Lyn Stone and orthographic mapping

 

Lyn Stone had blocked me for commenting on her tweet. Only recently have I seen her tweets again. Here is one such tweet I read yesterday and believe she does not know what she is talking about other than quoting what someone had said about 20 years ago.

Here is the URL to Lyn’s video clip and my comments.

https://youtu.be/KIuwKnZqJEQ

Lyn Stone:

This doesn’t mean they should be given a set of ‘sight words’ to memorise. This is inefficient and doesn’t help them spell those words.

 

My comment:

There are at least 3 definitions of sight words. One of them is any word that can be instantly recognized from memory, regardless of whether it is phonically regular or irregular.

I believe Lyn is referring to the 220 Dolch words which are the most frequently used words.

To say memorising Dolch words is inefficient is misrepresentation. Any child can rote memorise the Dolch words with ease and I have taught all my dyslexic students to memorise them by rote.

 

We don’t teach kids to read by global shape as suggested by SSP proponents. Read my post here to see how devious some of these women like Debbie Hepplewhite and Sue Lloyd can be.

 

Lyn stone:

Many of them (teachers) spend hours and years even sending home sight words for memorisation.

 

My comment:

This is definitely an exaggeration and I shall not waste my time on this statement, except to say that this is what SoR proponents continue saying to mislead readers.

 

Lyn Stone:

You have to sound out words to map them orthographically.

 

My comment:

This statement is nonsense and propagated by SoR proponents. I dare Lyn Stone and her supporters to challenge me. 

i.                     Hundreds of thousands of kids orthographically mapped words during the whole language period. They did not sound out words

ii.                   A majority of kids who learned the sounds represented by consonants wrongly with extraneous sounds managed to map orthographically. They did this by patterns and analogies which is an innate ability.

iii.                 We can read familiar or unfamiliar words. We do not sound them out and yet they are orthographically mapped.

 

Lyn Stone:

The crucial part of this kind of memorisation is attention to the sequence of letters in a word.

 

My comment:

Finally, something sensible. Words can be orthographically mapped just by repeating the sequence of letters in a word using letter names. There is no need to sound them out using sounds represented by letters. This is exactly how I taught all my students to orthographically map the Dolch words. Of course, we all know that most of the Dolch words can be taught using phonics.

 

Lyn Stone:

Phonological recoding is the ability to:

·         read, from left to right, unfamiliar words,

·         generate sounds for the letters and letter combinations,

·         blend sounds into recognizable words.

 

Yes, but children can only blend sounds into recognizable words if they are taught the pronunciation of the sounds correctly. Otherwise they may be confused until they figure out by using patterns and analogies. 

Let us not accept whatever researchers tell us. Let us use our God given brains to think for ourselves.