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.
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.
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.
The reading wars have been going on for decades. The more I read tweets by teachers the more I understand why the wars have been going on for so long.
Many teachers are unwilling to discuss with an open mind. They are like the prince in an Indian fable who had caught a three legged rabbit and started proclaiming that all rabbits are three legged.
They are exactly what Charlie Munger had described about the human egg.
I believe most schools today teach phonics in one form or another. Unfortunately, many schools have these hard core three cueing system proponents, who have not mastered how to teach phonics correctly, who also teach kids how to guess.
Instead of sounding out words, the three cueing system proponents teach kids to rely on syntax, semantic, or grapho- phonemic cue by looking at the beginning letter of words.
I commented on a tweet by Pam Kastner which was responded by Erin Harrington, Narelle Lynch, Denyse Ritchie and David M. (a grade one teacher in Australia), Dr. Kathryn Garforth and Emily Hanford.
When I clicked on ‘Home’ to skim through what others were tweeting I saw a tweet (in no way related to the tweet above) by Jasmine lane @MsJasmineMN, a teacher.
Too many folks out here reading to respond instead of reading to understand.
The following is a Twitter discussion/debate I witnessed on 23.11.2020.
It started off with Pam Kastner making a sweeping statement. I asked a simple question based on what she had said and she has not responded. (I am told by a good Twitter friend that no one needs to respond to any questions asked. See note below.)
Notes:
In the last two days, 1st and 2nd December 2020, I have had discussions on Twitter with a teacher named Erin Harrington. She is an SSP proponent who insisted that High Frequency words are memorized, by Whole Language kids, by visual memory.
The above is not a correct assumption. One of the reasons why there is widespread reading difficulties could very well be due to this assumption that we store words using visual memory.
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.
