Read All About It– Important things to look at online this week by Dr. Sam Bommarito
Each week, I search the internet and find important posts that you shouldn’t miss. The descriptions of these posts will be brief, hence the title Read All About It. Read All About It posts typically appear during the week. Read All About posts will allow you to link to the featured items.
ENJOY! 🙂
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This is a recording of George Hruby’s ILEC webinar. He predicts another pendulum swing is coming. He provides an excellent overview of the current SoR situation and provides a hopeful view for what comes next.
Next Page
Nora Chahbazi, founder of EBLI, leads a webinar about Linguistic Phonics.
I’ve known Nora for several years. I am especially impressed with her way of teaching phonics. It gets the job done just as well as other methods, but does so faster, leaving time for other important literacy instruction. This is a game-changer. Please see what she and her panel have to say. Dr. Sam
That’s all for this week! Be sure to check out my upcoming blog on Saturday as well!
Dr. Sam (the guy in the middle, taking flak from all sides)
Agree with Hruby on a lot of things: screens are bad, hedge-fund controlled publishers pushing expensive curriculum is bad, etc. etc. etc.
None of it seems to touch on the point the SoR camp is making: that phonics – clearly presented, explicitly taught is necessary (but not sufficient) for a strong early literacy curiculum.
Hrubry post touches quite directly on that fact that phonics must be taught SYSTEMATICALLY. That is what the NRP report said. As for structured phonics- “clearly presented explicitly taught, that is a term developed by proponents of synthentic phonics. It is a public relations terms NOT a research term.
Lots of hidden mines in the SOR bandwagon.
1. “Socio-economic status continues to be the most important single determinant of educational and social outcomes” – ‘plundering’ the public mind-space by filling it with SOR fanaticism harmed our education vision. Only so many causes one can take on, and taking on the shaky true-believer SOR cause has led us astray. I’ve watched a school division with 120 Teachers go mad for NO CONTEXT NO 3-CUEING NO READING TO THE CLASS NO TRADE BOOKS NO NO NO respect for the successful teachers who have been graduating capable readers at all grade levels for decades. The ‘cause’ disinforms us, ignores other massively important factors in reading success, and leaves our attention to poverty hanging fire. (SES and success: “Background Material for Parliamentarians and Staff Canadian Teacher Federation 2009”. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ806976.pdf
2. Psychology, Educational Psychology, Perceptual Psychology, has much to say about the SOR contention that ‘students ONLY LEARN UNITIZED WORDS PHONETICALLY/AUDITORILY. In my 4.5 decades as a School Psychologist I’ve seldom seen a higher grade of bullshit. The ‘unitized’ term came from an SOR researcher who struggled to find a non-visual term for ‘sight-words’. Unitized is his valiant effort to avoid speaking visual language. Last i ‘looked’ both eyes and ears contribute to Human perception; visual memory, visual association, and visual modelling all figure in children learning to read. Any educator willing to ignore the presence of visual memory in reading is a lost cause. Yes phonics is needed. Yes sight words are needed. And the rest of the Reading Rope. But hey when you can make a name for yourself selling fanaticism, selling the miracle cure……
3. The Phonics approaches of SOR appear to encourage autocratic delivery ‘repeat after me’ etc. The most successful classroom programs I’ve had the privilege to see are not autocratic. Directive as deemed appropriate to the issue, behaviour and content, but not dictatorial. Successful classroom programs include reading, writing, arithmetic, and happily they also designed to give learners power, choice (horrible word for the SOR groupies), by attending to cooperation, teaming, interpersonal skills and personal power. We can profitably call this ‘AUTHORITATIVE TEACHING’, a cognate of Democratic Leadership, a term from psychological research on parenting, grounded in Adlerian Psychology, Behavourial Psychology, and Group Facilitation Psychology. Authoritative Teaching is a hallmark of successful classrooms. I have seen Autocratic (Boss lead) classrooms with high achievement scores, but without the strong personality development possible with Authoritative Leadership.
(Diana Baumrind’s (1966) Prototypical Descriptions of 3 Parenting Styles
First Paper where prototypes are published:
Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior, Child Development, 37(4), 887-907.
Second Paper, and most often cited, extensive discussion of parenting styles:
Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75(1), 43-88)
4. N of 1 Studies – a final riff on SOR vs Good Teaching – psychological work with students is N of 1 work, you bring possible matching cases to each child/teen seen, but the job is to uncover this human’s strengths and needs. Back when PHONICS WAS GOD the last time, the 50s -70s, kids who needed visuals suffered. Then when WHOLE LANGUAGE BECAME GOD, auditorily capable but visually weak kids, suffered. Most good teachers I worked with, integrated the best of the two extremes, and ALL KIDS BENEFITTED. Why in the name of all that is holy are we messing with kids needs AGAIN???
Please contact me about your post. I’d like to use some of it in the blog, with your permission. My e-mail is bommaritosam@yahoo.com