Disinformation by Dr. Miah and Tiffany Peltier

                                                                    

This morning I read a Tweet by Dr. Miah who does not know how kids learn to read. She supports her friend, another Ph.D. who blocked me probably for asking questions she could not answer.

These are the people who will say anything to promote their products.

Here is the Tweet by Dr. Miah @dst6n01

(This woman has 17K followers. Imagine the harm she is causing by this disinformation)

Check out this blog on sight words—and why we should be moving away from them :)—from my colleague @tiffany_peltier @NWEA

Tiffany Peltier, Ph.D.🌸 @tiffany_peltier profile says she is a Mama to 2. Designer of Literacy PL @NWEA. Research in reading, dyslexia, conceptual change.

Here is the Link attached by Dr. Miah

Here are the extracts and my comments/questions.

Unfortunately, this practice of centering the learning on high-frequency words before students have learned to sound out words through phonics is an inefficient practice birthed out of the misconceived notion that children learn to read by memorizing whole words.

We know from decades of research that it is more effective for students to be taught individual letter-sound correspondences and use them to sound out words.

My comment:

Yes, teach individual letter sounds but don’t forget all the other tools available to teach a kid to read.

The main complaint from those who are against phonics and by many phonics exponents themselves is that of irregular words.

Those who are against phonics say that phonics does not work because many words cannot be spelled out phonetically.

The phonics proponents keep insisting that almost all the words can be spelled phonetically and therefore there is no need to memorise any of the words.

We all know there are many irregular high-frequency words. My question is why don’t we teach kids to memorise these words by rote memory and learn the sounds of letters and blending.

Sounds of letters + blending = phonics.

Kids will be able to memorise all the 220 Dolch words (High-Frequency Words) with ease. I have introduced these words at 8 words per lesson in my book Teach Your Childto Read.

It makes sense to memorise these words as 50 to 70 % of all the words in a book comprise of these words. Since my book teaches phonics, memorising Dolch Words as well as patterns and context clues any kid will be able to read within 3 months. 

Many people think students learn to read by memorizing a word’s shape or repeatedly seeing the whole word.

The above is another disinformation believed by many because of so-called educators like Dr.Miah and Tiffany Peltier. I don’t know of any school that teaches kids to memorise by word shape. Read my post here to see a few of the many other educators who believe that kids are taught to memorise by word shape.

Teach a kid to memorise by rote memory as detailed in my book and no kid will be left behind.

Read atestimonial from a grandma in California who taught her dyslexic grandchildren using my book.