One million London adults can't read-lessons for us?

[TheEndIsNigh]

This is the failure of capitalism. Literacy in Cuba is 99.8%

...Cuba, where food is rationed by a malevolent regime that has institutionalized scarcity. In that workers' paradise, the average ration of meat — if available and including fish — is two ounces per day. Milk is distributed only to children under 7, and each Cuban gets 12 eggs per month.
"Limited in what they can eat, Cubans spend much time thinking about their next meal," AP reporter Anita Snow, who lived on a Cuban diet for 30 days, wrote last year. "I found myself obsessing about food as well."
When man reaches the point where his mental resources have to be directed toward obtaining his next meal, he has taken a step backward .

http://www.infinitehealthresources.c...85/1/1802.html

...In 1989, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the average Cuban was eating 3,000 calories per day. Four years later that figure had fallen to 1,900. It was as if they suddenly had to skip one meal a day, every day, week after month after year. The host of one cooking show on the shortened TV schedule urged Cubans to fry up “steaks” made from grapefruit peels covered in bread crumbs. “I lost twenty pounds myself,” said Fernando Funes, a government agronomist.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/04/0080501

You can keep your workers paradise.I'd rarther eat than read Marx's Manifesto

[patslatt]

No, not at all. I don’t think you fully understood my post so I’m going to try and clarify it.

You said that you couldn’t find reference to “synthetic phonics” in the Primary School English Curriculum. The reason you can’t is because you are unfamiliar with the material and do not have the correct terminology. I said that you should look for reference to phonological and phonemic awareness.

You asked if the Primary School English Curriculum requires the teaching of phonological and phonemic awareness. I said that it does but that this is not the exclusive approach to emergent literacy.

You asked if the Primary School English Curriculum used a “whole word approach.” The terminology used in the Curriculum is “basic sight vocabulary” and the curriculum also requires that this be taught. I then demonstrated why it is necessary for an emergent reader to have a basic sight vocabulary with reference to words that cannot be phonologically decoded.

Now, this is important. I then outlined the approach that our curriculum takes to emergent literacy. Here it is again.

The 1999 Primary School English Curriculum requires that the emergent reader be taught to equally develop and sustain the following skills:

• understand the conventions of print,
• build up a basic sight vocabulary,
• develop a range of word identification strategies( of which phonological and phonemic awareness is but one part!)
• predict and cross check information
• monitor and self -correct

As you can see both the phonics and whole word approaches form parts of what is a much bigger picture. Some years ago there was indeed debate about the phonics vs. whole language approach. Nowadays we see things quite differently and have learned to look at literacy in a broader sense - letter, word and text level to be exact. The phonics or whole word approaches, on their own, are completely inadequate for the purposes of instructing the emergent reader. The whole language approach is inadequate because it has the child working purely at word level. The phonics approach is equally inadequate as it has the child working purely at letter level. Both approaches neglect the fact that reading is essentially a message getting, problem-solving activity and requires a high degree of functionality at text level.

Now, if you take both of these approaches and combine them with others (as detailed above) then you have a very workable and successful model for developing emergent literacy. And that’s what the 1999 Primary English Curriculum has done ( and ahead of its time I might add!)




I'm sorry, but this is just nonsense! Monosyllabic or not the child must still be given some kind of mechanism for dealing with that word when they see it! The only option in these cases is learning to recognise the word as a whole. However, it is not advisable to teach these words in isolation.



Did it occur to you that perhaps the NCCA know a thing or two about the Curriculum they have designed and are simply using the correct terminology?! I know of no primary educational system in the English speaking world that refers to phonological and phonemic awareness as “synthetic phonics.” I'd say it's a safe enough bet that they know what phonics are!



The bottom line is that literacy is a highly specialised area and articles from Wikipedia or glances at the NCCA website aren’t going to give you anywhere near adequate information to construct an informed opinion. That said, I think you’re well intentioned and it’s great to see someone take a robust and challenging interest in our educational system. You might find these sites of interest. They're a bit more scholarly than Wiki or Google but there are some very interesting and reputable articles on them. They won't turn you into a literacy expert but you might enjoy them!!

AERA Homepage
(very good article here on reading instruction for low-income students)

Ministry of Education - Home
(they really are ahead of the posse when it comes to literacy)

Thanks very much for that. I’ll be back to you on it but it won't be for a few days. Pretty tied up next week!!

Scottish research http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publicati...03/16513/18923 strongly supports the use of synthetic phonics over analytic phonics. Assuming that this research conclusion is correct and confirmed by other similar research,all literacy teachers should be required to train in synthetic phonics,which I understand requires the mastery of about 40 synthetic sounds. I'm interested in your opinion on the Scottish report.

[uriah]

Scottish research Scottish Government: Web page currently unavailable. strongly supports the use of synthetic phonics over analytic phonics. Assuming that this research conclusion is correct and confirmed by other similar research,all literacy teachers should be required to train in synthetic phonics,which I understand requires the mastery of about 40 synthetic sounds. I'm interested in your opinion on the Scottish report.

You really do worry about what is going on in our schools!!

Every literacy teacher teaches the 44 sounds of the english language.
This work is taking place in all our schools, patslatt.

if you look up youtube, you will see videos on how it is done.

[patslatt]

You really do worry about what is going on in our schools!!

Every literacy teacher teaches the 44 sounds of the english language.
This work is taking place in all our schools, patslatt.

if you look up youtube, you will see videos on how it is done.

Synthetic phonics,YouTube - Google Search