P David Pearson talks about various literacy issues

                                                      

Here are extracts of the interview of P David Pearson by Dr. Sam Bommarito and my comments.

David Pearson:

We take people's temperatures but we don't assume that the only thing you do once you've taken the temperature is to do everything you can to raise or lower the temperature directly you look for a cause and you try to root out that medical cause for it and then see if the temperature goes down so I think that the first task facing the child is transforming graphemes letters into phonemic names sounds and that's what you should focus on.

My Comment:

Teachers and educators are doing exactly this. They do not look at the causes of why many kids are unable to read at the end of Grade 1. These are the kids who get into higher grades and misbehave due to shame avoidance. 

David Pearson:

Telling kids not to use context clues when they are figuring out what a word says is like telling leaves not to fall or dogs not to bark. If you are in a problem situation and you cannot figure out what the word says you are going to use every resource at your disposal to figure it out if you are a decent learner.

My comment:

This has been my mantra for more than a decade. Use all the tools available. In my book, Teach Your Child to Read, I use all the tools mentioned by David Pearson. I use Systemic phonics, analytical phonics, word family phonics, memorising Dolch Words (not mentioned by David), context clues, patterns (not mentioned by David), analogy and ways of figuring out new words. 

Reading to your children

 

There have been debates on Twitter about reading to children. There are those who say that reading to children helps them to learn to read whilst another group says it does not.

Let us examine this. 

Notes for parents and teachers Part 3 - Context clues

 

Context clues

Everything that a reader has ever seen, ever done and ever read previously should be brought to the reading at hand.

Twitter conversation Part 2 – Sara Peden, Sue Lloyd and Debbie Hepplewhite

I tweeted the following

Luqman Michel @SaraJPeden @debbiehepp @suelloydtcrw

That is why I suggest teaching phonics (priority) as well as Dolch words (as about 70% of words in kids' books consists of Dolch words) and context clues as there are many words that cannot be read without context clues.

@SaraJPeden

Replying to @luqmanmichel

If they can't be read without context, it implied phonics wouldn't work. I'm now thinking that what you meant is that phonics gets you to two choices and you need context to decide which. I just wouldn't describe that as "many" words, the way you did.

Reading is certainly more than decoding. So context is always important in reading comprehension. Can you give me an example of when you would teach students to use 'context clues' to figure out what a word is (as opposed to what it means)?

Instead of just giving her one example out of many I gave her 3 examples.

I wound a string around a tree…

Yesterday, I read a story…

I drove down a windy road…

I did not get a response.

Surely we need context clues in addition to phonics to be able to read the highlighted words correctly. Of course, it is not restricted to heteronyms as above.

Contact clues will also aid us when we know of a word but have never read it before. For instance, a kid who had never seen the word island will not be able to read the word island as in ‘Treasure Island’. He would probably read it as is land. However, if he sees the following sentence ‘We then rowed our boat around the island’ chances are he will be able to read that word correctly using context clues. This is not guessing but using clues in a sentence to work out what a word is and pronounce it correctly.

What does Sara J Peden mean by, ‘I just wouldn't describe that as "many" words, the way you did.’

There are more than 70 heteronyms most of which are common words. If more than 70 is not many than what is? That does not include words with silent letters like the above-mentioned word ‘island’.

Without context clues, most of the words with silent letters will be difficult to sound out correctly e.g. debt, debtor, plumber, salmon, hour, knee, know, etc. Kids don’t have to learn phonics rules to read words with silent letters if they are taught to use context clues to read. 

In fact, only recently did I learn when the letter ‘b’ is silent. It is silent following the letter ‘m' as in the word comb. It is silent if it precedes the letter ‘t’ as in debtor. However, there are exceptions in both cases.

In any event, what is the big fuss about using context clues? Why don’t we teach kids all the ways that can aid them to read? Why be adamant about not teaching kids to memorise Dolch words (frequently used words)? 

Sara J Peden

Replying to @luqmanmichel @debbiehepp and @suelloydtcrw

Sounding Out The Sight Words.  It's misleading to suggest there are a large number of words that can't be decoded/learned via connecting graphemes to phonemes.

Luqman Michel @SaraJPeden @debbiehepp @suelloydtcrw

I did not say anything close to, a large number of words that can't be decoded via connecting graphemes to phonemes. 

Don't put words into my mouth.

Sara J Peden did not respond. I tweeted and said she owes me a response and she said she does not owe me any response and did not answer my question as to when I said that a large number of words can’t be decoded via connecting graphemes to phonemes. 

Most of these whites have the habit of saying whatever they like and when cornered just shut-up or if possible delete the comments.

Of course, I know that almost all the words can be read phonetically. Otherwise, I would not have taught my students' phonics. Why do these phonics proponents talk as if they created phonics and where do they get this notion that they are the only people who know phonics?

      It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled. (Mark Twain)