Orthographic Mapping by Stephen Parker (Part 1)

 

Here are extracts of an article by Stephen Parker and my comments. You may read the article here.

I have decided to break this up into bite sized posts.

Stephen Parker:

Orthographic mapping is the connection-making process that automatically creates sight words – words that are simply recognized at a glance, with decoding no longer necessary.

The connections that need to be made, according to Ehri, are between the letters seen in a word’s spelling and the sounds (phonemes) heard in that word’s pronunciation. This is precisely what decoding (sounding out) a word accomplishes. For most students, decoding a word successfully 2-5 times creates a new sight word.

Why insist on research reports for everything?

 

I read a well written blog post by Lindsay Kemeny. Here are extracts and my comments on the article. (LINK)

 

I have always tried to be careful with how I bring this up, because people get so upset and defensive when confronted with the fact that there is no research to support these reading strategies and, even worse, they are doing harm to students. But my patience is wearing thin on this topic. Just when I think that the tide is turning and that the majority of educators now realize the problems surrounding 3 cueing, I hear an edu-celebrity tell teachers on Facebook to simply “tweak” the strategies instead of get rid of them or a reader emails me asking me to take down this post stating that it’s only my opinion and that 3 cueing works. This particular reader told me not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but 3 cueing is exactly what needs to be thrown out. I stand by what I said. There is no research to support these strategies and you don’t need to take my word for it. You can read about it here, here, and here.

 

Lyn Stone and orthographic mapping

 

Lyn Stone had blocked me for commenting on her tweet. Only recently have I seen her tweets again. Here is one such tweet I read yesterday and believe she does not know what she is talking about other than quoting what someone had said about 20 years ago.

Here is the URL to Lyn’s video clip and my comments.

https://youtu.be/KIuwKnZqJEQ

Jo Anne Gross and other blockers

Too many so-called educators on social media block me. They block me to prevent truth being known by others. They misrepresent to promote their products.

Jo Anne Gross was one of the first to block me. She blocked me on LinkedIn when I wrote that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of dyslexia. In 2010, I also started promoting my Free of charge lessons on my blog for parents of kids unable to read. If teachers and parents know why kids are disengaging from learning to read, then Jo Anne Gross as an intervention business owner, may lose business.

Labels like ADHD and Dyslexia can interfere - Dr. Richard Selznick

 

Following my post on the response to a question on Twitter I received the following email from Dr. Richard Selznick.

 

I looked back on some of your other blog posts about Phonemic Awareness and related topics.

Building knowledge from the ground up

 

I read the post found here by a psychology teacher, Paul Cline, who writes on ‘thoughts on teaching and learning, and teaching psychology.

 

What is in the article is what I have been harping on for a decade. I have said that I learned from the experts - my 'dyslexic' students -that they had disengaged from learning to read due to confusion. They could not scaffold new learning to what they had already learned earlier. They could not blend because sounds of consonants were taught with extraneous sounds.

 

Q&A Dr. Richard Selznick

 

Here is a Tweet for which I had no answer and had to refer to my mentor. I am posting this here as it may be useful to other readers.

 

Dr. K. Metropoulos @DrKMetropoulos

Question-what if a child sees N, but the printed letter is M? Phonemic awareness won’t mean anything because they aren’t seeing the letter others see. What can I do to help?

 

No one wants to be sold but everyone wants to buy

 

I spoke to my son about what I tweeted to Tisha Rarendra (see below) and told him that I think she will not write as requested by me. He then told me that no one wants to be sold but everyone wants to buy and I have used that statement for the title above.

Tisha Rajendra @TishaRajendra Nov 20 Replying to @JoAnneGross1

Why and why not

Here is a tweet I read this morning responding to one of my tweets.

A Williams aka Ms. Worf @Ms_Worf Replying to @luqmanmichel and @MartinOdimaJr

Where I worked as an elementary teacher, they did very little to find out the why. Where I am now as a high school teacher, we focus on finding the why. Personally, finding and addressing the why is of extreme importance because no one tried to help me with my why.

Chalkbeat Colorado

 Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization reporting on education in Denver and the surrounding area. (From the internet.)

Early this month a zoom meeting by community@chalkbeat.org was announced on Twitter on the following topic.

Timothy Shanahan on phonemic awareness

Here are extracts from a post by Timothy Shanahan dated 13 November, 2021.

 

Timothy:

Not long ago, I dared question the evidence supporting the teaching of “advanced phonemic awareness.”

 

My comment:

This reminds me of my tweet and the response I received from KYEducator2018.

Evidence requested by Jeffrey Bowers - anecdotal and Research reports

Here are extracts from a post by Jeffery Bowers and my comments.

 

Jeffrey Bowers:

I expect some advocates of phonics will say that the term “phonics” refers to knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, and children need to learn these correspondences to read aloud.  The problem with this is that almost all forms of reading instruction teach letter-sound correspondences, including whole language, balanced literacy, and SWI.  The issue at hand is whether phonics instruction (as defined in all the meta-analyses and government reports) is the best way to teach these mappings.

Common sense and teaching

 

 

I read an article a week ago. Here are a few extracts and my comments.

One sentence from the article that caught my eyes is: Once habits become ingrained they can be very hard to shift, even when we are presented with evidence that challenges them.

That statement reminds me of what Charlie Munger had said about how the human mind resembles the human egg. LINK.

Fountas and Pinnell

The following are extracts from the Fountas Blog post. You may read the article here.

The goal for the reader is accuracy using all sources of information simultaneously. And that includes processing each letter in words from left to right. If a reader says “pony” for “horse” because of information from the pictures, that tells the teacher that the reader is using meaning information from the pictures, as well as the structure of the language, but is neglecting to use the visual information of the print. His response is partially correct, but the teacher needs to guide him to stop and work for accuracy.

"Try that again, and be sure what you read looks right and makes sense", or "Check the letters to be sure you are right."

The goal is for the child to stop or monitor, look more closely at the word and think about what would make sense and fit with the sequence of letters.

The bottom line is that a young reader must use everything he knows to move through a written text, to read it accurately and understand it. Multiple sources of information are combined in a complex and orchestrated way. The development of the child's ability to use all sources of information will take time and skillful teaching. It is impossible to boil down this process to something as simplistic as “don't think, just sound it out.”

Opaque language vs transparent language

 

I have written 2 articles on this topic but I am prompted to write again on this as within a span of less than a week two dyslexia experts have said that kids are unable to read in English because it is an opaque language.

English is considered an opaque language because letters represent more than one sound.