Accountability and transparency of Reading Reforms Foundation UK

 

Is the Reading Reform Foundation influenced or controlled by external powers such as funding sources, political agendas, or institutional pressures?

Should there be more accountability and transparency in organisations advocating educational reforms?

I can think of only 3 probable answers to the attitudes of the committee members of Reading Reform Foundation.

They are controlled by the Funding Sources or the committee members are naïve.

Another reason could be to protect their rice bowls – intervention services and sales of educational material.

How Can We Educate Educators Who Struggle with Critical Thinking?

 

Learners generally fall into two categories: approximately 80% of children accept what their teachers present without question, often learning to read through patterns and analogies. In contrast, about 20% are logical thinkers who question everything they encounter. When their lessons conflict with prior knowledge or fail to make sense, these children may shut down or disengage from the learning process. This was already discovered by Thorndike in 1913 (More than 100 years ago). LINK

Learning to Read Changes the Brain - Richard Gentry

 

This morning I read a Tweet by Karen Vaites which had a link to the article here.

Here are some excerpts from the article and my thoughts. 

 

“How Learning to Read Changes the Brain”.

 

Yes, brain imaging will show a difference in the brain before and after a child learns to read. But it does not show how the brain learns to read. No one has discovered how the brain learns to read. 

Different perspectives – Part 4 – Blocking

 

Here are two tweets I have a different perspective on.

Dr. Mary Howard @DrMaryHoward  Jun 13, 2023

I'd add.... ignore blatant attacks because there is no good that will come from responding.

Pick your battles & find inroads but ignore dead-end streets that lead only to a childish Twitter battleground. I learned this lesson the hard way. Share legitimate info & avoid the fray

Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Jun 14

I just gave that same advice in the comments to my blog. If it's apparent the person wants to attack rather than discuss, simply block them. Picking your battles is critical, some of them purposely say outrageous things to get you to go down an off-topic rabbit hole.

I don’t ignore blatant attacks when they are silly and evil.

4th Lesson with Jack and the naysayers

 

Yesterday, 8.5.2022 was my 4^th lesson with Jack.

He still guesses instead of reading what he already knows. This is a habit which will take a little time to unlearn.

Today, I gave him the following Dolch words to memorise by rote memory:

her, all, good, some, my, this, here, soon, 

Let’s just address the issue of extraneous sounds

 

I tweeted about Timothy Shanahan asking me for evidence (research reports) to show that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds.

The following Tweets ensued.

Peter Blenkinsop @ManYanaEd Replying to @luqmanmichel @ReadingShanahan and 14 others

It must be ok to ask for evidence?

Luqman Michel Replying to @ManYanaEd @ReadingShanahan and 14 others

Yes, when it is something that cannot be thought of logically. Tell me, Peter, do you really need evidence to teach consonants without extraneous sounds. Where do I look for such reports? I can give you many personal anecdotes but you won't accept them.

 

Peter Blenkinsop @ManYanaEd

I would expect others to be using the system you use. That is some evidence.

Flash cards - Twitter Discussion with Elizabeth Brown

                                                      Flash card for teaching Dolch Words

I learned quite a bit from Elizabeth Brown on a long Twitter discourse. Here are somethings she tweeted and my comments:

Elizabeth Brown @PhonicsMom Replying to @luqmanmichel @ReadSimplified and 2 others

With 100% whole word methods, they used flashcards for everything. Now with balanced literacy, the predictable readers are used for new words, but they also send home hundreds of high frequency sight words to be memorized with flash cards.

Why insist on research reports for everything?

 

I read a well written blog post by Lindsay Kemeny. Here are extracts and my comments on the article. (LINK)

 

I have always tried to be careful with how I bring this up, because people get so upset and defensive when confronted with the fact that there is no research to support these reading strategies and, even worse, they are doing harm to students. But my patience is wearing thin on this topic. Just when I think that the tide is turning and that the majority of educators now realize the problems surrounding 3 cueing, I hear an edu-celebrity tell teachers on Facebook to simply “tweak” the strategies instead of get rid of them or a reader emails me asking me to take down this post stating that it’s only my opinion and that 3 cueing works. This particular reader told me not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but 3 cueing is exactly what needs to be thrown out. I stand by what I said. There is no research to support these strategies and you don’t need to take my word for it. You can read about it here, here, and here.

 

Lyn Stone and orthographic mapping

 

Lyn Stone had blocked me for commenting on her tweet. Only recently have I seen her tweets again. Here is one such tweet I read yesterday and believe she does not know what she is talking about other than quoting what someone had said about 20 years ago.

Here is the URL to Lyn’s video clip and my comments.

https://youtu.be/KIuwKnZqJEQ

Jo Anne Gross and other blockers

Too many so-called educators on social media block me. They block me to prevent truth being known by others. They misrepresent to promote their products.

Jo Anne Gross was one of the first to block me. She blocked me on LinkedIn when I wrote that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of dyslexia. In 2010, I also started promoting my Free of charge lessons on my blog for parents of kids unable to read. If teachers and parents know why kids are disengaging from learning to read, then Jo Anne Gross as an intervention business owner, may lose business.

The Role of Orthographic Mapping in Learning to Read (Part 1)

 

The following are extracts from a blog post found here.

Every word has three forms – its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling), and its meaning. Orthographic mapping is the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers. Through orthographic mapping, students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings). They then permanently store the connected sounds and letters of words (along with their meaning) as instantly recognizable words, described as “sight vocabulary” or “sight words”. (Internet)

With orthographic mapping of a word, the letters we see with our eyes and the sounds we hear in that word get processed together as a sight word and are stored together in the brain. This is not the same as memorizing just the way a word looks. It is also important to remember that orthographic mapping is a mental process used to store and remember words. It is not a skill, teaching technique, or activity you can do with students (Kilpatrick, 2019). What can be taught are phonemic awareness and phonics skills which enable orthographic mapping.

Visual memorisation misunderstood

 

From the discussion I had with a number of teachers on Twitter it is obvious that both a majority of phonics as well as whole language proponents are not aware that we don’t store words visually.

Here are some tweets on visual memorisation between Erin Harrington and me.

 

Visual memory revisited

I am writing on visual memory again as there is a discussion on it on Twitter. 

 

Most teachers assume that words are stored by visual memory. This is not an accurate assumption. Some of the phonics proponents say it repeatedly. So much so, that they have begun to believe their own lies.

Instructional videos that cause many kids to shut down

 

Yesterday, 27.10.2020, I had a fruitful discussion on Twitter with nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia.

 In brief I said at the end of the discussion:

My discussions on Twitter is not to 'fix' but to make teachers aware that we can reduce kids leaving school as illiterate simply by not teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes of consonants. Prevent rather than cure.

nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia responded:

Agree...whenever I watch an instructional video I shudder.

 

Reading Reform Foundation, Geraldine Carter and Debbie Hepplewhite

Note: The founder of RRF UK, Mona Mcnee, was a friend of mine. We had exchanged emails until the point she was almost blind and had to read my emails by asking someone to read to her. I then decided to stop writing to her.

"Knowledge leads to Ignorance"

Ignorance leads to Knowledge" AND "Knowledge leads to Ignorance". (Dr.Shalini Ratan on LinkedIn)

What a coincidence that Dr.Shalini Ratan should post this on LinkedIn yesterday (23.4.2020). It supports what I had intended to write.

Letter sounds and letter names

Here is another tweet where there is a new participant, John Bald, an Independent educational consultant.

Luqman Michel Replying to @debbiehepp @JohnBaldLangLit 

Many of my shut down students looked with a quizzical look when I sounded out the words be, bee, deep, giraffe etc.

After some thinking it dawned on me that it was because I had taught the letter sounds but these words use letter names.

Listen to my YouTube presentation here for letters in words using letter names.

My Twitter discussion with Sara J Peden, Debbie Hepplewhite and Sue Lloyd - Part 3

The following is my tweet to Debbie Hepplewhite.

Luqman Michel @debbiehepp

I have no problem with what you and @suelloydtcrw are doing.

My contention is that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds. Teach correctly and the reading wars will end.

Read my post at lhttps://dyslexiafriend.com/2020/04/to-teach-or-not-to-teach-correct.html

My discussion with phonics proponents on Twitter (Part 1)

I have maintained for the past 10 years that we will end the reading wars if we teach the pronunciation of consonants the way it was meant to be taught.

A group of ladies who are phonics proponents insists that teaching consonants with extraneous sounds cannot be the reason why kids shut down from learning to read.

Critical thinking (Part 2)

“Surely, Scott must be aware of Finkel’s views and yet he has made no attempt to counter or rebut them.” (Greg Ashman)

The above comes as no surprise to me.

Other than the three professors no one attempted to counter or rebut my posts on my blog, Face Book or on LinkedIn.