Three weeks ago, the government released the threshold mark for the Phonics Screening Check. The check was implemented by the government because it provides a quick and cost effective way of determining whether teachers are teaching phonics effectively. This is because top quality phonics instruction, taught to young children from the moment they enter school,… Continue reading Phonics across the curriculum
A subject I keep coming back to is the ‘nature’ of the English writing system. I keep doing this because lack of understanding of how the sounds of the English language relate to the spelling system causes so many, (particularly) academics, to arrive at the most absurd and reactionary conclusions about how to teach it.… Continue reading ‘Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own’ (Henry IV, Pt I)
Sounds-Write would like to pay tribute to all the schools, wherever they are, who managed to achieve over 90% of children passing the Phonics Screening Check threshold of 32/40. I am particularly proud of the following Sounds-Write schools that have sent their results to us to make public. Well done to: St George’s Church of… Continue reading Phonics Screening Check – results from seven Sounds-Write schools
This morning, I’m posting a reply I made to this post on Read Oxford. It’s by Anne Castles, a professor at Macquarie University in Australia and it’s yet another egregious example of how professors responsible for teaching teachers how to teach literacy come unstuck: they are so rooted in graphemic phonics approaches, they can’t see that… Continue reading Castles in the air
Today I’m wondering if ‘Stand Up for Education’ has been newly created for people, with the title of professor, to tell jokes about education, or whether they simply use it as a forum for displaying their ignorance about the process of teaching literacy to young children. The latest post on SUFE is titled, ‘Phonics fanatics: politicians who… Continue reading A word to the Wyse
As it’s half-term, I thought I’d draw readers attention to a couple of items you might have missed. First up, the Oxford University Press have just published the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary. It’s been produced by Susan Rennie, a lecturer in English and Scots language at the University of Glasgow, where she works on a… Continue reading The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary and the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Thanks to reminder in a tweet from Maggie Downie, I’m adding a further point to my previous post ‘Linguistic v traditional phonics’. As I’m always arguing, linguistic phonics gives primacy to the spoken language. The reason is because all children grow up learning the spoken language naturally, which is not the case with written language!… Continue reading Linguistic v traditional phonics – an afterword
Given that for many researchers working in the field of beginning reading and writing it is axiomatic that teachers should be adopting a synthetic phonics approach, the next question is: should that approach be graphemic, as Letters and Sounds is; or, should it be phonemic, as Sounds-Write, Sound Reading System, and That Reading Thing are?… Continue reading Linguistic phonics v traditional phonics
I’ve just been asked by someone in Australia why it is that the Sounds-Write programme aims to teach to young children multiple spellings of a sound at the same time – the concern being about overloading children’s memories. This is unquestionably the hardest aspect of learning how to read and spell for every single one… Continue reading One sound, different spellings: the Sounds-Write way
When Matthew Syed, former table tennis champion, Times correspondent and author, trained his sights on what it is that makes someone a champion, he tackled the question head-on by dealing with one of our most cherished enigmas: in his superb book Bounce(2010), he asked the question ‘How do you solve a conundrum like Mozart?’ The reason he… Continue reading What do young children learning to read and write have in common with the young Mozart?
