Disinformation by Marion Blank.

                                     

The following are extracts from a YouTube video by Karen Quinn, Co-Founder - www.TestingMom.com interviewing Marion Blank from Columbia University New York City, United States. LINK

 

Kindergartens today are asking parents to teach phonics lessons at home with their children to help them label the sounds and so that is generally very destructive and not constructive and it puts a lot of pressure on the children those who can do it don’t need it and those who can’t do it just fail. It is a lose-lose situation as opposed to a win-win. (Marion Blank)

This is the kind of disinformation that misleads many parents and teachers who accept such nonsense from so-called educators.  

Overlearning to automaticity - Marion Blank.

                                                 

Marion Blank is a psychologist known for her work on language, both spoken and written. The following is an extract from her article. LINK

Children with reading difficulties struggle with automaticity. Yet no attempts are made to teach them the skill because of the misguided notion that it can be developed only after extensive phonics practice. Overlearning to Automaticity (OtA) is the key to less-skilled children mastering reading. It requires multiple exposures to a word: typically, 20 to 30 exposures on each of about 200 carefully selected words from both the content and non-content domains.

About 60 percent of the words on any page are “non-content words”—words like the, so, what etc. that cannot be decoded by sounding out.

Ignorance and arrogance (Part 2)

                                                         

This is a continuation of the misleading article dated 26.9.2023 by Marion Blank

Breaking phonics into its components lays bare its shortcomings. First, in the initial instruction, months are spent teaching children how to decode a minute set of simple, three-letter words like man, cat and bus that can be sounded out. Those words bear little resemblance to the content of any book, leaving children unprepared for actual reading.

What an exaggeration that is! Do we need to spend months to decode a minute set of simple three-letter words? It could be true if this woman is talking about teaching 5 minutes a week or so.

About 60 percent of the words on any page are “non-content words”—words like the, so and what that cannot be decoded by sounding out. The result is that children have no solid tools for dealing with the most frequent words they see on every page.

Ignorance and arrogance (Part 1)

 

On September 26, 2023, I read the following article by Marion Blank

Two Thirds of American Kids Can’t Read Fluently. LINK

Here are some extracts and my comments:

Phonics may be a popular way to teach reading, but it fails too many children.

This is another disinformation spread by the Balanced Literacy proponents that has its roots in Whole Language (WL) instruction that emerged in the 1970s.

The level of arrogance attached to ignorance is unbearable because it is rooted in smug satisfaction with being isolated from the facts of the case.

Nonsense perpetrated by Head nerd of a community of education Nerd - Holly Korbey

 

Holly Korbey @HKorbey

Journalist and author of BUILDING BETTER CITIZENS. Head nerd at The Bell Ringer, a community of edu-nerds!

On 28.9.2023 she posted the article below and then tweeted the following.

‘…the majority (80%) struggle due to a problem with phonemic awareness.’

Two Thirds of American Kids Can’t Read Fluently

Phonics may be a popular way to teach reading, but it fails too many children.

The article was written by Marion Blank, a psychologist known for her work on language, both spoken and written.