Dr. Richard Selznick in our email discussions in 2010 said:
“I agree with you that many of these kids are instructional casualties and if they had been taught differently, many would not have shut down.”
Please keep in mind that what I say and how I respond are based on my experiences and understanding of the research. I am not a scientist or researcher, but I respond from my decades of clinical experience.
This is part 2 of my response to Dr. Martin’s answer to my question.
As you read this, please ask yourself what happened to this research 'Children of the Code' which was conducted over 13 years.
David Boulton:
10 times the number of kids who have innately biologically ordered learning difficulties have learning difficulties that are a consequence of what they learned…... Until such time we can read that they are cognitively going askew relative to what they have learnt in the past then our teaching is kind of brute force against this deep core stuff that is working against us.
How much of what they are struggling with is an innate learning problem and how much of what they are struggling with is what they have learned in the past working against them learning now.
In a recent LinkedIn post by Dr. Martin Bloomfield I asked what % of the population can be considered neurodivergent.
He gave a detailed reply as follows:
Such a good question, and impossible (at the moment, although I'm working on something...) to answer with any degree of certainty.
So, you have several intersections making the precise answer impossible: you have intersections of (or shared neurotypes/ phenotypes of) ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, etc. You have intersections of neurodivergence and gender. You have intersections of neurodivergence and wealth/ poverty. You then have different cultural intersections. And you have different definitions of each of the neurotypes, different ways of measuring them, different "official" (hah!) measurements... (see www.DyslexiaCompass.eu, something I'm proud to have led on). You also have the problem of no databases (quite right too) with any reliable figures. Essentially, all the figures right now are guesswork.
Best guess? I'd say between 15-20%. But it's still an estimate.
Another University Kebangsaan Malaysia Lecturer has hit the headlines for saying stupid things.
Here are extracts from the Sin Chew Daily.
A Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) professor is currently under fire for something he said recently concerning Chinese school students.
“These Chinese students studying in Chinese schools are not very smart. Although the school teaches 3 languages, they are only good at their mother tongue. They are not very good at English or Malay,” he said. LINK and LINK.
Here is another part of the LinkedIn thread by Ethan Lynn
Ethan Lynn, PhD Author Illiteracy Eradicator | Presenter | PD Specialist | Published Researcher:
Luqman Michel, this is an interesting perspective. Are you saying, it's best not to teach it at all if it's not done right?
Ethan Lynn was referring to teaching sounds represented by letters.
Lesli E. M.S, CALT, LDT and Certified Teacher
There are several older students I work with who do not know their letters and sounds. We need to give students what they need not what we think they should have based on data. Too many students are overlooked and they have learned coping skills (memorization) only to learn they actually can’t read.
His profile says: ‘I forewent my dream of being a university professor to join the ranks at Reading Horizons in a crusade to eradicate illiteracy because I had personally witnessed the impact of effective reading instruction.’
The following was written by Ethan on LinkedIn.
What are your thoughts on the topic?
Here are mine:
Foundational reading skills are essential to master especially if they occur beyond third grade.
I have always maintained that a majority of kids who are classified as dyslexic are shut down kids.
I just received a message from the father of a kid who I taught to read when she was in grade two.
She could read in Malay and Hanyu Pinyin but could not read at grade level in English.
She is one of 39 out of 137 graduates from University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) who graduated with a distinction.
Here is my post in 2019 about her Matriculation results I posted in December 2018. LINK
This is a
continuation of a discussion thread on LinkedIn. Yesterday I wrote about evasive answers and today it is about not answering direct questions.
Emma
Hartnell-Baker wrote:
The science of how children learn to read is fairly settled, but instruction is where the issue lies.
When children enter the self-teaching phase (Share, 1995; Ehri, 2014), they continue to develop orthographic knowledge by deducing words from context—if those words are already part of their vocabulary. Activities like repeated reading help them track back and re-code without instruction. Children who face no difficulties do this easily, often without any phonics instruction. This is precisely why three-cueing is so effective for children with good phonemic awareness—they are essentially teaching themselves phonics. And their phonics isn’t limited to around 100 correspondences.
My response now:
Where did this woman come up with such a notion about how children learn to read?
I have asked this question several times over the last few years on social media and no one responds and yet these people keep stating something as if they know it.
Questions that need to be answered are:
i. How did about 80% of kids who learned during the Whole Language period learn to read?
ii. How do about 80% of kids learn to read despite the sounds of letters being taught wrongly?
iii. Where is the Science about how children learn to read?
I asked the same question I asked for many years on Twitter and other social media. I always get evasive answers. Read my question carefully and see if the answer below is appropriate.
This is the question I asked on LinkedIn.
But the question remains. Why don't kids who learn to read in Malay and Hanyu Pinyin effortlessly, have phonemic awareness when learning to read in English?
Emma Hartnell-Baker replied as follows:
The following are comments on a LinkedIn post by Dr Martin Bloomfield.
Emma Hartnell- Baker, whose profile states that she connects spoken and written English with ‘Phonemies’ from birth commented on the post by Dr Martin.
Here are extracts and my comments/questions.
Dr Martin Bloomfield Author - Relentless optimist
Unless you're taking kids through your programme who have never had a reading difficulty, you have an ideal opportunity to research based on kids who have a reading difficulty but received early intervention.
My comment now:
During the discussion, I mentioned that many Chinese teachers are teaching Pinyin wrongly causing many kids to shut down/disengage from learning to read.
One of my friends quickly retorted that this statement was uncalled for. We had a healthy discussion on this matter.
Yesterday, 6.9.24 I read an article on LinkedIn written by Scanning Pens entitled
‘5 Things we learned about kids with dyslexia on the first day of the new school year…’
Here are a few extracts and my comments.
Scanning Pens:
The new school year is a fresh start for everyone, but a lot of kids with dyslexia might not be able to get over a challenging report card or low results so easily, especially if the achievement has been impacted. It helps if teachers can emphasise that every assignment is a clean slate— it’s all about learning and building from last year, not letting it dictate their story.
A PRC politician wants schools to spend more time teaching Pinyin.
You may read the full article here.
The following are extracts and my comments.
Xu Xudong (徐旭東/徐旭东), a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a professor at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, is advocating that public schools in China allocate substantially more time to the teaching of Hanyu Pinyin.
