"As Daniel began to read he began to rock - an indication of how anxious he has
become." This is an extract from an Educational Psychologist report about me as
nine year old child. It sure has been a long and wild dyslexic ride for me ever
since! 2024 was an amazing year for me. The highlight was winning the Teacher of
the Year Global Award (Dyslexia Aware) from Nessy.
Nessy is an amazing Reading and Spelling online program
It was a huge honour and I am most humbled to have received this global award. It is
wonderful recognition for my work in advocating for the Science of Reading over
the last eight years. The first reason I won the award was for the work I have done at an international level, on my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man which includes lots of structured literacy songs, music videos and virtual concerts (571 in total). It is most incredibly exciting to have recently hit the 25 000 subscribers and 15 million views milestones!
My Science of Reading YouTube playlist now includes animated music videos for 6 syllable types, 3 types of syllable division, single vowels, y as a vowel, schwa, the doubling rule, digraphs and Sound it Out (The Orthographic Mapping Song). Go and check it out now! The Science of Reading never sounded so good! Your children will be singing and dancing along to these catchy tunes as they are learning and reinforcing important structured literacy concepts at the same time!
The Virtual World Tour was awesome!
It was an amazing experience to play 571 virtual shows to classrooms across 14 different countries over two and half years! It was great to play so many of my structured literacy songs during the concerts and to promote evidence based teaching while entertaining the children and the teachers at the same time! Of course I had the chance to discuss the Science of Reading and dyslexia with the teachers after the shows. It truly was privileged to be able to share my music with the world and to help children with their learning outside of my own classroom. Did you have a virtual show at your school? Let me know what you thought of it.
Rockin' on the Virtual Tour Stage
If you would like to find out more about my music or teaching you can have a chat to my AI Rocking Dan AI Persona. It was very exciting this year to have been selected to take part in a trial from start up tech company Persona.
The award was also for the volunteer work I have done with The Code Read Dyslexia Network promoting the science of reading and dyslexia awareness at a number of Sharing Best Practice teacher conferences. It's been wonderful to talk to so many parents and educators about dyslexia, the science of reading and what can be done to help dyslexic and non dyslexic children in school and in life in general. I have really enjoyed talking to people about Code Read's report Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia. It such an important document.
It was fantastic to meet one of my Educational Heroes Maths and Daily Review guru David Morkunas. His Keynote speech at Sharing Best Practice was amazing!
Working the Code Read stall at Sharing Best Practice with Bruce Wicking Award Winner and Board Director Julie Mavlian.
Finally, the award recognises the contribution I made at a community and local level for the work I did at my former school as temporary literacy coordinator and Multi Sensory Structured Language Therapist working one on one with dyslexic children. As a temporary literacy coordinator, with support, I was able to move the school from a whole language/ balanced literacy approach to the teaching of literacy to an evidence based structured literacy approach. I was able to educate and mentor the school leaders and teachers on the science of reading, explicit instruction in phonics, explicit vocabulary instruction, writing instruction, daily review, screening and assessment, tier 2 and 3 intervention, the literacy block, learning routines and cognitive load theory which lead to an overhaul in the way reading, spelling and writing was taught and assessed in the early years (K-3). The school also introduced Nessy Reading and spelling online program.
I would like to acknowledge the work of the other literacy coordinator at the time (Ivana) for her hard work, research and dedication to reforming literacy at the school. Thank you for the synergy. I also had some great opportunities to share my knowledge with teachers and leaders from other schools in Australia and help them make the transition to a structured literacy approach. It was a huge job and I have to say I am so grateful to have had the opportunity at my previous school. Thank you so much to the leadership team and the amazing teachers. I can certainly say once my temporary position came to an end I was proud of what we all achieved. The National Testing results for spelling in Year 3 were out of this world and the reading comprehension improved too. I am now working with schools in Kenya to help them set up their structured literacy programs.
Thank you so much to the Institute for Multisensory Structured Language for your kind words! I am deeply moved! It is a great privilege to be an Accredited Member of the Australian Dyslexia Association. A huge thanks to Jodi Clements and Kate Finnie for all the help and guidance they have given me over the years.
Here I am presenting at an MSL course, promoting Code Read and discussing how to transition your school from balance literacy to structured literacy. I also got to play the song Hey Hey they're the Vowels .
If you are interested in what should go into your literacy block, Jocelyn Steamer interviewed me for her Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able and share how I plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years.
I found the park, now to find the rope!
In 2023, I was fortunate to secure a highly prized classroom teacher position at the incredible Riverwood Public School. The school features as a case study in Dr Nathaniel Swain's new book Harnessing the Science of Learning. I have been at Riverwood for two years now and I have learned so much from the expert instructional leaders (Sophie Roberts AKA coach Robo and Julie Mavlian). Thank you to former principle Anne Davis for mentoring me and for hiring to work with these wonderful people. This year it was wonderful to have Dr Nathaniel Swain come to our school with the AERO team to film some of our award winning teachers demonstrating Explicit Direct Instruction. It was a massive thrill that Dr Swain walked into my classroom one day when I was doing a maths daily review! It was so wonderful to hear that Dr Nathaniel Swain was a Rocking Dan fan and that he had used my music videos at former school back in his teaching days! He is now the proud owner of a Rocking Dan mug.
They say never meet your heroes because you'll be disappointed, but meeting these three more than exceeded my expectations.
If you would like to own a Rocking Dan mug like Dr Nathaniel Swain then head to my Redbubble store .
It was also great that Nathaniel came back to launch his book at the school. I was so fortunate to be there. I also had the opportunity to meet and be coached in front of the amazing educational researcher, StepLab instructional leader and podcaster Ollie Lovell. Can you believe that? (Ollie Lovell )What a great experience! I am so grateful for all the opportunities that Riverwood has given me.
Another wonderful experience I had this year was meeting Sarah the creator of the Powerful Vowels kits. They are an amazing, portable, practical and powerful resource that complement evidence based phonics instruction! Check them out now Powerful Vowels
If you would like to find out more about my personal journey with dyslexia then you can check out my 2017 blog post My dyslexic journey.
I finished off the Year by attending the Code Read Annual General Meeting and witnessed Pam Snow be awarded 2024 Sandra Tidswell Memorial Award for most outstanding advocate. Congratulations and thank you Pam for all your outstanding work on the science of reading.
At the meeting Code Read also payed tribute to their outgoing Chairperson and founding member Sandra Marshall. Thank you Sandra for the outstanding contribution you have made advocating for evidence based practice of the teaching of reading in Australia. You are a remarkable person and have done so much for the children of Australia and for me.
Sandra and the Fonz!
On the last day of the school year I played a classic Rocking Dan Live show for the K-2 children at the school! It was a joyous way to end the year! I will never get tired of children singing along to my songs with me or just on the playground with each other!
Hello K-2, let's Rock 'n' Learn!
What an honour it is that Award winning teacher Lauren who is featured in the AERO video is a fan!
Great Teacher Fans. If you would like a Rocking Dan t-shirt head over to my Redbubble store.
Thank you Rookery Road! Always great fans!
One more exciting development for 2024 was that I started making videos to show the actions to my popular songs. You can now dance along with me!
So that was it for 2024! It's been an amazing journey and I look forward to 2025! Thanks once again to Nessy Teaching and Learning for the amazing Global Teacher of the Year Award! Until next time bye from, Rocking Dan Teaching Man!
Hey Rocking Dan fans, my Science of Reading/Orton Gillingham YouTube playlist now includes animated music videos for 6 syllable types, 3 types of syllable division, single vowels, y as a vowel, schwa, the doubling rule, digraphs and Sound it Out (The Orthographic Mapping Song). Go and check it out now! The Science of Reading never sounded so good! Your students/ children will be singing and dancing along to these catchy tunes as they are learning and reinforcing important structured literacy concepts at the same time! It's a win-win that is for sure. I've had lots of great feedback from teachers, parents and Orton Gillingham/Structured literacy therapists about the songs and videos which is amazing! My class loves the rockin' tunes too! It is so wonderful to know that my music is helping dyslexic and non dyslexic children all around the world with their literacy learning. Make sure you subscribe to my channel too! I have a number of songs and videos I am currently working on.
In other news, I've had the great pleasure to represent The Code Read Dyslexia Network at a number of Learning Best Practice Conferences over the last two school terms. It's been wonderful to talk to so many parents and educators about dyslexia and what can be done to help dyslexic children in school and in life in general! I have really enjoyed talking to people about Code Read's report Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia. It's an important document! If we help dyslexic children we are in fact helping all children as we know " Explicit teaching of alphabetic decoding skills is helpful for all children, harmful for none and crucial for some." (Snow/Juel, 2005). It's vital for children that they become literate in order to give them choices and opportunities in life. We know what the cognitive science tells us about how the brain learns to read and what the evidence tells us about the most effective way to teach reading for everyone is.
If you would like to know more about dyslexia or my personal experience as a dyslexic person and dyslexic therapist or my advocacy for dyslexics and for evidence based reading instruction then you can check out my most viewed blog post from 2017 My Dyslexic Journey
Here is a short video I a made about dyslexia for Distinct Magazine!
I have to say it is wonderful to be an Accredited Member of the Australia Dyslexia Association. It's great to be able to work with dyslexic children and help them with their learning!
It was also a great honour to be interview by Jocelyn Seamer and be featured in her book Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able how to plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years.
My Virtual World Tour wrapped up a few months ago! What an amazing experience it was to play 571 virtual shows to classrooms across 14 different countries over two and half years! It was great to play so many of my structured literacy songs during the concerts and to promote evidence based teaching while entertaining the children and the teachers at the same time! Of course I had the chance to discuss the Science of Reading and dyslexia with the teachers after the shows! It truly was privileged to be able to share my music with the world!
That's about it for now! If you haven't done so yet, go and check out my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man! Make sure you subscribe! Until next time Rock on!
If you are interested in what should go into your literacy block, Jocelyn Steamer interviewed me for her Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able and share how I plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years.
