I Received a comment on my post ‘Stop Blaming Kids' 'Poor Phonemic Awareness' — It's the Wrong Letter Sounds, Stupid!’ LINK
Here is the comment by Deanna White - Interdisciplinary Studies Major
Sir, while your success in helping students is commendable, neuroscience offers a clearer explanation for why your "letter-naming" method works—and why "rote memorization" isn't actually what is happening in the brain.
Here is an on-going discussion with a lady who is very knowledgeable and open to discussion.
Cynthia Shevel CALT /TCRS Therapy
Cynthia:
As a Certified Academic Language Therapist, Wilson Practitioner, and Intervention Specialist, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on how dyslexia is identified and supported here in Ohio—and what families actually experience through the process.
For clarity, the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) defines dyslexia as a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language and are often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.
This is a
continuation of a discussion thread on LinkedIn. Yesterday I wrote about evasive answers and today it is about not answering direct questions.
Emma
Hartnell-Baker wrote:
The science of how children learn to read is fairly settled, but instruction is where the issue lies.
When children enter the self-teaching phase (Share, 1995; Ehri, 2014), they continue to develop orthographic knowledge by deducing words from context—if those words are already part of their vocabulary. Activities like repeated reading help them track back and re-code without instruction. Children who face no difficulties do this easily, often without any phonics instruction. This is precisely why three-cueing is so effective for children with good phonemic awareness—they are essentially teaching themselves phonics. And their phonics isn’t limited to around 100 correspondences.
My response now:
Where did this woman come up with such a notion about how children learn to read?
I have asked this question several times over the last few years on social media and no one responds and yet these people keep stating something as if they know it.
Questions that need to be answered are:
i. How did about 80% of kids who learned during the Whole Language period learn to read?
ii. How do about 80% of kids learn to read despite the sounds of letters being taught wrongly?
iii. Where is the Science about how children learn to read?
