[senco-forum] Reading and Phonics

Hi Eddie

Graeme

The reality is that at present, children with very specific learning 
differences are lost among those with non-specific learning difficulties. 
Had the readily resolvable difficulties of this latter group been confronted 
with a one-term  SP course in infancy, before they acquired the emotional 
hang-ups associated with years of self-esteem destroying failure, those with 
very special needs such as APD would have received much greater attention 
than is currently the case.   I believe that this is the only way your 
personal goals will ever be achieved.  All it requires is that each school 
ensures that at least one TA is trained to provide an SP course. This 
requires neither additional funding nor research. It could be implemented 
now and would bring our national literacy standards into line with those 
Scandanavia, most of Europe and the developed countries in Asia and all with 
imposing anything on any body.

With the knowledge currently available, headteachers could and should be 
required to called to account if they fail to bring literacy to any child 
who does not have a specific learning difficulty.  As sson as pay depends on 
results, obstancles tend to disappear and amazing things start to happen.

Eddie C.

Eddie C.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "dolfrog" <dolfrog at tiscali.co.uk>
To: "'Eddie Carron'" <eddiecarron at btconnect.com>; 
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 9:03 PM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Reading and Phonics

> Hi Eddie
>
> In my case and for many like me and others who are predominantly Visual
> Learners, the sight vocabulary comes first, and the phonics comes later
> (The Power of Visual Thinking
> http://www.apduk.org/learningstyles/powerofvt1.htm
> http://www.apduk.org/learningstyles/powerofvt2.htm
> Teaching Reading to Visual-Spatial Learners
> http://www.apduk.org/learningstyles/vslteachread.htm
> (got a crucifix handy?) Whole Word
> http://www.apduk.org/learningstyles/vslwholeword.htm
> and just to see how the learning style theories should be applied from day
> one at school, as have the children taught in their three main learning
> style groups, which can be identified very easily and some may be able to
> move from one group to another if they are capable of switching learning
> styles. You can download a very good working model of Learning styles and
> Left/ right brain dominance from
> http://www.apduk.org/learningstyles/lsworkingmodel.htm
> All of which should be considered before teaching any child anything 
> before
> blindly exposing then to something like SP as you suggest.
>
> I have in the past come across some SP fundamentalists who go as far as
> being discriminating against those who have disabilities such as APD,
> because it does not fit in or clashes with their fundamentalist beliefs. 
> It
> can be very upsetting to be told that your clinically diagnosed Disability
> is all Stuff and nonsense, or an American Fade.
>
> 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: 17 January 2007 23:47
> To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: [senco-forum] Reading and Phonics
>
> Mary
>
>
>
> Surely its not surprising that where phonics is the reading code,  when a
> large population is taught by a phonics method, their average performance
> will be better than that of those not being taught the reading code.  This
> must be especially true when you consider that a large, credible research
> sample will include the 20% or so from the 'below average' cohort who it 
> is
> known will not learn to read UNLESS they are specifically taught the 
> reading
> code.  None of that is in doubt. Both of the authors you quote are leaders
> in their field and their conclusions are no longer doubted by any 
> reasonable
> observer. Their work neither proves nor claims to show that the tens of
> millions who like myself and possibly also yourself, who were not taught
> phonics, would be more literate if we had been.
>
>
>
> Testing groups of people to compare how they were taught with the level of
> their literacy is only one route in research.  We need also to have a 
> better
> understanding the processes involved and these are not, in my view, given
> sufficient consideration. Phonics is the only successful route to reading
> for those with no specific learning difficulty who are unable to deduce 
> the
> code from the sight vocabulary which they unavoidably assimilate. I do not
> believe that there is only phonics and nothing else in the reading 
> process.
> We need phonics to crack the reading code but whether we care to admit it 
> or
> not, we do assimilate a sight vocabulary which, even in infancy,  is
> sufficiently large to form an internalised reference library for every one
> of the 160 phoneme/grapheme correspondences and this is part of the 
> reading
> process.   The process is not the simple act of decoding every letter in
> every word every time we are reading. That is the precisely the view of SP
> fundamentalists who deny the very existence of sight vocabulary. That is 
> the
> clear blue water between an SP supporter like myself and an SP
> fundamentalist for whom there is only SP and nothing else.
>
>
>
> Eddie C.
> 