David and I first met almost twenty years ago, by which time, he’d been working as an educational psychologist for Wigan Council for more than twenty years. What brought us together was our mutual commitment to teaching children to read. During his career, David realised that the problem behind many of the things that… Continue reading In memory of Dave Philpot, co-founder of Sounds-Write
Although I’ve been asked this question a number of times in the past, today I was confronted with it again. The question was: ‘What should I do about my boy? He hates writing.’ So, assuming that the boy wasn’t given some kind of emotional or physical shock when he first picked up a pencil, there are… Continue reading What to do about the boy who hates writing
At Sounds-Write, we always begin each section of our teaching programme with word building? There are three main reasons: First, we are teaching children that spellings stand for sounds in the language – our threshold concept. All children learn the sounds of their language without having to be taught explicitly. All they need is exposure.… Continue reading 3 Reasons why segmenting is the mother of all skills in learning to read and spell
A question I’m often asked by both parents and teachers is what you do when the child you’re working with comes up against a word that has in it a sound-spelling correspondence (SSC) you haven’t yet covered. Here’s what to do. Supposing you’ve covered the (SSCs) [a] [i] [m] [s] [t] [n] [o] [p] [b]… Continue reading We’ve got it covered
This post is an edited version of a post of the same title I wrote in October 2012. As it’s an aspect of phonics teaching that seems to come up time and time again on social media, I thought I’d amend it slightly and re-publish it. In written English, spellings can represent different sounds. It’s… Continue reading One spelling, different sounds – a reprise
The English writing system is very complex. So complex that if it’s approached visually, it’s no wonder people, even many professors, get into a terrible tangle. If, on the other hand, we start from what every child growing up with English as their L1 learns without having to be taught – the sounds of their… Continue reading Bringing order out of seeming chaos
Can you imagine teaching a group of as many as ten children, of which two are autistic, one has cerebral palsy, two have severe hearing difficulties, and one has ADHD, in one classroom all at the same time? That’s the kind of thing they do every day of the school week at Multikids Inclusive Academy… Continue reading Teaching literacy in a truly inclusive school
On September 17th Misty Adoniou wrote a piece for The Conversation entitled ‘New phonics test will do nothing to improve Australian children’s literacy’. Although I’ve written a couple of times before about Ms Adoniou’s somewhat jaundiced view of phonics here and here, I thought this time I’d look more closely at the arguments she puts forward.… Continue reading Misty muddies the waters – again!
Ever wondered why when you’re teaching verb tenses that the simple present isn’t about the present? As readers of this blog will know by now, I’m keen on the idea of threshold concepts. A threshold concept, as defined by Glynis Cousins, is ‘central to the mastery of one’s subject’, especially because it enables teachers to ‘make… Continue reading 3 things you wanted to know about the simple present
You might be wondering why I haven’t posted in the blog for a while… Well, I have been busy writing a free-online course for parents and carers, and I am delighted to let you know that it is now live. In fact, it has been live for two weeks now, and since then, nearly 1300… Continue reading Help your child to read and write
