Nancy Hennessy's Wisdom: The Majority of Struggling Readers Aren't Dyslexic – And We Are Failing Them Anyway

For years I have argued that most children labelled “dyslexic” in English-speaking systems are not truly dyslexic. They are bright kids who shut down because of confusion introduced by poor teaching—especially the extraneous vowel sounds added to consonants (“buh” instead of pure /b/) that make blending impossible. Remove that confusion with pure sounds, structured practice, and high-frequency word automaticity, and they read fluently. I have seen it in more than eighty children I taught personally.

The root cause of children being unable to read (Part4)

  

Ethan Lynn, PhD

Thanks, Luqman, I appreciate your insight and fully agree that phonics and letter-sound correspondence are one important key to reading success.

However, I’m a bit unclear about the idea that kids can "figure it out" on their own if they don't have proper instruction.

From my experience, those who don’t receive proper early instruction still need targeted intervention later on to fully catch up. This can and should occur in 4th grade and beyond and focus on the instruction you mentioned in the audio clip.

Could you clarify whether you're suggesting that most kids who can't read well by fourth grade will learn to read without further intervention even if they've received poor instruction? Or if there’s still a role for additional instruction? I'd love to better understand how your approach applies to struggling readers.

Luqman Michel Author

Ethan Lynn, PhD Has any research been done on how many students who could not read in grade four could read by the time they are in grade 9?

Did anyone find out how they could read without any remediation/intervention?

A large % of kids learn to read when they somehow figure it out.

They learn to read in later grades by using patterns and analogies.

Had they been taught correctly at the onset; they would not have had to figure it out.

 

Ethan Lynn, PhD

Luqman Michel, I agree that early instruction needs to be done right.

I'm curious about your argument that some kids eventually figure out how to read without intervention. How do they do this, and is there research supporting it? What do you mean by using "patterns and analogies," and what percentage of students successfully make this turnaround?

 

Additionally, what about the students who don’t figure it out? Are you advocating for no intervention, or could intervention help teach kids the right way, making up for what they missed early on?

To be continued…

Dyslexics by Dr Martin Bloomfield - A discussion on LinkedIn

 

The following are comments on a LinkedIn post by Dr Martin Bloomfield.

Emma Hartnell- Baker, whose profile states that she connects spoken and written English with ‘Phonemies’ from birth commented on the post by Dr Martin.

Here are extracts and my comments/questions.

 

Dr Martin Bloomfield Author - Relentless optimist

Unless you're taking kids through your programme who have never had a reading difficulty, you have an ideal opportunity to research based on kids who have a reading difficulty but received early intervention.

My comment now: 

Pre-boxed intervention programmes – Jackie Connell

                                                                    

Below is a Tweet asking an excellent question and a reply that is equally good. It is like many other such tweets where the twitter says he/she is serious but never replies once I have tweeted in response.

Jackie Connell @jackielconnell Aug 30

Why is our education system so deeply committed to pre-boxed intervention programs? Models almost exclusively designed by people who do not represent the learners or communities they are intended to support. Legitimate question. Not rhetorical. Please answer.

Angelina Gerard @awolgerard Aug 30

You have to consider, that most educators are people who enjoyed & did well in school, so most see education through the lens they experienced, making it challenging to consider approaches they never needed or experienced, taking the creativity out of the problem solving process.

This is exactly what I have been harping on for many years.

The number one cause of low literacy in America Dr.David Boulton

The following was published on 4.4.2018 by Dr. David Boulton on the Learning Steward website.

The Number One Cause of LowLiteracy in America? 

India too has been afflicted with wrong phonics

Last year the parent of one of my past students requested me to help her sister in India whose child was not reading at grade level.

I spoke with the mother, via Whatsapp, and asked her to record how her daughter read a few of the consonants I gave her.

Here is an audio of the sounds (now converted into a video) of the few consonants I had sent her to have it recorded.

Reflective Practice

Here is a comment I received on my article on Winning and Losing and discovery in my blog. The same post can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/winning-losing-discovery-luqman-michel/