[senco-forum] Developinglistening skillsinsecondarypupils-Eddie's CD

Eddie, Aly, You are approaching the problems faced by early readers in

Claire and ALy

Someone started this thread with a question about responding to the needs of 
children who lacked listening skills. I, and a couple of others, responded 
with positive contributions which that initial enquirer appeared to find 
useful. That would have ended the thread as far as I was concerned until Aly 
intervened with a blanket condemnation of the use of approaches like mine 
because they did not involve an examination of the possibilty that any of 
these children had APD.

There are many people who do not agree with me and who find my responses 
irritating - that is their undoubted right. By the same token there are many 
contributors whose views I find unbelievably crass and ill-informed. The 
strategy I use in these cases is to press the delete button when I see their 
names. I only open a tiny fraction of the mails I receive and I assume that 
others do the same. I believe there is a psychological label for people who 
are drawn to read the views of those whose view they find 'unacceptable' or 
distasteful. I dont know whether this label is helpful or not. My own 
personal strategy is simply to delete them unread and it really works for 
me.

Aly describes my approach as 'hit and miss' with no way of knowing why they 
work.That does deserve a response and I will not shy away from providing 
one. My approach is the very opposite of 'hit and miss' It is about very 
precisely targeting of specific, identified deficit. If a poor reader is 
unable to segment complex words into two or three simpler segemnts, I teach 
that child in a way that ensures that segmenting becomes a reflex reaction 
to complex words, secure in the knowledge that his or her reading skills wll 
inevitably and significantly improve when this very specific problem has 
been resolved, And I know exacly why their reading has improved - nothing 
hit or miss there!

During the current hols, I have been working with a 6 year old child whose 
reading was not taking off' His distraught parents had paid privately for an 
EdPsych evaluation which provided only some very general advice - 'read to 
the child every night - make reading fun - etc (which the parents had always 
done anyway) I taught the parents how to use Keda Cowlings Toe by Toe on a 
daily basis and provided a short, daily skills boosting programme of my own 
devising. I only visited them once a week. The parents are now ecstatic 
about the child's reading after only four weeks. They know that he is on the 
way to becoming a reader - certainly not because I gave his difficulty a 
label but possibly because I declined to do so. I am happy to let other 
apply labels.

Listening is a skill. If a poor reader is deficient in that skill, I believe 
it reasonable to assume that some degree of attention deficit is at least a 
contributing factor in the child's failure to make normal progress in 
reading. If I am able to exercise the child's ability to maintain focus on 
auditory information, that can only improve his or her chances of becoming a 
literate individual - whatever label is applied to their deficit. No more 
than that - but also no less than that!

Eddie C.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gillian Clayton" <jillclayton at mac.com>
To: <Olanys at aol.com>
Cc: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:17 PM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Developinglistening 
skillsinsecondarypupils-Eddie's CD

> Eddie,  Aly,  You are approaching the problems faced by early readers  in 
> different ways.  Aly is looking for a first cause,  Eddie giving  practice 
> in skills.  Surely,  we need people to do both.  You are  highly valued 
> members of the forum - but this squabbling and snarling  will be losing 
> Forum members.  We have politicians to tell us that we  are doing 
> everything all wrong,  all the time,  whatever we do.  We  really don't 
> need to start in on each other.
> I'm sorry if this comes over as pretentious and patronising.  Jill
> On 27 Aug 2006, at 20:59, Olanys at aol.com wrote:
>
>> But literacy skills deficits do not have general causes, they have  very
>> specific causes and yours is a very hit and miss approach, which,  if it 
>> works at
>> all you claim as success but have no idea why!
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Aly
>>
>> Chair Auditory  Processing Disorder in the UK/APDUK
>> www.lacewingmultimedia.com/APD.htm
>> www.apduk.org
>>
>
> 