While arguments rage about state versus private versus free schools, a quiet flanking movement is taking place: the growth of the virtual school or education online. As a tutor for the Open University for sixteen years, as well as being an online student with the OU myself, I’m a big fan of online study. Every… Continue reading Virtual school?
As minister of state for schools, Nick Gibb knew very well the need for ringing the changes in education. He understood well that a bull in a china shop approach would be counterproductive in assisting Michael Gove in bringing about those much needed changes. As a result, he tended to be pretty even-handed, dispensing adverse criticism of… Continue reading Goodbye Mr Gibb
I thought Sounds-Write practitioners and other readers of the blog would like to catch sight of a couple of testimonials we received at the end of last term. The first, from Pinchmill Lower School in Felmersham, Bedfordford, comes from the head teacher, Vanessa Coleman. Vanessa writes: Dear John, I thought I would write to you… Continue reading Plaudits for Sounds-Write
The new school year starts with me looking forward to the publication on September 6th of David Crystal’s new book on spelling. As readers of this blog well know, I am a huge fan of Crystal’s work. Crystal’s knowledge of the English language is encyclopaedic and he is one of the few writers on the… Continue reading Spelling crystallised
Some time ago I read a piece in the tescommentcolumn by Michael Rosen entitled ‘Art doesn’t come with a set of instructions’. Since then, after reading his frequent rants against the government’s attempts to improve the standards in literacy teaching across the country and his tirades against the phonics screening check, I’ve come to see… Continue reading Pedagogy is paramount!
Seen outside a primary school in Bedford the other day and posted to me by a happy parent!
Until this morning, I’ve only received one result of the phonics screening test from a school in Kent and that doesn’t give me all the facts and figures, but I’ve been thinking more about this test. Firstly, I was never really convinced that giving this kind of test at the end of Year 1 was… Continue reading Phonics food for thought
If you tuned in to the Radio 4 Today programme this morning, you would have heard Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, debating the relevance of phonics in teaching children to read with Greg Wallace, executive principal of the Best Start Federation of primary schools in Hackney. After being… Continue reading Bousted? A busted flush!
As reported by the Guardian, the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, on which I always have a few words to say (here, here and here), has been won this year by Snigdha Nandipati, a fourteen-year-old from San Diego. Funnily enough, the word she won the competition with reminds me of just how daft are the… Continue reading The annual Scripps National Spelling Bee
This week’s TES treats us to yet more phonics fantasy, this time in the ‘Comment’ section of the paper. In a review of the Radio 4 two-part documentary ‘Reading between the lines’ by Michael Morpurgo, Adi Bloom displays the kind of ignorance about phonics and phonics teaching to which the practitioners have become all too… Continue reading Adi’s red physiognomy