacts and different payment details on their website and invoices.

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