Yesterday, 9.12.21, I read a tweet by Reading Reform Foundation of UK as follows:
@RRForg
The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) is challenging the Department for Education's promotion of Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) - the technical code knowledge and skills for word recognition of the Simple View of Reading. Dr Marlynne Grant responds: http://rrf.org.uk/2021/12/08/res
I responded by tweeting the following:
Luqman Michel Replying to @RRForg
The committee at RRF doesn't even have the courtesy of responding to questions. Read my post at https://dyslexiafriend.com/2020/06/reading-reform-foundation-geraldine.html
Marlynne, also do read my current 2 posts at http://dyslexiafriend.com
and feel free to question me.
Geraldine Carter tweeted the following:
Geraldine Carter@ged10 Replying to @luqmanmichel and @RRForg
Luqman - there are thousands of requests, messages, different points of view. It is not possible to address all of them. Perhaps write your own programme and get it published?
The RRF website says the following:
What is the RRF?
The RRF is an organisation dedicated to campaigning for better teaching of reading in the English language. This website has something to offer everyone who is interested in the teaching of reading.
Members include people from a wide range of backgrounds with a variety of experiences. They have all been convinced by evidence that a method known as synthetic phonics is the most effective for teaching everyone to read.
If Geraldine had read my post above she would not have responded as she did.
My emails to Debbie Hepplewhite of RRF explains that one of the problems faced by kids in the UK and around the world is the programme aired by Baby TV produced in the UK. Sue Lloyd of RRF, when I wrote to her, said that the ‘sounds of the letters’ (in that TV programme) are not that great.
What did RRF do about my complaint about the Baby TV Programme? Why is it being aired in more than 100 countries?
Read my post here on the importance of Early Childhood Education. The post states the following:
i. A child’s early years lay the foundation for all that is to come.
ii. Early learning paves the way for learning at school and throughout life. What children learn in their first few years of life—and how they learn it—can have long-lasting effects on their success and health as children, teens, and adults.
iii. Thorndike (1913), for example, hypothesized that the degree of transfer between initial and later learning depends upon the match between what was learned initially and what is learned subsequently.
iv. Early Childhood Education (ECE) leads to less students being placed in Special Education in their primary years. By meeting a child’s need early on, they can better learn and retain the foundational skills and knowledge to help them succeed in their future. If they start off in Kindergarten behind in their learning, they are going to be playing catch up for many years, and possibly their entire school experience. Early Education gives them a great jump start into learning.
The TV programme Charlie and the Alphabet has been viewed by 70,301,673 and has more than 20 million subscribers.
A related article on the importance of initial learning is a
must read.
Please think along with me as to why despite SSP being
taught in the UK many kids are still unable to read. I had written to Baby TV
several emails to no avail.
If RRF, which is an organisation dedicated to campaigning for better teaching of reading in the English language, does not follow up with my email to them then who is to be blamed for the poor performance of kids in the UK?
Teachers who have learned SSP may be teaching the correct pronunciation of the sounds represented by the letters but what about the initial input that has been embedded in the children’s minds via the TV programme mentioned above?
Notes:
1. Does Dr Marlynne Grant, Registered Educational Psychologist, Author of Sound Discovery® and Rapid Phonics, have a vested interest.
2. The British Dyslexia Association has its own agenda and I have written enough about them.
1 comment:
Here is a statement made by Debbie Hepplewhite on 'House of Commons
Education and Skills Committee' website in 2004.
Is this not similar to what Debbie and RRF have done with my emails over the years.
Mrs Hepplewhite: No response. Is it not very clever? Is it not very clever that the way you can dissipate an argument or a challenge is by not responding to it? I am maintaining that this is the way that this has gone on for several years now. The criticism has been there for years and no one has actually said “Well OK then, let’s embrace the critics and let’s see what we do need to do to compare”. There is a shroud of “Let’s not be open about that criticism” (pg 67)
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