"The task is not to see what has never been seen before,
but to think what has never been thought before about
what you see every day."
-- Erwin Schrödinger (1887 - 1961)
I listened to the whole interview of Julian Elliott with Martin Bloomfield which spoke about things everyone knows. Where is the solution to reducing illiteracy? LINK
Learners generally fall into two categories: approximately 80% of children accept what their teachers present without question, often learning to read through patterns and analogies. In contrast, about 20% are logical thinkers who question everything they encounter. When their lessons conflict with prior knowledge or fail to make sense, these children may shut down or disengage from the learning process. This was already discovered by Thorndike in 1913 (More than 100 years ago). LINK
On 30.11.23 I read a tweet by The reading mum, Ph.D. @readingmumngr
If your child struggles with a concept, they have yet to understand it. Sometimes, they are not developmentally ready. Other times, you need to show them another way they can better learn that concept.
What has been your experience?
I replied as follows:
What if that kid is struggling with a concept that has been taught wrongly?
How can a child scaffold when the first scaffold is damaged?
I am only talking about decoding/reading.
I am from the audit field and started teaching to find out why kids were able to read in Malay but not in English. There is a Chinese saying - A journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step.
My question is - what if a kid's first step is to the East when he actually wants to go West?
On 30.11.23 Cameron Carter @CRCarter313 Tweeted the following:
Every educator knows the importance of foundational skills, and of building student engagement and ownership while teaching these skills.
I then Tweeted as follows:
'Every educator knows the importance of foundational skills'.
This is Bullshit! Stop spreading disinformation.
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 then replied to my Tweet.
? Sorry you feel that way.
For many years now I have said that many intelligent kids disengage from learning to read due to teachers/schools teaching the wrong sounds represented by letters.
The obvious questions to ask me, which have never been asked, are:
i. Why are there kids unable to read in schools teaching systematic synthetic phonics like the school in which Sue Lloyd is teaching?
ii. How are a majority of kids who are taught sounds represented by letters wrongly, that is teaching letters with extraneous sounds, able to read?
The first sentence in the image above says little was known in the old days.
But, many matters discovered and explained in the old days have not entered the brains of many of our present-day educators including Mark Seidenberg.
One of the most important theories proposed by Thorndike in 1913 (more than 100 years ago) is that what is learnt in the initial stage is important. New ideas that do not reconcile with old ideas will be rejected by the minds of a majority of people.
There is another quote from even much earlier as follows:
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning. (Claude Bernard 1813 - 1878)
A kid’s prior knowledge can help or hinder learning. Prior knowledge influences how kids interpret what they are learning. When the knowledge a kid has from previous learning is inaccurate it will interfere or impede new learning.
The powers that be are experts in ensuring that this policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ is in place.
The Reading War has been going on for decades and is now stronger than ever between the phonetics and whole word Apostles.
Exponents from both sides keep warring and will not stand to reason. Their minds are like the Human egg. When one sperm goes into the ovum the ovum does not allow another sperm to get in just like the minds of these exponents.
Minute 34.50: If they don’t know the sounds of the letters they are not going to know how to read.
This is nonsense propagated by the puppets of the powers that be.
The brain is powerful enough to figure out how to read despite not knowing the sounds of the letters.
The following are extracts of a research report by Prof. James Chapman and Prof. William Tunmer in 2019 and my comments. I was sent this as an attachment in an email from James Chapman a week ago, on 6.12.2021.
Chapman and Tunmer are researchers attached to Massey University
The wealth of scientific evidence does not support the view that dyslexia is present at birth, that it can involve numeracy and musical notation, and that the skills may not “match up to an individual’s other cognitive abilities” (Elliott & Grigorenko, 2014).
The U.S.-based International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has retained the term dyslexia:
Dyslexia is 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 that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. (IDA; retrieved from http://eida.org/definition-of-dyslexia/ )
Yesterday, 27.10.2020, I had a fruitful discussion on Twitter with nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia.
In brief I said at the end of the discussion:
My discussions on Twitter is not to 'fix' but to make teachers aware that we can reduce kids leaving school as illiterate simply by not teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes of consonants. Prevent rather than cure.
nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia responded:
Agree...whenever I watch an instructional video I shudder.
‘Preschool and child care have little impact on a child’s later school test scores’.
The above was tweeted by Greg Ashman.
“This is why we MUST provide explicit, targeted instruction and practice opportunities to all of students.” (Lynn Givens)
