Congratulations to one my former student

I wrote about one of my first students who drove me up the wall with refusing to sound out the word fox. She had been taught letter sound correspondences wrongly by her Tuition Centre. Please read details in my post here:

Q&A on Disengaged Students

The following is a Face Book Q&A between my former employer Mr.Kandiah Namasivayam and myself.

Kandiah:

Luqman, some Kids shut down while Learning English. Others don't. Why? That is the million dollar question. It is obvious to you. But when some kids have no problem why only some kids shut down? So the entire blame cannot be put on English and its teaching method. Obviously there is more to it than what is apparent. Now I wonder why kids turn off when watching Sesame Street? There could be many reasons, one being distraction or attention deficiency syndrome. How do you connect the former to this one?

Challenging institutionalized assumptions about reading failure

I think it is time to challenge our institutionalized assumptions about reading failure. Our assumption that many students will be poor readers can and should be changed. As Dr. G Reid Lyon said, these kids are “instructional casualties”.

Since they are “instructional casualties” what should teachers do to prevent it?

I ask myself as to why scientists, educators, and PhD’s are still groping in the dark when Dr.G Reid Lyon had said in ‘Children of the Code’ that most of the disengaged kids are “Instructional Casualties”?

Is he the only one to say that? No.  Many others have said the same thing and they had said it even much earlier than Dr. G Reid Lyon did. Recently Jo-Anne Gross, from Linkedin, a group I belong to, was daring enough to say (in Linkedin) that reading failure is a case of ‘Dystechia!’ I hope more people will be bold enough to speak their mind like Jo-Anne. 

Shame avoidance

The following is taken from 'Children of the Code'

Here are some of the things the 6 kids in the video above said:

Kid No.1: I’d make a scene …... I would act out….just rebel…I was just embarrassed

Kid No2: I just make up an excuse, I say I don’t have glasses with me, that normally worked but I don’t wear glasses.

Kid no.3: I usually slump down on my seat where they couldn’t see me. If they wanted me to read I’d pretend that I am figuring out something ….It’s pretty much what I have been doing for as long as I know.

Kid No.4: Go to restroom…… turn my head down …make like I was not paying attention so they won’t call me.

Kid No.5: I will go to the bathroom and stay until it was time and come back in.

Kid No. 6: I will act like I was asleep so they would not call on me

Correct 'Letter sounds'

I copied and pasted my article "How not to teach letter sounds" in Linkedin and a reader asked me if I had any videos on 'how to sound letters'.

It appears that there are many teachers who do not know how letter sounds let alone parents.

So, I copied 3 videos below for your listening pleasure. Please listen to them carefully. Ask your kids, especially kids who do not like reading, how to pronounce a few letters, say, F, M and L and please write to me and let me know if it is different from what you hear below.

You may write to me at: luqmanm2002@yahoo.co.uk

Here are the three videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeFoJkbqOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Byg6oork8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKzTXfZlIc

The Real 21st-Century Problem in Public Education

The Real 21st-Century Problem in Public Education isPoverty

I picked the title above from a discussion on Linkedin in the internet. I believe articles like this will be leading the masses to bark up the wrong tree.  

"The October 2013 Southern Education Foundation study indicates clearly that poverty, which has long been the biggest obstacle to educational achievement, is more important than ever. It is our true 21^st century problem.

A large and growing proportion of US students live in poverty and even concentrated poverty, have a disability, and/or are learning English as a second language. THAT is the paradigm shift, and we need a totally new set of policies to address that 21^st century reality.

We do have a 21^st century education crisis – poverty. Until we properly diagnose the illness, however, our prescribed remedies will continue to fall far short."

I believe poverty (the state of being extremely poor) is a problem but not necessarily the biggest problem in public education.

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?