About

Reading with Monty is a small one-woman show (along with my bestest, goodest girl, Monty the maremma X) run from the Great-Southern region in Western Australia. The idea for Reading with Monty began circa 2017 when I was teaching a child who could not blend sounds to make simple words like "hot". I noticed that words like "sheep" or "feet" were not difficult for her to blend orally as the sounds can be drawn out with no gaps between them but the spelling was more complicated than words like "cat". I drew on my experience as a languages teacher where I taught Japanese characters using mnemonics. This always made it easy for kids to remember the new script. I also wanted to create a phonetic script but I needed the children to be weaned off it quickly so I colour-coded it. The color-coding has been thought out carefully so it is closely related to the mnemonic. For example, the sound "ow" as in "cow" is brown and the mnemonic is brown cow. Every time the phoneme "ow" is written, whether it's "ou" in "about" or "ough" in "plough", the letters that make up the "ow" sound are always brown.

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As my idea developed and was trialed with children in the classroom, it became evident that it could potentially help those with various reading difficulties. ​I began a Doctor of Education to study the effectiveness of the Reading with Monty method in 2021 but I had to put my studies on hold due to illness. During this time of study, I learnt that despite my method being borne through observation in the classroom, it was supported by research in the literature. The unique blending of different types of visual support means that Reading with Monty has become greater than the sum of its parts. I still hope to go back and complete my doctorate. In the meantime, I hope that the Reading with Monty app will help your child read!

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