Last year I reported on St George’s CE Primary School’s success – they achieved a magnificent 96.5% success rate in the phonics screening check. St George’s is in Wandsworth, where the average pass rate was 66%. Painting of St George’s slaying the non-word monster Vap, with Janet Hilary looking on! There is little doubt what… Continue reading St George’s triumph over screening check!
I’ve been looking at an example of the phonics screening check from the DfE’s website. Here’s what it looks like in terms of structure: Section 1: the words and how they are structured in terms of consonants and vowels: tox CVC, bim CVC, vap CVC, ulf VCC, geck CVC, chom CVC , tord CVC, thazz CVC), blan… Continue reading The screening check, Sounds-Write style
In this, my final look at David Reedy’s contribution to the debate about whether the phonics screening check should be continued, I want to look at more of the claims he has made. Reedy complains that when administering the check the class teacher ‘may […] be out of the class for three days or more’.… Continue reading UKLA baloney
Continuing on from yesterday, today I want to look more closely at some of the claims made by David Reedy in his contribution to the ‘debate’ in the April issue of Teach Primary. Reedy states that, ‘in 2012, the UKLA undertook a survey of KS1 schools and teachers about the [phonics screening] test’ [sic] and… Continue reading Is it time to ditch David Reedy?
The latest issue of Teach Primary carries a debate entitled ‘Is it time to ditch the phonics screening test?’ In actual fact, its correct title should be ‘Is it time to ditch the phonics screening check’ but we’ll come back to this point. In any event, it pitches Debbie Hepplewhite against David Reedy. As most… Continue reading David, is ‘reedy’ a pseudo word?
Today, yet again we see a London newspaper highlighting yet another attempt to put a tiny piece of sticking plaster on what seems to be the ever festering sore of illiteracy in schools. The London Evening Standard reports that university students are being sent in to five London secondary schools to provide ‘urgent’ help for… Continue reading Illiteracy in London secondary schools? It’s Standard practice.
Last week in the oxforddictionaries blog, professor Simon Horobin posed the question ‘Does spelling matter?’ and, in truth, it’s very hard to answer largely because it is so multidimensional. One of the most immediate and obvious of problems when dealing with correct spelling is the seemingly enormous amount of emotional investment people have in the… Continue reading Does spelling matter?
If there’s one thing The United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) never misses, it’s the opportunity to attack approaches to teaching all children to read and spell successfully and from the moment they enter school. Of course, I’m talking about good quality phonics approaches and, in particular, linguistic phonic approaches, such as Sounds-Write or Fiona Nevola’s… Continue reading The LB gives UKLA F for PSC
We’re coming up to the second phonics screening check in June and already I hear sounds (no pun intended) of anxiety whispered in school corridors and teaching rooms. Of course, if teachers have been doing what they should have been trained to do, there wouldn’t be a problem and everyone would relax. The screening check is… Continue reading Phonics screaming check!
At the moment the US is experiencing what the Thomas B. Fordham Institute call ‘the anti-testing backlash’.Here, Kathleeen Porter-Magee and Jennifer Borgioli demolish the four biggest myths proliferated by the anti-testing movement. Thanks once again to Susan Godsland for spotting this.
