Saturday, October 31, 2020

Lucy Calkin vs SoR proponents

 



The SoR proponents keep smearing the good name of Lucy Calkin. What is their basis? I believe it is none other than promoting their SoR products.

To be honest, I have not read Lucy’s book but I have read many who say that her books have helped them to teach their students.

Friday, October 30, 2020

Research on Teaching consonants without extraneous sounds


Dr. Kathryn Garforth has told me that she will respond to my questions after the busy month of October is over.

I usually write links to my tweets. This is because I type with 2 fingers which is very time consuming and because the links I suggest are related to what I am tweeting.

Many on Twitter rebut without reading the links and therefore it makes discussion a little less effective.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Opacity of the English Language – Dr.Kathryn Garforth


This is a continuation of my tweets with Dr. Kathryn Garforth.

Luqman Michel:

Dr. Tell us what is so complex about learning to read simple sentences in children's books in English. Very simple stories. Why do about 20% of kids disengage from learning to read?

Why does a majority grope in the dark until they figure out how to read?

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Instructional videos that cause many kids to shut down

 


Yesterday, 27.10.2020, I had a fruitful discussion on Twitter with nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia.

 In brief I said at the end of the discussion:

My discussions on Twitter is not to 'fix' but to make teachers aware that we can reduce kids leaving school as illiterate simply by not teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes of consonants. Prevent rather than cure.

nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia responded:

Agree...whenever I watch an instructional video I shudder.

 

Monday, October 26, 2020

Lesson 8 Word family 'ug'

 


The following are the word families I have introduced until lesson 7.

at, an, ap, og, ig.

I have introduced the following word families from lessons 8 to 27.

Peer Review

 



Here are two tweets from Dr. Kathryn Garforth that I wanted to ignore but in less than a week I read a blog post by Greg Ashman that I think I should share.

 

First, here are Dr. Kathryn Garforth’s tweets:

 

Kathryn Garforth, Ph. D.@GarforthEduc Oct 17 Replying to @GarforthEduc and @luqmanmichel

I have a long list of papers & books to read that are peer-reviewed and published, forgive me for not putting yours at the top of the list because of your aggressive & insulting manner in attacking my intelligence. I have paying clients that are my priority not boosting your ego.

As far as I know, your posts have not gone through the peer-reviewed process and published in a reputable journal. It is unrealistic to expect anyone to read absolutely every article they are interested in. I would be happy to read your posts if you pay me for my time.

Here are extracts from Greg Ashman’s blog post.

I could not have put it half as well as he has.

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Humans Are Born With Brains ‘Prewired’ to See Words


I googled ‘Reading is unnatural’ and there are about 12,200,000 results (0.50 seconds).

I have said several times on my blog that the problem with research reports is that when one ‘researcher’ says one thing the others jump on the band wagon and repeat what the researcher had said, without thinking at all.

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Restarting the “science of reading” conversation

 


Restarting the “science of reading” conversation (The Thomas B. Fordham Institute)

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/restarting-science-reading-conversation

I read the above post on Twitter and noted the author Robert Pondiscio is yet another SoR proponent.

There are many so-called educators who block me when I ask relevant questions, ignore without responding, give some idiotic excuses and there are those who say they will get back to me and then don’t keep their promise.

Friday, October 23, 2020

Lesson 7 - word family 'ig'

 

Let your child/student know the sound represented by the letters 'ig'. Then ask him to see if he can now read the word families big, dig, fig etc. Chances are he would be able to read all of the words in the list. 

Then continue with the lesson below.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

RWYK Podcast with Dr. Kathryn Garforth (Part 3)

 



On 17.10.2020 Dr. Kathryn Garforth tweeted the following:

Twitter only gives you so many characters to express your thoughts

You critic a podcast that I was on because I said some of the things parents can do to help their child with reading. There are 30 minutes in the podcast and only so much that can be covered. I was trying to make my advice applicable to the widest audience & provide the most help

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Main cause of reading problem as per Sue Lloyd

 


Yesterday Sue Lloyd, an expert in teaching phonics, tweeted the following:

In my experience the cause of reading problems is nearly always when children are expected to memorise words instead of decoding them.

This post is in response to her tweet.

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Friday, October 16, 2020

Reading With Your Kids (RWYK) Podcast - Jedlie with guest Dr. Kathryn Garforth (Part 2)

 


The following is the continuation of tweets between Dr. Kathryn Garforth and me.

Kathryn Garforth, Ph. D. Replying to @luqmanmichel and @jedliemagic

PA (Phonemic awareness) alone is not enough to become a fluent English reader. English is orthographically complex for other reasons (morphology, etymology, 44 phonemes only 26 letters & multiple ways to represent the same sound). IDK much about Tamil & Malay but the others don't have same complexity

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Notes 4 - Letters represent various sounds

 


One of the 3 reasons why kids shut down from learning to read is the fact that they are not told on the outset that letters represent more than one sound. Let them know this fact and when you come across words where the sound represented by the letter you have taught him earlier is different point it out to him.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

The different sounds represented by letters


I have said that there are 3 matters that cause children to shut down / disengage from learning to read.

One of the three is not telling the kid at the onset that almost all letters in English represent more than one sound.

Friday, October 9, 2020

Notes for parents and teachers Part 3 - Context clues


 

Context clues

Everything that a reader has ever seen, ever done and ever read previously should be brought to the reading at hand.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Witch Hunt 3 Kevin Wheldall

 


On 24.8.2020 Kevin Wheldall clicked like on a tweet by Professor Jennifer Buckingham who had said the following:

Luqman, I have had enough of your outlandish statements. Disagreement is fine as long as it is respectful, honest, and not persistently personally targeted. If you don't change the way you interact with me on Twitter I will block you.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Teach your child to read - Lesson 3

 

For best results let your child/ student learn all the Dolch words in Lesson 1 and 2 before listening to this lesson.

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Witch Hunt (Part 2) - Lions Club an example



This is a continuation of my response to a tweet by londonjohn on 5.10.2020

As I've said before, if you are right then relax in what you're doing as truth will prevail. You don't need to go on a witch hunt trying to destroy others who are helping kids read. (London John).

Witch hunt? (Part 1)

 


Here is a tweet by londonjohn on 5.10.2020

As I've said before, if you are right then relax in what you're doing as truth will prevail. You don't need to go on a witch hunt trying to destroy others who are helping kids read. (London John).

Monday, October 5, 2020

Professor Pamela Snow on Literacy


Here is a paragraph extracted from Professor Pamela Snow’s blog post, and my comments.

How can a child who receives solid, teacher-guided instruction ranging across phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency be “short-changed”? Seriously?!  Many children can but dream of having these basics in place in their classroom. Having them in evidence is one thing. Having them based on robust evidence, is another thing altogether. And where is the evidence that children exposed to phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency “disengage from the learning process”? What about the possibility that systematic attention to these features might have the very opposite effect for many at-risk learners?

Sunday, October 4, 2020

Notes for parents and teachers (Part 2)



Dolch Word (Sight words) list

50-70% of all words used in school books are from the Dolch Basic Sight Words vocabulary of 220 words.

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Lessons for Shut down kids - Lesson 1

 


Lessons for instructional casualties or so-called dyslexic kids.

Preface - Teach your child to read

 



A majority of children are wrongly classified as dyslexics when in fact they are instructional casualties. Many smart children who are predisposed to shutting down will disengage from learning to read when they have been taught the wrong pronunciation of phonemes.