Phillip Chipping and I have been discussing on LinkedIn for a few days. He asked me to send him 2 posts which I think are the top.
All my posts are worth reading but I thought I’d make a new post as there was another teacher, I discussed with who teaches phonics but does not understand why memorising Dolch words is important.
This is one of the problems with kids shutting down. The phonics proponents are adamant that kids should not rote memorise HFWs because it is based on Whole Language and the WL proponents think phonics is useless as many kids who have learned phonics can’t read.
Neither the phonics or the whole word advocates know why many kids shut down from learning to read.
Many kids who learn phonics can’t understand how to read many of the HFWs because they are not phonetic. The kids predisposed to shutting down give up and disengage from learning to read.
The HFWs comprise between 50 to 70% of all words in a book. It makes perfect sense to memorise these words and together with phonics the kid will read. Unfamiliar words can be read using phonics.
The main reason kids can’t read is confusion. They are taught consonant sounds with extraneous sounds and blending is impossible.
I tell parents to teach the correct sounds and within a short while, kids are reading.
My Twitter discussion with an accomplished teacher in Australia is a good example.
Let us examine extracts of my discussion with her. You may read the post here. LINK
Alanna Maurin:
He had stomach aches to go to school.
He cried when I got the tricky words out to practice.
The above covers both the matters I am discussing above. First, he had stomach aches. He could not blend because he was taught consonant sounds with extraneous sounds. The tuition had taught SSP but not the Dolch (tricky) words.
Luqman Michel:
He is pronouncing many of the consonants with extraneous sounds.
I will tell you what he has learned wrongly. Start from the beginning and he will read in no time.
Teach the first lesson with the correct pronunciation of the consonants as shown in the lesson. (These lessons are available free on my blog)
At the end of the lesson make sure he learns the Dolch words by heart. Forget all that you may have heard about Dolch words not being memorised etc.
After the first lesson please record for me his sounding out the word families and reading the lesson.
The mother corrected the kid’s pronunciation of letters and started the lessons. After two lessons the mother was ecstatic because her son was keen on reading.
He was not confused anymore as he could read using phonics + Dolch words memorisation (WL)
Alanna Maurin:
Dec 26, 2020, 6:14 AM
After just two lessons he is now asking me to help him read words from packages, from his games and he now sounds t p b l f d correctly every time.
We are only JUST scratching the surface of understanding how the brain reads, so how can these people claim to understand the 'science' of how to teach reading? Especially when so many observations from the field contradict what they say.
I am sure if I told them about Louis, they would say there is something wrong with his brain.
I suppose it may be difficult for people to accept that someone from a non-English speaking country, with a different accent to theirs and without a 'qualification' would have a better understanding than they do.
I have been studying master’s in Reading literacy for two years and I know that you have a good knowledge of the main debates in reading and a good knowledge of who the main players are and then you have also taught me new things. E.g. teaching the alphabet.
My discussion with Phillip reminds me of the words of Charlie Munger. ‘The human mind is like the human egg.’ This guy has read many articles about dyslexia by those with a vested interest and can’t accept a simple solution despite so much collaborative evidence I have given him.
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