Debunking the Phonics-Only Myth:

 

A Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading to Dyslexic Students

In a recent LinkedIn post, reading consultant Brian Vieira argued strongly against sight word or whole word instruction, calling it the “worst way” to teach reading. He emphasized the superiority of phonics-based methods, pointing to the vast number of English words, the finite set of speech sounds, and scientific evidence favoring sound processing over memorization.

Memorising Dolch words also known as HFW

 

A former teacher from the UK, Pat Stone, posted the above image on Twitter. I then tweeted the following:

Luqman Michel @luqmanmichel

One of the widely held beliefs is that HFW (Dolch words) cannot be memorised by kids, dyslexic or otherwise. Kids in Chinese schools have to memorise 600 words per year for 6 years while learning to read in Malay and English and Han Yu Pinyin. What's your view?

Despicable behavior of some British and Australians

 

Many ‘educators’ from the US have blocked me but I can’t recollect any from the US who have blocked me and said things behind my back. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for some Australians and the British.

Recently I created a second account on Twitter and saw the following tweets from Peter Blenkinsop from the UK.

This guy is a secondary school teacher and has never taught kids to learn to read and yet argues with me about how to teach kids to learn to read. 

Notes for parents and teachers (Part 2)

Dolch Word (Sight words) list

50-70% of all words used in school books are from the Dolch Basic Sight Words vocabulary of 220 words.

Teach your child to read - Lesson 2

 

Please go to lesson 2 only after your child has learned all the sight words in lesson one.

Relevant Tweets on phonics

Here are some recent tweets on phonics. 

Teach your child to read - a sample lesson

Do read my post on balanced literacy here.

The post above on balanced literacy is on how I taught all my so-called dyslexic students to learn to read. They were all kids who had shut down from learning to read due to confusion. They were all able to read in Malay which uses the same letters as does English.

Notes for parents and teachers (Part2)

I regret that the uploading of my book on the internet will be a little delayed as we are having a little problem with sound recording.

Meanwhile here is part two of 'Notes to parents and teachers' which will be part of the book.

Sight words – My first student for 2019 (Part 2)

Yesterday was the 7^th lesson for my first student,Emmanuel,  for 2019. He has now memorised 57 sight words and has been taught to read many words using phonics. Listen to the 2 YouTube videos below.

A book with the first family words

Let your imagination run wild and think of all the phrases/ sentences you can make with the family words and with the sight words you have introduced to your child.

Look for a list of sight words as introduced by Edward Dolch in the 1930's. You may find them here or/and here.

You may write the words Dolch words in your search button and see if you prefer other web sites.

Teaching reluctant and struggling learners

                                                         

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the discussion in a forum under ‘Literacy for Reluctant and Struggling Readers’ on LinkedIn and have tried to figure out if any suggestions there that can help to ease the confusion of dyslexic students. At the end of the day I still feel that dyslexic students will be confused and will ask me just as many questions as they have asked me. 

 

I have students who have asked me why ‘was’ is spelled that way and not ‘wos’. Why had I pronounced ‘as’ the way I did and now sound out ‘was’ which has the ‘as’ in it another way? One student had asked me why I had taught him to sound ‘on’ the way I did and yet pronounce ‘station’ the way it sounded. These are the ‘shut-down’ kids. They always ask the question ‘why’. In school when they are not told explicitly that many letters and letter combinations have different sounds they shut down.

Teach your dyslexic child to read - Phonics vs Whole word

How do we read unfamiliar words?

In English, fluent reading requires both phonics and rote memorization of high-frequency words. Phonics helps us decode unfamiliar words that follow phonetic patterns. However, many English words are not phonetic, so we must memorize them.

This is why debates over which single method to use when teaching children to read English make little sense. We should use every useful tool available.

Teaching reading without phonics reduces an alphabetic language to something more like a pictorial one from ancient times. Alphabets were invented precisely to make reading simpler and to allow us to figure out unfamiliar words.

Dyslexia - Phonic vs. sight words

By the middle of primary one, if a child is falling behind in reading than there should be immediate intervention and a one to one tutor should be found.