Evening News Chasing the Illiteracy Fix: Why Vivek Ramaswamy Could Be the One to Break the Silence

 

 🔍 A Decade of Decoding, One Sound at a Time

I’ve spent over ten years teaching kids to read—real reading, not guesswork. It starts with clean consonant sounds, not “buh” for B. My book Shut Down Kids lays it out: teach the right sounds from day one, and no child shuts down. My follow-up, Teach Your Child to Read, has helped parents worldwide turn bedtime into breakthroughs.

 

In Sabah, I’ve taught 80+ kids to read fluently.

 

In India, ESL learners thrive with sound-first methods.

Several children in Australia. 

In California, a grandma is reversing “dyslexia” labels at home.

I have even taught a child in Kenya using Whats App.  

Are Dr. Sam Bommarito and the other educators that naive? Part 2

 

If anything is deemed offensive in my post yesterday on Dr.Sam Bommarito, it is intended.

He and many so-called educators have been stating things that are obviously misleading.

Sam mentioned David Boulton in his blog post. I commented on David Boulton’s LinkedIn post back in 2015 and stated that one of the main reasons why kids disengage from learning to read is due to the fact that teachers teach the sounds represented by letters wrongly as in the 2 videos that David recommended for viewing. He disagreed with me and blocked me and yet removed the 2 videos immediately thereafter.

In 2015, Andrew Johnson and I had several email discussions where I told him that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of kids being unable to read. He asked me for evidence and research reports and cut me off saying that I don’t have the credentials to talk with him on this subject.

This was the same with Timothy Shanahan who ignored my comments in 2015 and made an about-turn in 2017.

I have been blocked by many so-called educators for no reason at all since 2010 when I started being active on social media. 

Be respectful and professional - Dr. Sam Bommarito

 

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Sam’s blog. In general, I agree with what he says.

‘…educators should fairly evaluate all evidence “regardless of whether the conclusions are inconsistent with your beliefs.” It also says we should “acknowledge differences and discuss them with respect and decency.” Unfortunately, I seldom see this kind of respectful debate on social media posts. I sincerely hope we can find common ground on the essentials of effective reading instruction, and when we disagree, we can do so with respect and professionalism.’

Of course, we should be respectful on social media. But, I am reminded of a Tamil proverb that says that a thorn in the flesh should be taken out with a thorn. I have been respectful of all my comments and posts until recently when I realised that many on social media are there to make money at the expense of distraught parents. I have no respect for those who do not apologise for grave disinformation which is then retweeted or liked by many.

Memorising Dolch words also known as HFW

 

A former teacher from the UK, Pat Stone, posted the above image on Twitter. I then tweeted the following:

Luqman Michel @luqmanmichel

One of the widely held beliefs is that HFW (Dolch words) cannot be memorised by kids, dyslexic or otherwise. Kids in Chinese schools have to memorise 600 words per year for 6 years while learning to read in Malay and English and Han Yu Pinyin. What's your view?

Broken record

 

On 7.3.2022, The Reading Ape @TheReadingApe tweeted the following:

'...many first grade readers who struggle to master orthographic-phonological coding and read laboriously while they are doing so, may be more on track for becoming independent readers than readers who memorize words and disregard the alphabetic principle.' (Rayner et al., 2012).

I then tweeted as follows:

If kids learn the alphabetic principle should they not memorise words?

What is wrong in memorising words and at the same time learning the alphabetic principle?

'End the bickering on how to teach' Dr. Sam Bommarito

 

Dr. Sam Bommarito article here is worth reading.

Here is part of a paragraph from his article.

There is no one size fits all answer when it comes to teaching reading. What works with one child/group of children, does not always work with another. If all sides in the dialogue about how to best teach reading would be willing to admit that their favorite method(s) have limits and limitations and that they could sometimes use a little help from methods they usually don’t use, I think the current dialogue around how to teach reading could become more productive. There are a number of things we can and should do to end the bickering (as opposed to dialogue) that has all too often dominated our conversations about reading.

Robert J Marzano’s strategy for teachers

 

I believe teachers and administrators can benefit from Marzano’s teaching strategies.

We need to give our students the tools they need to be successful in the classroom and beyond.

On 16.8.2020 Dr.Sam Bommarito tweeted the following.