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The missing piece of reading comprehension - Theory of Mind
In the opening scene of Paul Jennings’ ‘The Gizmo’, the young protagonist is contemplating stealing from a market stall… ‘I don’t want to take anything. But I promised. And Floggit will tell the kids at school that I winmped out. Broke my word. I couldn’t let that happen. No way.’ On the face of it, as we read, we may feel, ‘so just don’t take it then. Just walk away. That’s what I’d do.’ But even if we do feel that we understand his perspective and his dilemma eve


THAT VOICE IN YOUR HEAD – INNER SPEECH AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT FOR READING
As you are reading this, even though you are reading silently, you may experience the sensation of hearing your voice speaking the words...


Analyse this…synthesise that – a pedagogical focus.
This is not a blog about phonics, but let’s start with phonics… When mathematician/philosopher/polymath Blaise Pascal developed a...
The Eyes Have It - what can eye movements tell us about reading instruction.
We may never know how we learn to read and what the cognitive processes of a skilled, fluent reader actually involve. Although fMRI...


Not so simple...The Simple View of Reading.
At the heart of the conflict between whole language approaches to reading and code emphasis approaches appears to be a confusion between...


The Eyes Have It - what eye movements can tell us about reading instruction.
We may never know how we learn to read and what the cognitive processes of a skilled, fluent reader actually involve. Although fMRI...


English spelling! Do I really have to teach it?
Discovering the alphabetic principle appears to be the key to learning to read (Backman, 1983; Bradley and Bryant, 1978), with the...
Sorry, just not ready to read yet. The fallacy of Reading Readiness.
The complexity of the acquisition of skills required to even begin reading has prompted considerable debate as to when reading...
Theoretical models of reading - better informed but none the wiser?
For skilled readers, silently reading text feels no more demanding than listening to an audiobook and in many ways can be easier:...


The whole language reading Rasputin gets a blow to the head - simple.
Whilst Smith and Goodman were condemning millions of children to illiteracy - 60% of Californian nine and ten-year olds taught by their...
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