[SENco-forum] Reading

Seeing as schemes of work go in and out of favour  whether 'real books' or
phonics or rhyming word families etc etc despite this 75% still go on to
read with little difficulty it would seem that some children are automatic
sponges and some are not.  Or more technically - what Eddie said re memory
etc.,
Sharon Tringham

-----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: 13 July 2007 19:21
To: Amanda; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Reading

Ammanda asks "Do good readers learn to read in the same way as poor
readers?"

We all have the same basic learning equipment although there is clearly some
variation in our capacity to use it.  We know that initial readers sound
words out letter by letter - we can hear them. We also know that older,
failing readers never seem to graduate beyond this. The child with good
short term memory function appears to pass through this phase quickly and
identifies familiar words in reading from an internalised sight vocabulary
of frequently encountered words.  We also learn how to use this internalised
sight vocabulary as a reference resource for decoding other, unfamiliar
words. The initial reader who has internalised the word 'cat' as a discrete
entity, will probably be able to use this 'new' informtion intuitively to
decode words less familiar words such as 'can, car, cap' and at a slightly
more advanced stage, words such as hat, mat, sat, bat, rat etc.   The value
of an effective sight vocabulary cannot be over-rated but this is just a
rationale of the process - not a statement in favour of learning list of
words as a means of teaching children to read. That doesn't work.

Eddie C.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Amanda
  To: Eddie Carron ; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
  Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 6:36 PM
  Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Reading

  Hi Eddie
  This seems like common sense to me.
  Most children learn to read.  I can remember that I couldn't read when I
went to school at age 5 but I can't remember having to learn at all and I
was a good reader very quickly.  I know this because I used to be taken out
to read to the Headteacher.
  I also know that my daughter learned to read very easily.  When I tested
her reading using NFER GRT II (I know - what a sad mummy I am!!  But she did
say she wanted to do it!  I'd just tested a friend for dyslexia and she
wanted to do the same test) she had no 'stickability'.  My 'poor readers'
will all sound out words.  She just gave up when the going got tough.  She
came out with a standardised score of 120.
  What I have never established is this: do good readers learn to read in
the same way as poor readers?  Will some of us 'get reading' in spite of how
we are taught?
  Anyone know of any research on this?
  Amanda
  Secondary SENCO
  Cornwall

  Eddie Carron <eddiecarron at btconnect.com> wrote:
    The true dichotomy is not whether you believe in 'phonics' or 'whole
word' approaches to the teaching of reading - it is whether you are talking
about the initial teaching of reading or the remediation of reading
difficulty in older children.

    When children learn to read the word cat, they sound out the letters
ki - ah - ti After encountering the word 'cat' a number of times, they no
longer sound out the letters because they recognise the text word 'cat' as a
whole and the associated sound of the word 'cat' In time, they internalise a
few thousand of these discrete visual text images with links to the sounds
of the actual words. So we have both 'phonics' and 'whole word' in the same
learning process ie inclusively - not exclusively.

    I always test the ability of older poor readers to recognise individual
letters/sounds and they invariable score 100% on this test, yet the same
children scored less than 20% on a sight vocabulary test! Using synthetic
phonics as the initial means of teaching reading will in all probability,
produce a higher percentage of good readers than any other single approach.
It is not however, the holy grail for poor readers in secondary schools
whose principal difficulty is the ability to acquire an effective
vocabulary, invariably as a consequence of poor short term memory function.

  Amanda
  Secondary SENCO
  Cornwall

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