[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

I'm no Ruth Mishkin but I was responsible for some work in junior school in an area of South London where the children were predominantly fBengali. In some cases, the child was the only person in the family with any English. The work did not involve SP or any phonics whatsoever. It involved exclusively a whole word approach.  The children involved in the one year project were the poorest readers in Year 6 in this school which on average only achieved about 30-38% gaining Level 4 at Key Stage 2 (all a matter of record)   In the year this work was done, the school achieved 63% Level 4 passes in English and the four poorest readers graduated to secondary school as literate hopefuls with reading ages well in excess of their chronological ages. The highest reading age gain in the group was about 5+ years - all a matter of record.

This is in no sense a boast.   Although I have a great deal of respect for Rtuh Mishkin's achievements, this is just to make the point that individual school achievements like that quoted, actually mean very little.

SP is one route to decoding success but it is not the only route.

Eddie C