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:...
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IS READING COMPREHENSION AN ACTUAL THING?
The purpose of reading, according to Elder and Paul (2006:3) is to ‘figure out what an author has to say on a subject’. This ‘figuring...
Decisions, decisions - can research help identify the best phonics programme?
‘The question for teachers is no longer “look and say” or phonics. Instead, the question is which phonics programmes are most effective’,...
I predict...a riot?
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a good reader will make predictions whilst reading a text. As a result, predicting has...
Comprende? Reading comprehension: a skill to be taught?
The point of mastering the procedural knowledge of decoding text, recoding text, practicing decoding to facilitate the word superiority...
So hands up, who hates phonics? Some very influential people...
Systematic phonics instruction has been described as the nearest thing to a silver bullet for the development of literacy. With all the...
All phonics instruction is not the same.
‘The question for teachers is no longer “look and say” or phonics. Instead, the question is which phonics programmes are most effective…’...
Bad science = the end of phonics.
Although educational research was in its infancy in the early decades of the twentieth century there was sufficient concern and curiosity...
Rudolph Flesch points out the elephant in the room...
By 1955, the American academic elite had come to an almost universal conclusion: phonics was dangerous. In that year the most eminent...
Virtual insanity in reading instruction - teaching reading without words.
Huey’s (1908) ‘scientific’ proof that phonic instruction was a superfluous, torpid stage of reading development resulted in a revival of...
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