I haven’t posted on the Scripps Spelling Bee event for some time now – since 2011 in fact. As in so many previous competitions, thiswas a nail-biter to the end and finished in a tie. It’s the second tied win in two consecutive years. Prior to 2014, there hadn’t been a tie for fifty-two years. In the… Continue reading Scripps Spelling Bee 2015
Sounds-Write is very proud to be able to make public this testimonial from Mrs Janet Hilary, headteacher of St George’s Church of England Primary School in London. I recommend Sounds-Write to every teacher and school leader I meet. At St. George’s, where deprivation levels are extremely high, we achieve consistently outstanding results in all phases.… Continue reading Our wonderful testimonial from Jan Hilary of St George’s C of E Primary School
‘Phonics,’ wrote Diane McGuinness, in her superb book Early Reading Instruction ‘is a problematic word.’ Never was there a truer thing said! Why? Because ‘phonics’ is an umbrella term for all kinds of approaches, some good and some fair-to-middling-grim. According to McGuinness, the ‘classification is unsatisfactory because it does not identify the critical difference in… Continue reading Sound to print: the appliance of science
There are a number of reasons why I think that phonic programmes that advocate the use of flash cards are barking up the wrong tree. The use of flash cards is a legacy of old fashioned phonics programmes, which emphasise the visual/graphemic at the expense of the aural. Presenting children with flash cards, which are… Continue reading Why doesn’t The Literacy Blog advocate the use of flash cards?
Talk to anyone today who was taught to read through i.t.a. (Initial Teaching Alphabet) and they will almost invariably tell you how they’ve never been able to spell correctly since. As i.t.a. was more or less abandoned in the sixties/early seventies (though it did cling on for much longer in some places), many of today’s… Continue reading i.t.a: a great idea but a dismal failure
