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
Blending is the ability to push sounds together to make recognisable words and, in young children learning to read and spell from the beginning of their schooling and in children who have fallen behind, performance is often variable. That is to say that what they can do one day, they may not be able to… Continue reading Can’t blend, won’t blend
This post is written for readers who already have some knowledge of how a good quality phonics programme, cumulatively structured, is organised and how it can be exploited to enable pupils, even at the level of Year 1/2, to read and write virtually any word in the English language. My starting point would be to… Continue reading Reading in text
What with one thing and another, there’s a lot of pressure on teachers today. Grammar and word study has suddenly assumed much greater proportions and one aspect of grammar somebody was asking me about the other day was morphology. The conversation went like this: Teacher: I’ve got to teach my class about morphology. Me: Okay.… Continue reading Morphology
I’ve never used my blog to answer a question from a single individual but, as the subject has come up in other contexts, the post is about reading and spelling simple past tense -ed endings in weak verbs. To be honest, I’m always slightly surprised by this question – it does come up occasionally… Continue reading Simple past tense endings for reading or spelling
