Return-Path: <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id j4HL5kG29165; Tue, 17 May 2005 17:05:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 17:05:50 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <015401c55b23$dedf8260$0402a8c0@Tomschoice> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "John Nissen" <jn@cloudworld.co.uk> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:1393] Re: Teaching reading to kinesthetic learners and X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 9808 Lines: 254 Hello Bella, You do seem to have been behind - over a year! I was very surprised indeed to find something I'd written myself at the end - something which I'd almost forgotten that I wrote. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and I have had a conversion experience! I used to believe in the balanced approach, but a rigorous study in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, has shown, that a "phonics, fast and first" approach actually suits practically all the pupils, especially the disadvantaged, and actually slightly favouring boys! By age 11, pupils were over 3 years ahead of peers in reading age. This is quite astonishing! I've looked into it in a lot of detail, to see what they did, and worked out why it worked. The pupils are shown the essence of our alphabetic writing system, right from the start. They are shown how symbols represent sounds, and how one can put the sounds together to make words. They learn the letters in about 8 weeks, and have learned to read simple text in 16 weeks, with the ability to decode words that they've never seen before. This is amazing, when you compare it with our National Literacy Strategy (NLS), in which the children are taught to read in 3 years. Moreover, children are not necessarily taught how to tackle new words, since the teaching is based on a mixture of whole word recognition, working out meaning from cues (i.e. guesswork), and only a certain amount of phonics (i.e. analytic or extrinsic phonics) and phonemic awareness. Under the NLS, about one in five children cannot read by age 11. Tony Blair himself has admitted that this is scandalous. We've got to do something about it, and here is the Clackmannanshire study, sitting under our noses. I've put a lot of references on my company web site: http://www.cloudworld.co.uk. I've written specifically about synthetic phonics teaching in http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm. Only today I came across some more detail on the web. I did a Google search on "Fast phonics first", and got http://www.phonicsteaching.com/fast-phonics-first.html. From there I took the link to teaching portfolio. From http://www.phonicsteaching.com/teaching-portfolio.html I got some more detail on the procedure adopted in Clackmannanshire. Can anybody provide evidence that a 'balanced' approach works better than this? I'd eat my hat (sounding /h/ /a/ /t/). Cheers from Chiswick, John P.S. Re the subject line of this email, there is some kinesthetics with magnetic letters as part of the synthetic phonics approach used in the Clackmannanshire schools. P.P.S. There are similarities with "systematic phonics", "intrinsic phonics" and the Orton method. Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud. Tel: +44 208 742 3170 Fax: +44 208 742 0202 Email: info@cloudworld.co.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: BELLA.HANSON@spps.org To: Multiple recipients of list Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 5:08 PM Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:1392] Re: Teaching reading to kinesthetic learners and George, (As you see, I am far behind in reading the emails.) I reallly agree with your last paragraph. Bella Hanson "George Demetrion" <george.demetrion@lvgh.org> Sent by: nifl-fobasics@nifl.gov 04/02/2004 11:46 AM EST Please respond to nifl-fobasics To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> cc: bcc: Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:1026] Re: Teaching reading to kinesthetic learners and Patricia More fundamentally, Pearson shows that the evolution of reading theory through the 20th century was historically constructed in which the politics of literacy can not be easily separated from the pedagogy of literacy. In terms of Pearson's own view, he's a major advocate of balanced reading theory, which he represents as a radical middle ground that he hopes will be drawn upon to end the wars on reading theory. In this, he opposes approaches which are primarily bottom up (skill-based) and top-down (the more extreme versions of whole language. In his discussion of history, the current period is marked by a phonemic revival. That could shift in succeeding years. Whether it does or doesn't may have as much to do with political culture as it does with sound reading instruction. In any event, P. David Pearsons, along with Michael Pressley and Victoria Purcell-Gates promote the balanced approach to reading instruction and they provide a good deal of research in making their respective cases. Here's one intelligent statement on balanced theory: http://reading.indiana.edu/ieo/digests/d144.html Here's another: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/timely/briiss.htm For more, just do a google search for (a) balanced reading theory, (b) P. David Pearson (c) Michael Pressley (d) Victoria Purcell-Gates. There is some serious work being done on balanced reading theory which merits serious consideration, the substance of which I have not begun to address here. In making this argument, I do not suggest that the balanced theory is uncontestable. Moreover, the last thing I want to do is to enshrine a new orthodoxy. What I do stress is the substantial research and theoretical work that has gone into the balanced approach, a perspective that contains considerable subtlety and various differences of emphases within an overarching framework. Perhaps there's at least as much about adult literacy education, which, as a field, we >don't< know about than what we do know, though we do know much. If that is the case, perhaps there's a need for more tentativeness in our collective claims, along with a need for ongoing critical experimentation and hypothesis formation. George Demetrion ----- Original Message ----- From: "tom zurinskas" <tzurinskas@yahoo.com> To: "Multiple recipients of list" <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 9:30 PM Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:1023] Re: Teaching reading to kinesthetic learners and Patricia > Thanks John, > > Check out the history of "Reading in the Twentieth > Century" by P. David Pearson > http://www.ciera.org/library/archive/2001-08/200108.htm > > He shows how reading instruction is swinging back like > a pendulum to phonetics/phonics again for initial > instruction. Research on "phonemic awareness" and the > National Reading Panel were instrumental in this > swing. Interestingly, a new instruction method in > Scotland shows that a rather than phonics, the better > way to teach is to use "synthetic phonetic spelling" > for learners. In USA Dr John Henry Martin did used a > similar system with 100 schools. The book "Writing to > Read" shows that k-2 learners could learn to read and > write simultaneously. In both studies the transition > to traditional spelling was positive. > > The drawback with these systems is that they use > special symbols and are not keyboard friendly. > Basically they are meant to be forgotten. But > truespel is different. It is not meant to be > forgotten. It uses regular letters, so it's keyboard > friendly. It shows stress in a word, so it is the > first and only "pronunciation guide spelling" of USA > English. It is meant to replace the various > nonstandard pronunciation guides in our present > dictionaries. It is also meant to be a standard > translation guide phonetic spelling. A pronunciation > guide truespel book is forthcoming shortly. > > I am a retired govt worker with the FAA, who mainly > did research and quality assurance there. Like then > I'm more interested in helping out and don't know how > to push a product for profit. That's why truespel is > available for free to any learner/instructor at > http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm > Quality control is maintained. > > I'm glad to support those who would use truespel. It > should be possible on the computer screen to have > learners drag phonemes into string and hear words > spoken by the computer. Truespelling can also be a > good accent reduction tool. > > Cheers from Greenacres > > Tom Z > > > > > --- John Nissen <nissen@freeuk.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > The research seems to show that getting learners to > > write > > phonetically is an excellent path to phonemic > > awareness, > > and thence to reading. > > > > What would be nice, is if the phonetic writing > > produced > > phonetic sounds, giving immediate feedback to the > > writer. > > This could be built into a product such as > > WordAloud, > > see www.cloudworld.co.uk. > > > > If anybody is interested, we could discuss how such > > a > > system might work, using Truespel (or similar > > phonic notation based on the alphabet). Note that > > because there are more sounds in English than > > letters of the alphabet, letter combinations have to > > be used. > > > > The next step after phonic writing with Truespel (or > > similar phonic notation) would be to produce a > > chordal > > keypad especially designed for direct phonic input, > > where > > each key action produces a defined phonetic sound > > (or sound modification), covering the 50-odd > > phonetic > > sounds of the English language. Note that that > > there > > are more phonetic sounds than phonemes (generally > > put at 44, by the way) because of allophones and > > glotal stop. > > > > Cheers from Chiswick, > > > > John > > ===== > Read "Truespel Book One: Analysis of the Sounds (Phonemes) of USA English http://www.1stBooks.com/bookview/16593 > Convert text to truespel USA accent by copy/pasting text at: http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm > Read all about truespel at truespel.com. > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway > http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/
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