This is a continuation of the Tweets by Alanna Maurin. I am posting this now as, yesterday, I listened to a short video by Mark Seidenberg where he says that there are no multiple ways that the brain can be structured to read.
“Educators have a pretty firm belief that every kid is different and that the challenge of reading is to be able to tailor your instruction for the needs of the child, and their learning style, the way that they happen to learn best. We don’t find that when we study the computational, and behavioral, and neural systems that underlie reading” (Mark Seidenberg) LINK.
As far as decoding is concerned, the above video should have put paid to the frequently quoted saying ‘One size doesn’t fit all’.
Let us examine this a little more.
On 28.12.2022 Alanna Tweeted the following:
Alanna Maurin Dec 28, 2020 Replying to @PamelaSnow2@DTWillingham and @EdinspireGeoff
My son had a year of structured synthetic phonics via a scripted program and he struggles to blend. He said puh instead of p, buh instead of b tuh instead of t. A week of correcting this and he is beginning to read fluently. Are there any studies on this?
On 4.1.2022 Alanna tweeted the following.
Replying to @DoctorSam7 @DrMaryHoward and 8 others
He's attending to print and reading words that he hasn't mastered the code of yet.
This is a child who for a year has been switched off to reading and struggled to decode and blend simple cvc words and was distressed by his inability to retain 'tricky' words out of context.
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Jan 4
What works with one child doesn't always work with another. Glad you found something that is working for your student. Here is a blog in which I try to make it clear one size doesn't fit all.
You may refer to Dr.Sam’s blog Post here.
My comment now:
I follow Dr.Sam’s Blog fervently. I agree with his centrist view. However, in this regard, perhaps, Dr. Sam did not understand the matter at hand.
For those who are new to my blog, I met Alanna Maurin on Twitter on 23.12.2020. She was desperate as her son was unable to read unlike her 3 other sons who were doing well at school.
I assured her that together we will be able to get her son to read in no time.
After teaching her son two of my lessons she was elated as she now found that her son was enthusiastic to read. Read more in my post here and here.
I am not talking about any particular programme. Therefore, Dr. Sam’s Tweet that ‘what worked for one child doesn’t always work with another’ is not apt.
Alanna’s son is not the first such case as I have taught many other similar kids. If a kid has no acuity problems and is unable to read, then in all probabilities he is an instructional casualty.
I asked for a recording of her son reading the sounds of the letters. Upon receiving the recording, I knew at once that her son was a disengaged student due to confusion – an instructional casualty.
Her son was reading out most of the sounds represented by consonants with extraneous sounds. I asked her to teach him the correct sounds which she did.
I then asked her to get him to learn 5 Dolch words by rote memory and teach him the word family ‘at’. This was on 23.12.2020.
She did not do any lessons with her son on Christmas day.
To my surprise, she Tweeted the following on 28.12.2020.
My son had a year of structured synthetic phonics via a scripted program and he struggles to blend. He said puh instead of p, buh instead of b tuh instead of t. A week of correcting this and he is beginning to read fluently. Are there any studies on this?
He was now able to enjoy reading because his confusion had been cleared. He could blend CVC words with ease as he was now taught the correct pronunciation of consonants – with no extraneous sounds.
He, like any other kid was able to rote memorise the Dolch words for both lessons 1 and 2.
This has nothing to do with ‘One size doesn’t fit all’. What fits all is teaching every kid the correct pronunciation of consonants.
Also, stop saying that High Frequency Words (HFW) should not be memorised. They can easily be memorised by rote memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment