LinkedIn discussion - naïve or irresponsible (Part 3)

 

Here is a comment on my post and my response.

Phillip Chipping 

The Science of Reading body of science dates back 50 years with thousands of studies/researchers and millions of participants. The National Reading Panel's 2000 report showed that instruction that taught phonics made greater progress than instruction that did not focus on phonics. I'm not saying there are no other ways to teach and other ways to improve, but I know dozens of dyslexic tutors and every one of them has seen immediate and drastic improvement in children's reading ability when the method of instruction was changed to an explicit, structured-literacy, phonics-based approach. In other words, this method has been duplicated by thousands of teachers across the world and had immediate and powerful results in children's lives who otherwise could not read. The same results as what you're telling us you have with your method. Perhaps one of the reasons it's not "working" here is because most of the children who need it aren't getting one-on-one instruction. Maybe that's what makes the biggest difference.

LinkedIn discussion - naïve or irresponsible (Part 2)

 

These are public comments on LinkedIn.

Phillip Chipping’s LinkedIn profile says he is an Educator, Inventor, Writer, Lover of People (philanthropist)

 

Phillip Chipping:

 

Although I don't discount the 80 kids you succeeded with (no small feat! I'm sure their parents are so grateful for your help!), have you taught your methods to others? Have they also implemented them with successful outcomes? Although technically statistically relevant, 80 kids is still a fairly small number, especially if we can't see anything regarding the research methods and the tutoring methods that were used. You are asking us to simply trust you. So, I'm curious what you are doing to build a body of evidence for your methods.

LinkedIn discussion - naïve or irresponsible (Part 1)

 

A LinkedIn connection and I discussed on LinkedIn Messenger. Here are extracts of our discussion.

Phillip Chipping:

You are turning off people who could be allies to your cause. In the business world, we know that our most vocal critics can become our greatest customers and supporters. We often make an extra effort to satisfy those customers and answer their problems. These are all smart people - why the attack mode? Why not work with them instead of against them? I'm not saying to adopt what they teach, but why not ask respectfully? Are you looking for clickbait for your blog? Sensationalism over cool-headed discussion?

The importance of combining phonics and whole language.

                          

Phillip Chipping and I have been discussing on LinkedIn for a few days. He asked me to send him 2 posts which I think are the top.

All my posts are worth reading but I thought I’d make a new post as there was another teacher, I discussed with who teaches phonics but does not understand why memorising Dolch words is important.

This is one of the problems with kids shutting down. The phonics proponents are adamant that kids should not rote memorise HFWs because it is based on Whole Language and the WL proponents think phonics is useless as many kids who have learned phonics can’t read.

Neither the phonics or the whole word advocates know why many kids shut down from learning to read. 

Identifying At-Risk Students in grade 1

 

I am not a trained teacher, but in 2004, I found myself teaching a child who couldn’t read a single sentence after two years of school. Curious about this intelligent child’s struggles, I began researching the issue. I eventually worked with over 80 similar students and noticed a common pattern: each child was sounding out consonants with an extraneous sound.

By teaching them the correct consonant sounds, they started to read successfully. Many of my former students have since become professionals. I then began assisting parents concerned about their children's reading difficulties. I asked them to record their kids sounding out consonants and encouraged them to correct the pronunciations. Soon, those children also began to read.