We might at last be about to gain some real insight into how well children in England’s primary schools are being taught to read. It seems that in a trial run of the new reading test, in which some 8,963 children from 300 schools took part, and which is about to be rolled out at… Continue reading Two-thirds of children fail new reading test
Morrisons announced this week that it had had to send back three-quarters of its new recruits from Salford for remedial training before they were ready to start working for the company. Out of two hundred and ten staff recruited, a hundred and fifty had to be sent for ‘remedial training including refresher course in literacy… Continue reading A tale of two cities
It’s perhaps a little early in the day to be saying this but the signs are that the government has made a huge blunder in putting together resources and training for match funding. Already, it is becoming obvious to us that many schools are using the opportunity to replenish their libraries (a massive allocation of… Continue reading Teach the teachers first!
Alison Hatch, Deputy Headteacher at Reculver CE Primary School in Kent was recently trained in Sounds-Write on one of our Kent trainings by Derrie Clark. She described it as a ‘light bulb moment’ in her career and in her understanding of how reading and spelling should be taught.Alison won the National Primary Teacher of the Year… Continue reading Praise for Sounds-Write from former Teacher of the Year
Something which keeps on coming up on Sounds-Write trainings we run is the question of ‘silent letters’. The explanation that there are such things as ‘silent letters’ is still one to which many teachers resort when they find themselves unable to explain the relationship between sounds and print. For example, in the word ‘knight’, although… Continue reading ‘Silent letters’?
Ever considered a linguistics tattoo? Probably not! But Team Verb showed how me how amazingly committed some people are to their academic disciplines and the legs (you have to look at the slide show slide 10! ) to which they will go to display that commitment. Running teachers’ courses I’ve seen some interesting tattoos in my time. After reading… Continue reading Visual rhetorical reverberations, or linguistics tattoos to you and me
Literacy ‘experts’ maintain that testing children on made-up words confuses children and that they can’t read or spell words that aren’t real. As I’ve argued repeatedly, see here and here, they are talking utter claptrap. Well, I thought, I’m sure my friend’s daughter Scarlett would love to show them just how wrong they are: http://vimeo.com/31894110.… Continue reading Red faces at UKLA as Scarlett reads and spells non-words
It sounds like a headline from the Daily Stands-back-in-amazement: the BBC education news desk reported yesterday that an OECD study has discovered there is ‘a strong link between teenage reading skills and early parental help’. Hmmm, you’re very likely calling to mind John Cleese’s ‘stating the bleeding obvious’ remark! Graeme Paton in the Telegraph has also picked up the story today, which… Continue reading The parent factor in student performance (OECD)
Why are education journalists such dupes? Once again, this time in the pages of the Independent and on the BBC website, education journalists have swallowed the nonsense propagated by ‘literacy experts’ who are calling on the government to abandon the planned tests of reading for six-year-olds. The opposition to the tests is in truth an attack on the… Continue reading Please Miss, what’s a Grinch?
Since its revamp, have you noticed how the TES seems also to be shifting its political alignment? A few weeks ago, it ran a much more sympathetic piece on Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, than I’d have expected – notwithstanding the fact that Chris has motor-neurone disease. This week, there’s an editorial entitled… Continue reading TES reloaded?