[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

On the theme of learn to decode then comprehension will follow:

I was told today about Downs children learning to speak once they had
learned to decode.  The reading led to words being available to them to
speak...

My experience agrees with Barbara - that those who have good language will
fly with reading once they have efficient decoding. Two case histories
spring to mind:

The boy who stagnated on comprehension because, although he could decode,
his eye movements were not at his age or intellectual level so his
processing capacity was consumed by the physical effort of deciphering the
print.  Once he had carried out eye exercises to bring his saccades and
fixations to the appropriate functional levels his comprehension took off
like a rocket from a jar.

A boy who had reading accuracy so low down the scale it did not register on
objective tests.  His speed was registering on testing but since he was
mostly guessing words that did not help him much.  His comprehension was a
bit higher than his speed as he was bright too.  Once he had decoding
cracked (through scrambled reading - and sorry but I too have lost contact
with the suppliers - am trying to find them again) his comprehension reached
the ceiling of the Neale Analysis without further explicit teaching.  (None
too surprising cos one of his questions while he was still learning to read
was, "Why are there thermals above the snow line?  Isn't it too cold up
there?").

Others need comprehension teaching explicitly;  inference, sequences,
vocabulary etc... sometimes this a "boy" thing, as we found with our own son
pre GCSE - he had not been an avid fiction reader, so although his language
skills were strong he found some of the GCSE literature texts and questions
beyond him.  With direct and intense teaching he soon caught up (key words,
key sentences, the structure of a paragraph and how to apply these concepts
to study skills).

Philippa

On 2/7/07, barbara <barbht at saqnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Total misunderstanding of the purpose of teaching decoding/ synthetic
> phonics  - which is just that - to understand the written code
>
> then what you make of it, having first acquired the tool,depends upon your
> knowledge of the oral language and its nuances ie such things as cultural
> background.( an able kid with background that uses words will 'fly' when
> they can decode but many others will still plod on)
>
> However once the code is cracked it is then possible to teach an extended
> vocabulary and hence an extended comprehension
>
> Barbara ht
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
> [mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of dolfrog
> Sent: 07 February 2007 18:05
> To: 'Eddie Carron'; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary
>
>
> Hi Eddie
>
> >From the content of the posts on this thread, it would appear that if
> >you
> use synthetic phonics only then children can decode from the text but have
> no idea what they are reading, you may as well have them read perfect
> French
> but still have no idea what they have read. It would appear to be like the
> Monty Python Hungarian Phrase Book sketch, but not so funny, as these are
> children who are supposed to understand English as their main fork of
> communication.
>
> It is like my son Who learnt to read books by recognising the shape of the
> words, and again could read perfectly but he had no idea what he was
> reading
> about.
> So synthetic phonics seems to display from the content of these posts on
> this thread, a complete lack of comprehension, and if you can not
> comprehend
> what you are reading then you might was well not bother because you are
> not
> able to use these skills are part of your means of communication, which is
> the prime purpose of learning to read.
> So may be if some were to actually READ the Clackmannanshire Report it
> says
> that synthetic phonics should not be used on its own but should be used
> with
> other reading programs, may be the posts on this thread are explaining the
> reasons why that was the main conclusion of that ill conceived research
> program.
>
> Best wishes
>
> dolfrog
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
> [mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Eddie Carron
> Sent: 07 February 2007 11:07
> To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary
>
> Graeme
>
> Teaching SP doesn't create parrots - it creates people who are able to
> decode.  No-one has ever implied anything other than that as far as I am
> aware. This may not be of importance to you personally but it is a
> critical
> skill for millions of poor readers.
>
>
> Comprehension of language beyond a restricted expressive code is a
> consequence of life experience and innate intellectual capacity.  It is
> generally agreed that there is no specific and separate phenomenon called
> 'reading comprehension' - there is only language comprehension. If you
> define 'reading' as the retrieval and assimilation of the intellectual
> content of text then these children have learned to 'retrieve' but not
> 'assimilate'  It is not a weakness of synthetic phonics that some children
> have limited language appreciation.  Another feature of innate
> intellectual
> capacity is the inability of generalize information and this specifically
> limits the ability to assimilate implied meanings. Such children usually
> cope reasonably well with non-fiction reading material but generally fail
> with fiction where inferrential comprehension is required. It is important
> to appreciate that SP is about improving decoding skills and is not in any
> connected with 'comprehension'
>
>
>
>
>
> Eddie C.
>
>
>
> --
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>
>
>
>