[senco-forum] reading

I completely agree with Philip.  We have used Ruth Miskin in small groups
for Year 2 underachievers this year.  By the end ot the year, out of 6
classes of 25 children, only 3 are making no or little progress.  They need
1 to 1 next term.  The rest have learned their phonics and how to decode and
are moving on quickly now.  This is in line with the Rose report.  The
withdrawal reading sessions were delivered by TAs trained by me.  Jonathan
Solity's research, out of Warwick, also found that when synthetic phonics
was taught to all the kids only a few needed 1 to 1 by the end of it.  He
quoted 3%  as having reading difficulty after synthetic phonics when I asked
him at the Warwi\ck conference in 2003 - It is fast and effective teaching
and took us two terms.  Solity gets the kids onto real books as fast as
possible once the basci skills have been learned - this includes high
frequency word teaching too, which came up recently on the forum.

Philippa

On 7/10/07, Philip MacMillan <P.Macmillan at exeter.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Sounds to me like Whole Language is still very much in charge, obviously
> the
> insprector has not read the Rose Report or any other emprical evidence as
> to
> how children (and adults) learn to read.   Before the higher order skills
> come the lower order word recognition skills, without these the higher
> order
> skills will not develop.  Obviously neither the deputy head or the
> inspector
> have read any empirical research and for this should taken to task, it is
> surely the duty of professionals to keep up with their field of endeavour.
> I would like to know in detail how they measured the gains in reading.
> Whole language was based on mistaken ideas about language development and
> very dodgy research by the likes of Goodman and Smith.  It really should
> be
> buried.  I am appalled.   There are better programmes than Toe by Toe for
> those who have failed long term but big books in not one of them.
>
> Philip EP
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Elaine Burns" <elaineburns36 at hotmail.com>
> To: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 8:23 PM
> Subject: [senco-forum] reading
>
>
> > I have been onto the forum before about Toe by Toe.  Inspectors have
> told
> > the head the school must use another scheme.  Well I have resigned and
> taken
> > early retirement over this and other matters.  The deputy head sent me
> an
> ex
> > senco to advise me on reading.  She demonstrated teaching a group of 6
> to
> > read by using big books.  She aimed to teach genre and other higher
> order
> > reading skills.  Yet the students my dept work with using Toe by Toe
> have
> > reading ages of below 8.  The head was unable to replace me permanently
> so
> a
> > part time acting senco will be in post for Sept.  She apparantly also
> does
> > not believe in teaching children to read one to one but wants to
> implement
> > groups of 6.  I would love to hear what the experts think of this.  I am
> > told that the results are an improvement of 2yrs in one year.
> > Elaine
> >
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