Ok, So This Is A Boring Post… Or Should I Say A Boring Read?
Gloria Sty, bud Iyam riting this coz I wanna mayk sum poynts bowt reeding and fonnix…
You probably read that first sentence more slowly than usual and some of you will have just ignored it, but your probably able to read it, if you read it allowed.
Of course, you probably read that second sentence much more quickly and only some of you will notice that it used the wrong homonym. It should have read: You’re probably able to read that just fine if you read it aloud.
More importantly, you were able to read the first sentence because you were able to use phonics to decode the sentence. For most people that made it much, much slower than the way they read most things.
To use an imperfect analogy, think of reading like learning to drive: It’s very important to learn how to use the brakes. And the steering wheel and the accelerator. Once you’ve learned where all those things are, then it’s time to start concentrating on where you’re going and what’s around you. You may still be a poor driver and have no sense of direction, but only a small number will need a refresher course on where the brakes are. In this analogy, think of knowing how to use letters to sound out a word as the breaks and knowledge as the accelerator. Sometimes you’ll neither be able to use either of those things to make meaning, so you might swerve around them with the steering wheel and continue in the hope that what you avoided isn’t a problem later.
Ok, it’s an imperfect analogy. I admitted as much myself. Of course, just like with driving, it’s a lot more than knowing where the brakes, accelerator and steering wheel are. You have to know where you’re going and – even though you’ve been driven to Grandma’s house hundreds of times – when you’re driving you may suddenly become aware that you don’t actually know which road to turn down and you need someone to direct you, or else you need to put on the brakes and look up the route… (Yes, I’m ignoring the possibility of using a GPS because it doesn’t fit the analogy…)
Reading is not simply a matter of decoding words with phonics any more than driving is a matter of knowing where the brakes are. In both cases, if you have to use them every few seconds, you’ll never get anywhere. Reading requires knowledge which Daniel Wllingham explains rather succinctly in this article: “School time, knowledge and reading comprehension”.
When I say knowledge, I’d don’t just mean a knowledge of vocabulary. While a rich vocabulary is extremely important in understanding what one reads, one needs a wide general knowledge to pick up the inferences in what one reads.
A sentence such as: “Albanese took the wind out of Dutton’s sails by agreeing with him!” requires not just a knowledge of Australian politics to appreciate the implications of the sentence, but unless one is familiar with the phrase “wind out his sails” then one might be left confused. Similarly the following paragraph needs the reader to make a number of inferences that aren’t present in a literal reading:
She thanked David for the lift and asked him if I’d like to come in for a coffee. “Won’t your husband mind if we wake him up?” he asked. “No,” she replied, “he’s away at the moment, so we really don’t have to worry about him at all!”
A literal reading would have the reader believing that David was concerned about the sleep patterns of the husband, whereas most people would suspect that there was a subtext to the question as well as the answer.
When the Grattan Institute’s report was publicised last week, I couldn’t help but notice that the media used the failure to success anecdote by talking about an individual school who had made a dramatic improvement after adopting the recommended strategy. The trouble with the failure to success model is that it doesn’t tell you what’s going on elsewhere and, in this case, I’d suggest that most primary schools do have a structured approach to teaching kids how to sound out words. There may be room for improvement but when you are talking about the failure to success model, you aren’t looking at what’s happening in most places.
To explain what I mean as simply as I can, I’ll move away from education and use healthcare to illustrate by way of a fictional example:
Jonestown Hospital had one of the worst fatality rates in the state, then a new chief of staff, Dr Smith, instituted a policy of sterilisation. Dr Smith insisted that instruments were sterilised after each use and mandated the washing of hands between surgical procedures. “Surgeons had been instructed to save soap and water by only washing their hands at the start of the day but once we washed before every operation, the infection rate went down dramatically!”
If only other hospitals were to adopt these simple measures then we may be able to reduce fatalities to zero.
Yes, the reason that Jonestown hospital was able to improve was that it wasn’t doing what nearly every other hospital does. That’s why it had such a high fatality rate.
Now to drag that back to education, it’s obvious that if one poorly performing school isn’t doing something that most other schools are doing and they start doing it, then they’ll likely improve but that’s not an indication that all the schools who were doing better than the previously poorly performing school has something to teach them. In fact, it may be the opposite.
Every time the media report on education they have a tendency to report on the failures within the system and present some solution as though it’s the panacea for everything, while overlooking the fact that some of the reasons for poor performance are known to everyone and ignored. For example, why does NAPLAN compare like schools? Well, everyone knows if we compared all schools with all schools and didn’t take into account socio-economic factors, we’d find that socio-economic factors were the biggest element in the difference in ranking.
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leefe
Return to home pageSuspicious of the phonics movement, especially when promoted by external non experts; another Trojan horse to nobble teaching and learning?
I blame Emma Chizzit for corrupting phonics in Australia :
Author PD James once signed a book “To Emma Chizzit” for one of her Australian fans in Sydney, before realising that what she had misheard as a name was actually an inquiry about the book’s price.
It may have been Monica Dickens, Terence. Anyhow, phonics has its place in tools to be used, as has whole of reading techniques and a general practice of just getting people to read. I used old Reading Cards, Mc Graw Hill and R F U , which went out of fashion, unfortunately, for once, I improved the rate of a neglected lad from a reading age seven to an age twelve in six months (he was c. Fourteen) He and others liked the general knowledge, the little challenge, the wider benefits. Really, just read, as runners run and swimmers swim. Do it. I’ve had students, myself, daughter, reading a book quickly over night. But comprehension is why we read. The old aforementioned cards did a good job and can still be found and used. My old box was retreived, cast out as unwanted by “fashion”. Also in one school we got funds for second hand books, kept in milk crates, and just got the neglected ones to read, and that worked well.
@Terence Mills.
Quite so TM. Reminds me of that well-known breakfast item Baked Neggs.
For further information, see: https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/strine
Thx Terence, needed a laugh.
Anyway,
Ross Lay, isn’t “bowt” spelded “bout”.
In contecks, that is.
Ewe can’t say I am Alliterate.
as Keith Dunstan used to say it’s about Affablek Lauder.
If we don’t respect Lora Norda,
We’ll end up with Anna Key.
paul walter,
“Ewe can’t say I am Alliterate.”
BaAlliteratehh.
Synd,
Ewe.
I’m an old ex-high school teacher of physics. I sat in on my son’s kindergarten reading class and witnessed the best pair of teachers (2 young women) I had seen and since have seen no better. They were using the distar method, quite behavioural in nature. This was in the western suburbs of Sydney and rather culturally deprived. My young bloke was reading at year 2 level by the end of that kindergarten year. I mentioned this to the school counsellors where I was teaching and was roundly criticised for praising the behavioural approach. Anyway there was a boy in year 7 who was a real problem in class. His twin brother was brilliant. The counsellors said they were going to put the problem kid in my science class. I was one of the old style teachers who disciplined my classes. No buggerising around and I asked if that was the right choice. They said yes. In the first lesson, in 20 minutes I found the problem. He couldn’t read! And of course he had developed strategies to hide that. I approached the English department and was sent away as it wasn’t their jobs to teach kids to read. He had got through primary school and no one detected the problem. So, at recess and lunch times I taught him to read. By the end of the year he could read a novel and write a precis of it. I learned later that he became the school’s top chess player and was a star in all his subjects. Best thing I ever did as a teacher over decades.
Sorry, that should be Old Bloke….clearly a failed teacher of typing.
Been sayin’ it forevva: leave off the fancy stuff, n’ juss concentrate on teaching the basics. The three Rs: Reedn, Rytn, n’ Riffmedics!
1 in 5 children have dyslexia. The changes happening now with the Science of Reading are all evidence based. There is no evidence that whole language and guessing teaches children with dyslexia to read.
My son has dyslexia. I picked it up during covid lockdowns thanks to a friend who posted some information on dyslexia. He was formally diagnosed at the start of year 6. The school didn’t want to know neither did the other public school we moved him too. We paid for expensive private tutoring and he can now read. Imagine if you don’t have the means to pay for private tutoring.
The founders of whole language Fontas and Penell basically wrote why should whole language change if 80% of children can learn to read. Too bad for the other 20%
Groups such as Code Read, Dyslexia Support Victoria, SPELD. Have been fighting for change for a very long time. LaTrobe University Dr Pamela Snow runs the Science of Reading department. It’s not just the Grattan report. Lots of evidence research behind Reading. Most teachers are not taught this stuff. Not one teacher picked up that my son has dyslexia and dysgraphia in all of primary. The schools that have made the change to phonetics and structured explicit teaching are amazing. Why should children with specific learning difficulties, autism ADHD etc be left behind. A great author to read is Sally Rippin. What happens when children don’t learn to read.
Andrew Smith. Phonetics is not new. It is how I was taught to read in the 70s.
What is new is the non evidence based whole language approach which came from Fontas and Penell. It has had its time and has failed spectacularly. Not one research paper has found it works. Reading recovery is the same deal. Heaps of money for bugger all results. Parents of children with learning disabilities have had enough. We are sick of bashing our heads on a wall. Schools receive zero funding to help children with dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. Instead we are parent shamed. Given bad advice. Shunned. Ignored. Enough is enough. I hope the federal government ties the next round of funding to using phonetics and explicit structured teaching.
Reminds me of Nino Calotta, yelling in the pub……It was his shout.
New Australian’s…..
Was it John O’Grady who wrote “Let stork strine”, as well as “They’re a word mob”?
Interesting set of comments from Carina McNaughton.
Rossleigh’s posting may have found finally found a spiritual home, confirmed by Old bloke.
But I agree that there should be phonics and explicit teaching. Where I have a problem is the idea that ALL schools are teaching nothing but the whole language approach, and I’d like to see an audit into what primary schools are actually teaching before we jump on this idea that someone has found the answer and if only those silly teachers would listen then it would all be ok.
Dear Rossleigh.
Most schools are teaching whole language. The Dyslexia Support Group Victoria on Facebook have mapped all if the schools that use whole language.
The Victorian Dyslexia Assocoation have a list of all the schools in Victoria that use phonetics with structured explicit teaching. AND there are not very many. Plus the ones that do use phonetics parents are doing everything to try and get their kids into but public schools are zoned. The principal of each school sets how reading will be taught.
Jeff Kennet made it that all principals have freedom of choice. And we all know what Kennett did to education in Victoria. It has taken years of advocacy by people like Heidi Gregory ,( Dyslexia support Victoria)to get balanced whole language removed from the department of education website.
In other states the specific learning difficulties organizations SPELD can provide more detail.
Their is not one academic study which supports the effectiveness of learning to read with whole language.
Children do not learn to read by being exposed to books and reading just as a person who watches food being cooked does not become a automatic chef.
Correction,Ankisip..Nino Culotta,which literally means ..little big big bum.And stay away from the ‘Pissarea.’
my daughter and her daujghter are dyslexic In my daughter’s case she had a terrible time in primary school being shamed for her spelling but at high school her mother was the principal and the english elitists were not game to dump on her.
Although they got revenge in year 12 when the SSABSA board gave her 30 minutes extra exam paper reading time and this eng teacher stopped her at the same time as the others, ie 30 minutes early, and said you have 30 minutes to read your words but no writing.
As for my grandaughter the Qld and Vic schools have been ineffective because she read years ahead.
WAM
In Victoria at present in years 11 and 12 the only accomodation you can get for dyslexia is 10 minutes extra reading time. Even this you need years of evidence that accomodations have been in place. My son in yr 12 has developmental coordination disorder so he is able to use a laptop instead of handwriting. He can handwrite just if he has to write at speed he has physical pain in his hands and the ability to decipher his handwriting drops dramatically. School is a hard place for children who have learning differences and have Autism, ADHD.
A number of years ago a longtime school friend and I were at a high school reunion , my school friend was a teachers’ aid in a school Juvenile Justice . We both met up with at teacher that we didn’t like much at school ( he was deadly accurate with a black board duster) but we had really interesting discussion about how not being able to read causes social problems , the teacher told us how a problem kid in high school in 2nd or 3rd year ( yes I am old school) he discovered the reason for the kids problem was he couldn’t read , and just kept on being put in the next year’s class . Both my school friend and the teacher told how with some attention and care even after hours one on one produced beneficial outcomes and a dramatic change in these kids . What was really interesting the kids could bluff their way at school and no one noticed
This post – and some of the comments – have broken my brain. Try as I do, I can’t decode “Gloria Sty”.
There are other ND issues with reading than dyslexia. I’m hyperlexic and autistic – incorrect spelling, punctuation, word use and grammar derail my brain; only momentarily, but numerous issues in a single short piece of writing compound the problem until I can’t make sense of any of it. Time for a break/brake.
(And yet I love puns and wordplay and cryptic crosswords. shrug Go figure.)
leefe.. try glorious day. (and have one too). 🙂
A word that should not suffer extinction;;
“Coddiwomple’ (archaic).
To set out determinedly without a defined purpose or destination. Ava Gloria Sty.
Canguro, corvusboreus:
Thanks and you also.