intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load · VAS blog · Word building

The Reading Achievement Challenge – the child’s view at the point of learning

John4 Comments

Following on from two previous postings (here and here) on the subject of cognitive load in the domain of the teaching of phonics, here is a practical demonstration of the cognitive challenges a four-year-old child has to contend with in just one simple word building exercise. But first, why word building? Word building is our… Continue reading The Reading Achievement Challenge – the child’s view at the point of learning

The know-nothing world of the academic opposition to phonics
Anthony Radice · Peter Daniels · The Traditional Teacher · The World's Writing Systems

The know-nothing world of the academic opposition to phonics

John3 Comments

If you want to know why so many Australian (and English) academics are so strongly opposed to a Phonics Screening Check, which really is a fig leaf for their hostility to phonics teaching itself, it is that, at bottom, they don’t understand the relationship between the sounds of the language and the writing system itself.… Continue reading The know-nothing world of the academic opposition to phonics

Cambridge assessment · Debra Myhill · Rhea - super speller · Today programme

Of polydactyls

John

If you were listening to the last five minutes of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, you will have caught a short item on, allegedly, how pupils’ spelling has deteriorated. The item began by stating that new research from Cambridge Assessment is telling us that ‘we are making more spelling mistakes than our parents’.… Continue reading Of polydactyls

Misty Adoniou · phonics · Phonics screening check · The Conversation

The continuation of the war against phonics by other means

John3 Comments

Once again I feel obliged to respond to an article posted by Misty Adoniou in The Conversation and, as I have pointed out previously here and here, Misty is as foggy as her name when it comes to talking about phonics. In order to arrest the decline in reading ability, Australia is currently considering adopting the England’s Phonics Screening Check. Misty’s… Continue reading The continuation of the war against phonics by other means

phonics · Professor Diane McGuinness. Professor Anne Castles

How to teach some HFWs (Part I)

John

On the ReadOxford website, an Australian academic recently argued for the teaching of ‘sight’ words. What she didn’t or wasn’t able to say was which words she thought needed to be included in any such list, nor why they needed to be included. Neither did she state explicitly how far teachers should go down this road: how… Continue reading How to teach some HFWs (Part I)

A good time to start using letter names
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A good time to start using letter names

John

Here’s another one I heard in the classroom recently. A teacher was teaching her children the sound /ow/, as in ‘cow’, and a member of the class came up to the whiteboard to write the word. After the child had written the first spelling and said the sound, the teacher told the child to write… Continue reading A good time to start using letter names

‘Curly c’ and ‘kicking k’ or ‘This spelling of /k/’?
Phonics and how to teach it

‘Curly c’ and ‘kicking k’ or ‘This spelling of /k/’?

John

Very often I hear teachers talking about “curly ‘kuh’” and “kicking ‘kuh” to register the difference between the spellings [ c ] and [ k ], representing the sound /k/. Why don’t we use this language in Sounds-Write? The answer is simple. If instead we talk about “This kind of /k/,” or “This spelling of… Continue reading ‘Curly c’ and ‘kicking k’ or ‘This spelling of /k/’?

Diane McGuinness · Early Reading Instruction · linguistic phonics · visual phonics

Graphemes and phonemes, or how NOT to teach reading and spelling

John

Although I’ve written about the differences between linguistic and traditional (graphemic) phonics a number of times to date, I’m often being asked for further clarification. This I am more than happy to give because it’s in the detail of what we do at Sounds-Write that makes it so effective. So, how do the two orientations differ from… Continue reading Graphemes and phonemes, or how NOT to teach reading and spelling