Another confession of a teacher

The following is extracted from a blog by Melinda Crean  found here:  

“You know at the end of university I didn’t have a clue how to teach kids how to read, write and spell.  I came through university with the whole language approach to teaching reading.  This approach is based on the visual memorisation of whole written words and doesn’t teach the skills or conceptual knowledge needed to read.  When I came through uni, phonics was a bit taboo, and we were told that we don’t teach literacy like that anymore.  I have had no exposure to phonics and don’t really know much about this approach to teaching reading”.

Dyslexia is not a language based learning disability

                                                        

I'm afraid I have to disagree with what Rachna Varia says in her video. LINK

    This video shares what dyslexia is, what it's not, and what needs to be done!

    “Dyslexia is a language based learning disability that impacts phonological processing in reading…”

     “Phonological processing is the ability to see or hear a word, break it down to discrete sounds, and then associate each sound with letter/s that make up the word”.

Toast Masters Talk: Shut Down Kids

                                                       

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I am grateful for this opportunity to give a talk on shutdown kids.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Jacob Yan who invited me to give this talk. Dr.  Jacob Yan is a fellow club member of The Lions Club of Kota Kinabalu Host, the oldest and largest Lions club in Sabah.

This talk is one of the numerous activities of The Lions Club of Kota Kinabalu Host.

Confessions of a Teacher

                                                     

The following is part of a comment on LinkedIn in a forum I am participating in.

 "I`m told that to be polite is important but when it harms innocent children and puts their teachers into further instructional confusion-it irritates me to no end......there is barely a whimper of "how to teach reading" in the early grades. The factory of labeling the victim is still in place, I think 99% of the problems are dysteachia brought on by outdated teacher licensing institutions!" (Jo-Anne Gross)

 

Since 2010 I have been saying that the majority of kids leaving school as illiterates are casualties of teaching. It starts in kindergarten where letter sounds/phonemes are taught wrongly.

Disengaged students

                                     

                                          

I prefer the term disengaged/disconnected/shut-down students to dyslexic students. The term dyslexia is being misused by people with vested interest to include many conditions that would be best excluded from the dyslexia definition. For instance, kids with auditory processing difficulties, kids with acuity problems, kids with neurological problems, and kids with sight problems should all be excluded from the dyslexia umbrella.

I have reasons for wanting to differentiate between individuals who are said to be ‘dyslexic’ and disengaged students. Problems faced by disengaged students can be 1) prevented and 2) overcome as disengaged students are a result of schooling-caused teaching problems. Disengaged students form, I believe, a majority of kids who leave school as illiterates.

Dyslexia – How NOT to teach letter sounds

                                                       

How would you pronounce the following word?

‘Cuhohtuh’

Can you recognize that word? It is an English word given to us by Liz Dunnon. You can hear it in a YouTube video here: (You can hear it under skill 2 between minutes 1.48 and 3.05 in the video.) LINK

Dyslexia – News from organisations with vested interests

                                                      

On 4.6.2015 I first saw an article on the internet about how dyslexics see fonts. This news was subsequently published in many magazines and newspapers. It began to appear on Facebook and an article also appeared on LinkedIn. This continued for about a month.

Many articles related to dyslexia keep surfacing periodically and I believe these are articles supported by some organisations with a vested interest.

The first article that I saw on dyslexia fonts can be found here:LINK

Dyslexia not linked to eyesight

                                                 

A study says that dyslexia is not linked to eyesight. LINK

Many individuals and associations who have a vested interest keep posting articles that say that dyslexics have all kinds of ailments which is not true.

Writing and reading

                                                                

I have written about a British who could read fluently in Japanese and yet was ‘dyslexic’ when it came to reading in English. I have articles by researchers saying that Italians who could read fluently in Italian could not read well in English. I have taught many dyslexic kids who could read well in Malay and yet were dyslexic in English. Now, my friend Bob has said that a Harvard professor who wrote the introduction to the 1912 English translation of The Montessori Method also wrote "That (handwriting fluency) might work for Italians, but it would never work for Anglophone students".

 

How can we incorporate handwriting with what I have been writing in my blog on teaching ‘shut-down’ learners?

My article in LinkedIn today

                                                         

                                            Does not matter if it is a black cat or white cat

Here is an article I posted on LinkedIn today in response to the trained teachers who insist that students should be taught on some scientific system.

Dyslexia – Some questions and suggested answers

                                                  

Are there children who find it more difficult to learn to read than a majority of children?

The answer should be a resounding yes as there are research reports and newspaper reports stating that all over the world about 20% of children are illiterate in the English language when they leave school.

How many of the roughly 20% of children can become good readers after intervention?

Almost 90% of these children can be taught to read with intervention as recorded by many researchers.

My current 'Shut down' student - Part 2

                                                            

                                                                           实事求是    

We agreed to teach Steve 3 times a week for one hour each time. We also informed his parents that we would be able to teach him only until the end of March.

From day one (25.1.2015) we started writing out 5 Dolch words a day and asked his mother to make sure he knows how to spell those words on his next visit.

My current ‘shut-down’ student - 2015

                                                            

My current student Steve (not his real name) came to us on 25.1.2015. A mother of one of our former students had introduced Steve’s mother to us. (I have given him this nickname as he is well built and if he does bodybuilding exercises he will be like the legendary Steve Reeves).

Steve will be 9 in October this year and has been retained in primary 2 because he was not able to read at grade level.

Linkedin – Forum on how to teach reluctant and struggling readers- Final Part

                                                  

Jane

Individualistic views and opinions have no place in training teachers in the "science of reading".
There will be tremendous improvements when teachers gain this kind of training.
Phonemes are speech sounds.

My thoughts: I believe this is the problem. If the Science of Reading has been taught for the last donkey years why are there kids who shut down? Why has the rate of illiterate students leaving school not reduced since 1970?

Linkedin – Forum on how to teach reluctant and struggling readers- Part 3 of 4

                                              

As mentioned in my previous post the exchanges in the forum are all academic. 

Jane

I disagree because we teach the 44 phonemes of the English language and their graphemes (around 90) to achieve reading and spelling proficiency.
This is the science of reading.