SPELLIT - the Study Programme to Evaluate Literacy Learning through Individual Tuition - began in 1999 with support from the Community Fund. Additional funding from the Department for Education and Skills and WHSmith enabled the programme to develop quite substantially to involve 350 children in over 200 schools, and address a number of questions including: what are the characteristics of seven-year-old children with literacy difficulties; how well do these children respond to different types of support; and how can parents be helped to support their children?

Systematic observation shows that many children with literacy difficulties are not fully engaged in classroom learning. They exhibited more 'off-task behaviour' but the greatest difference was seen on activities 'peripheral' to work such as sharpening pencils, fetching books, etc. In other words, the children with literacy difficulties were quite good at looking busy while not fully engaged with the learning tasks.

The children in our control group made some progress as a result of support available in school but not sufficient to keep pace with their peers. In relative terms, they were falling further behind. Among the two groups of children who received additional support through the project, those who received individualised multi-sensory teaching (MST) made the best progress overall and were beginning to catch up to their peers. However, rather unexpectedly, we found one subgroup of children who did better with our Home Support Programme (HSP) - the children without attention problems and with less impaired phonological skills. It seemed that the HSP was providing them with opportunities to learn that were not provided by the multi-sensory teaching or class-based support. Conversely, children with the most severe literacy and phonological difficulties made the greatest gains with MST. Thus we found one programme was not always best - HSP was better for some children and MST was better for others.

Some parents who tried the HSP found that their children's difficulties were too severe or challenging. However, for many, following a carefully structured programme enabled children to improve foundation literacy skills, develop greater self - confidence and feel more valued. Parents were able to develop a better understanding of the nature of their child's difficulties as well as the confidence and language needed to communicate effectively with schools. But the success of the programme was, to some extent, dependent on the parents' ability to adapt and extend the work.

A version of the HSP, called the Dyslexia Institute Young Readers' Support Pack, or DIY pack for short, is currently available through the Dyslexia Institute website and a retail version may be developed in the future. Our experience on SPELLIT was that parents welcomed step-by-step instructions so we have tried to make the DlY pack easy to follow, including a video as well as written instructions. Parents are also encouraged to build on and develop the activities and talk to their child's teacher so that they may link with work at school. The pack supports both early reading skills, through structured phonic-based teaching of basic letter-sound rules and blending skills, and the reading experience, using supported reading activities to apply and develop skills in context. The SPELLIT research, and other research findings, suggest that it is this linking of skills-teaching and reading experience that is particularly effective.

Children with literacy difficulties, on the whole, showed cognitive difficulties that are
typical of dyslexia. Most showed poor phonological awareness and weaknesses in short-term memory; many showed slow speed of processing. Fully half of our sample scored in the 'abnormal' range on parental ratings of inattention and hyperactivity. Interestingly, there was a relationship between 'signs' of dyslexia and progress made with MST: less-good progress was made by those who showed the most pronounced, specific weaknesses in short term memory.

In summary the main messages from SPELLIT are:

• without support, children with literacy difficulties fall further behind and are likely to develop bad learning habits
• a structured support programme enables many children to make progress, regardless of the severity of their difficulties
• children with more severe difficulties can be identified through assessment and should be given early, individualised support
• literacy difficulties usually occur with a constellation of other difficulties -in language, memory and attention
• and, importantly, parents were better able to help when they gained an understanding of their children's difficulties by working through a systematic programme.