Read On Get On is is based on an understanding of all dimensions of the issue it seeks to address. In particular, it takes account of the underlying weakness in language experience and development that makes it extremely difficult for some children to make the transitions, first from spoken to written language (see Vygotsky, Thought and Language, Ch6) and then to the more advanced vocabulary that is central to study and public life, but is not current in the day to day speech that is mostly concerned with just getting by. The approach is summed up in an account on p30 of the work of Teach First teacher Lydia Gibb, who provided individual teaching in school, backed by work with a parent at home. Some parents, unfortunately, won't do this, and in such cases voluntary networks are important. The charity, A Book of My Own, grew out of work with the National Children's Bureau and the Who Cares? Trust to provide books and educational support for children in care, who are clearly those least likely to receive such support.
A child in the Children's Foreword tells us, "I always got stuck on the words. I even got stuck on the word, the. I couldn't even say the words properly."
Getting stuck on the word the is at the heart of what needs to be done in addition to the increased emphasis in schools on using the connections between letters and sound to build words (phonics or, more recently, synthetic phonics). Phonics teaches children that t represents the sound t, as in The cat sat on the mat, or Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. Old English had letters to represent the th sound alone. The most common was Thorn, written Þ or þ, and derived from the runic system. This letter did not suit the monks who transcribed old English into the Latin script, and was gradually replaced by th, and y, as in Ye Olde Englishe Tea Room.
The most common way of dealing with th is to call the word a "sight word", perhaps print it in a different colour, and tell children to learn it. This does not tell the child how to deal with th in subsequent words, and this is a major weakness, as the combination is so frequent. The itself is so frequent - Oxford Online and the SUBTLEXT project list it at the most common word in English - that not being able to read it is a sign of a serious reading problem. As the most common word, it receives more reinforcement than any other - count the frequency of the in any text you like to see the truth of this. It occurs particularly frequently in this posting, of course, as it deals with the word itself.
I have taught just three people in forty years who could not read the. They were seven or eight years old, and would try to build the word from the sounds of individual letters, as synthetic phonics had taught them. The solution in each case was to explain that the letters did not always tell us all we needed to know, and that sometimes they had to work in groups. Th is more difficult than sh, as the sound produced by the group is farther from that produced by the two letters individually. It therefore needs practice. However, once the group is learned and understood, it can be treated as if it were an individual letter, making it easy to read all of the other words with the combination. I haven't counted them, but there must be hundreds, and many of them among the most common words - mother, father, brother, this, that, then, think, thumb, thistle...
Teach a child to read a word at sight, and you teach him to read a word. Teach a child the way the letters work, and you teach him to read.