ITA, IPA and David Boulton's Magic Ladder (Part 1)

 

The following is what our David Boulton had said in his LinkedIn exchanges with me. Please read my post on this here.

"Children of the Code avoided advocating solutions so as not to be dismissed as having an agenda other than learning deeper into the challenge. 3 decades of work have culminated in a solution, an entirelydifferent approach to supporting learning to read.

I had said that this is utter nonsense that only the uninformed will believe. Most of America will believe anything that their ‘Gods of education’ say without thinking.

15 years ago Seigfried Engelmann, may his soul rest in peace had informed David Boulton that ITA and IPA did not work. (See my post tomorrow)

How is this solution that has ‘culminated after 3 decades of learning deeper into the challenge’ going to solve anything? Is it not the same thing as ITA and IPA clothed in a different package?

What you need to do is to just inform all students that almost all letters in the English language represent more than one sound.

This is to prevent them from not shutting down when a new sound other than what they have learned is introduced.

Many children shut down from learning when you have taught them ‘a’ as in apple and later teach them sounds of the letter ‘a’ which is different without having informed them that letters in the English language represent more than one sound.

Here is a list of sounds that the letter 'a' represents.

'A' as in around.

'A' as in also.

'A' as in ape.

'A' as in arm.

'A' as in apple.

You don’t have to list the different sounds but you need to let them know that letters represent more than one sound, so that their minds are open.

This will reduce the amount of ambiguity and they will not assume "one symbol, one sound."

The above is one of two reasons why kids shut down from learning to read and then wrongly classified as dyslexic.