My Decade-Long Dialogue with Barack Obama: Tweets Calling for Literacy Reform

 

As a teacher who's spent over 15 years helping "dyslexic" kids—most of whom are simply instructional casualties of outdated teaching methods—I've long believed that true change in America starts with fixing our broken literacy system. U.S. illiteracy rates have barely budged since the 1970s, trapping generations in cycles of poverty and limiting their potential. That's why, for the past decade, I've been tagging and replying to influential voices like Barack Obama, hoping to spark a conversation.

Right to read - Movie Review – Part 2

 

At minute 10.24: Let’s see what happens when we take away the pictures.

There has been a lot of opinion about how children learn to read.

The above part of the movie shows a girl reading with pictures and the same words being read (wrongly) by the same girl when the pictures were removed.

What does it prove? It only proves that the teacher did not know how to teach that kid and nothing more. 

Heading North to go south - chinese proverb

Dr. Sam:

I’ll start by stating my position about using research. We absolutely should use research to inform our decisions about teaching. LINK

 

Phonemic awareness and how children learn to read

 

Here are extract from an article found here and my comments. This is a continuation of my post yesterday.

 

A lack of phonemic proficiency is viewed as a reason for word-reading difficulties (e.g., Kilpatrick, 2019a, b, 2020). Hence, it is assumed that stronger and weaker word readers can be better differentiated by assessments that involve more advanced phonemic manipulation tasks (phoneme deletion or replacement), compared to measures that are viewed as more “basic” such as phoneme segmenting or blending.

 

Orthographic Mapping by Stephen Parker (Part 1)

 

Here are extracts of an article by Stephen Parker and my comments. You may read the article here.

I have decided to break this up into bite sized posts.

Stephen Parker:

Orthographic mapping is the connection-making process that automatically creates sight words – words that are simply recognized at a glance, with decoding no longer necessary.

The connections that need to be made, according to Ehri, are between the letters seen in a word’s spelling and the sounds (phonemes) heard in that word’s pronunciation. This is precisely what decoding (sounding out) a word accomplishes. For most students, decoding a word successfully 2-5 times creates a new sight word.

Can I change your mind about changing minds – Emina McLean (Part 6)

 

Emina:

Do not give voice to the naysayers. Do not amplify individuals who cling to misinformation, directly or indirectly. Do not amplify problematic or incorrect conceptions about reading instruction. Do not engage in tit-for-tat debates. Do not waste precious time on people who do not want to know better or do better. Do not demean or malign, and do not make people feel less than. Do not make fun of people.

Sadly, we must accept that some people are unlikely to ever change their minds.

 

The "Sine Qua Non" of Reading Acquisition (Stephen Parker)

I happened to read an article by Stephen Parker on Reading Acquisition which you can read here.

Here are some extracts and my comments.

Katherine Billington vs Luqman Michel

I want to cut down on my posts and concentrate on teaching kids remotely. 

I am currently teaching a 11 year old kid in Kenya, Africa, to read and spell. I have not taught anyone on spelling but I am now reading on that and therefore busy.

Ableism (A tweet by Pamela Snow) Continued

Here is my tweet in response to the tweet by Pamela Snow which you may refer here.

I think it is discrimination against the able bodied and not in favour of able bodied. I am talking about the majority of kids who are wrongly classified as dyslexic. These are the really smart kids. (Luqman Michel)

“The Era of Stupid” Michael A Cohen

The title above and this post is inspired by a post on Diane’s blog.

Here are extracts from Diane Ravitch’s blog post on 21.5.2020.

Interesting comments on Diane Ravitch's post

Here are some interesting comments from the blog by Diane Ravitch on 4.4.2020 which was on the 5.4.2020 for us in Malaysia.

Comment from: retired teacher

April 4, 2020 at 1:02 pm

The main credential of many of the disrupters is that they are arrogant billionaires that weaponize their wealth to destroy the common good. Many politicians are willing to take the $$, and some of the right wingers are more than happy to undermine public education in keeping with their small minded beliefs.

'Why people prefer to believe myth instead of facts (Vicki Cobb)

Here is a post extracted from Diane Ravitch's blog. 

Vicki Cobb, a writer of science books for children, ponders the question that puzzles so many of us at this time:

Why do so many people refuse to believe proven facts?

Why do so many prefer to believe myths instead of facts?

"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.

The Defeaning silence of Diane Ravitch

Below is another comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog post. Surely, one would have expected a response from someone who is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University. 

Preposterous idea - Dr.Robert Slavin blog post Part 2

Here is an email I wrote to Dr. Robert Slavin on 28.3.2020 when there was no response to my comment on his blog post - ‘Science of Reading: Can We Get Beyond Our 30-Year Pillar Fight?’

Diane Ravitch - Philosopher of Education?

                                                            Philosopher of Education

On the internet, it says Diane Ravitch's blog is 'A site to discuss better education for all.'

I read the following on Diane Ravitch's Blog .

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Joint Statement Regarding

“Science of Reading”

KEY TAKEAWAY:

It’s time for the media and political distortions to end, and for the literacy community and policymakers to fully support the literacy needs of all children.

Unfortunately, this media coverage has distorted the research evidence on the teaching of reading, with the result that policymakers are now promoting and implementing policy based on misinformation.

This key idea of a “balanced literacy” approach stresses the importance of phonics, authentic reading, and teachers who can teach reading using a full toolbox of instructional approaches and understandings.

At the very least, federal and state legislation should not continue to do the same things over and over while expecting different outcomes.

I made the following comment and I expected Diane Ravitch to agree or dispute what I said.

A comment on Diane Ravitch's Blog Post

Here is a response from a teacher who responded to my comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog post.

bethree5 on NEPC: There Is No “Science of Reading”.

My comment truncated:

“The researchers who only speak one language – English – have yet to do research on why many smart kids can read in Malay and Romanised Mandarin, both of which use the same letters as English but are unable to read in English. I have done that research for 15 years with more than 70 […]”