Well, how confused can some Key Stage 1 teachers be about HFWs? Answer? Very confused! Here is a letter to parents sent home recently from a primary school somewhere in the south east of England. Dear Parents/CarersThis week in phonics the children have been learning the following sounds:a, i, m, s, t, n, o p… Continue reading How confused can Key Stage 1 teachers be about high frequency words?
A very short message but a no less powerful one for that! Frances Woodward, one of our team of Sounds-Write trainers tells me that yesterday she finished another training at Potton Lower School in Bedfordshire. She was also able to pass on that she has just ‘finished a course in Potton, Beds. The school now has… Continue reading Potton Lower School in Bedfordhsire
Following on from my previous posting, I want to consider what the implications are for what our eyes are doing when we are learning to read? Certainly, because the span of fixations are more limited, the beginning reader needs more fixations and saccades to hold text in foveal view. This and the fact that publishers… Continue reading The Eyes to the Write (in English orthography)
To most competent readers, reading is something they do naturally, much like walking or talking: things we do that we have developed to the point of automaticity. Because we seem to be unable to look at text without gaining meaning, we are rarely aware of the cognitive processes that go into this most complex of… Continue reading The eyes have it!