What do you think of the Education White Paper?

[Shamster]

Our head went through the key points at last nights staff meeting and the effect was pretty depressing. Sounds stupid but two of us almost started crying! Just wondered if anyone has read it for themselves, rather than picking up whichever bits each paper decides to highlight according to their leanings. If you have; what do you think?

Hello, moondog - I see you've crossed over from the other thread to pursue me on this one - is stalking your thing?

I see my generous assumption on the other thread that you were capable of irony and indeed humour was sadly undeserved.

I clearly touched a raw nerve when I referred to your lack of educational achievement and resultant bitterness on the other thread.

Don't feel bad. We know you can't help it.

Nice, granted. More calm, reasoned debate from you then. And you have the brass neck to accuse other posters of being shockingly rude?!

at maizie!

Just in case you're wondering what kind of a loon moondog is, s/he is the person who posted a post over on the politics forum laughing at the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of police.

A really well-baanced character, clearly.

Very bad MN form to post on a thread about another thread, granted, whatever your beef.

feenie - see the othe thread for her posts.

You're damn right - unlike the extremely polite shamster whom you needlessly attacked with no provocation at all and only the politest of responses, I will give as I get.

I won't start it but will happily respond.

I don't pretend otherwise.

Anyway, why do you care what I think?

I think you're gratuitously rude and wrong and narrow-minded - you don't.

Fine.

Happy to agree to differ.

Not really bothered either way - your opinions are of little matter to me. Clearly you care terribly about your 'reputation' or something (?); I don't, about yours or mine.

It's just the internet. Chill.

Re bad mn form - you must forgive me, but I'm new here, and have never herd that as a rule, here or elsewhere.

I suspect you're making that one up.

I didn't attack her, I disagreed with her ridiculous assertions - one of now several people on this thread who do so (most of whom you ignore completely - yet somehow still claiming you are interested in debate. V. silly).

Incredibly hypocritical of you, also, to say that on the one hand you are happy to agree to differ, whilst insisting when someone else does it they are attacking. That's an interesting case of doublethink you've got going there.

Yet still you have failed to come up with one scrap of proof, whilst similtaneously being as rude as you like to other posters.

"Re bad mn form - you must forgive me, but I'm new here, and have never herd that as a rule, here or elsewhere.

I suspect you're making that one up."

Very quick search:

Here
Northernlurker Sun 08-Mar-09 20:29:37
Thread about a thread - very bad form you know!

And here
StellaWasADiver Tue 22-Jul-08 21:04:14
YANBU, but YABU to start a thread about a thread..........................

And here also
Add message | Report | Message poster ComeOeufeneer Sat 11-Apr-09 13:20:27
Very poor show to do a thread about a thread.

See, it's easy to provide proof - but only when yu are not talking out of your derriere.

I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone.

You seem to be trying and failing.

You are outrageously wrong on the English is a phonetic language thing - this has now been pointed out to you by a number of posters (including myself) and yet you continue to isist this is the case.

Which is why I can't take you seriously at all.

You sound like the kind of teacher I really dread my kids getting - one who is so full of her own self-importance that nothing else matters. And one who routinely puts down professional colleagues too.

Nice.

Right - well, I've never come across that before. As I said, I'm a newbie. I shall know that in future.

Nicce of you to teach me MN etiquette so politely and helpfully.

granted, there is a rule about that. But it's no big deal, because you didn't know about it, and other posters do it. Unfortunately, any thread involving phonics gets very heated, it's almost like a religion.

WHY???!!!

I just don't get that.

Sorry, it's a part of my work too, but I've never, heard any EFL teacher bicker over theory like this.

It's just weird.

They're all professionals aren't they? Doing it for the benefit of children?

So what's all the animosity about?

And a number of posters have repeatedly told you it is you who is outrageously wrong. But only one of us has years of research to back it up, and you continue to ignore other posters who disagree with you.

I have been involved in some right dingdongs about phonics. It is quite fascinating. I think it is big business and political. It seems to go in and out of fashion, and is now on the crest of a wave. It is usually a right wing type thing that goes along with standards etc. Labour brought it back in when they tried to improve standards and of course it is a policy well-loved by the Tories.

It is interesting that you say that it doesn't appear in ELT. I bet it will start to do so soon. I have seen French language teaching software that uses phonics (which seems like lunacy to me), but I am sure that it will spread.

Why?

Because while you blithely sit there with other posters, ignoring current educational theory, and years of research, it might just be laughs and giggles for you, but if we get it wrong children might actualy be let down in the meantime. It's serious stuff. It's our job to find out as much as possible, and not to sit there insisting anecdotal evidence of a few children says so, so it must be true. I actually handed you the code for deciphering the English language, but you are still adamant it does not exist - "Nope, you are outrageously wrong, it isn't decodeable." If you are a teacher teaching reading, it's your job to find out what works and what doesn't.

I would be just as unhappy with the kids learning 100% phonics as with them doing all sight words tbh. I (and ds1) would have HATED doing reading by phonics only - because it was the BOOKS that made it interesting - I could read long before I started school, and my mother proudly tells that I had read Alice in Wonderland before going to school (how true this is I don't know, but I do remember being able to read pretty much anything in reception). I learnt on Peter and Jane - which is all based on key words, no phonics at all. And ds1 found phonics REALLY hard, but has always been a fantastic reader.

It's about looking at the children surely, and finding what works for them. Suggesting that EVERY child has to do only 100% synthetic phonics is as flawed as criticising phonics because english is irregular!

No one would stop a child from learning however it suited them, and some children, as mrz says, seem just to be natural readers - however, nor would they stop a child from learning phonics that even though they don't need now, they may need at a later stage of their reading, or spelling. Children need decoding skills at some stage - or how can they work out a longer word later on, when they come across a long word they haven't been told through sight reading?

The point is that phonics teaching works for more children than sight reading does, and that children who learn using sight reading alone (or worse - by sight reading and picture/clues guessing) may have difficulties with reading/spelling later on. Why deny them the acquisition of that code - and teach them that guessing is how real readers read?

Moreover, phonics teaching doesn't prevent so-called 'whole word readers' learning to read - they learn the whole words along with the phonics. I just don't get this bizarre assumption that phonics teaching means that children aren't taught about meaning, comprehension or enjoying real books. All words are decodable in English; a very few have unique sound-symbol correspondences and a few others have rare sound-symbole correspondences.

I don't think anyone is suggesting, feeniwe, that phonics teaching should not be part of teaching reading. It is and I have yet to see anyone on this thread suggesting it shouldn't be.

All that is being suggested - and that uou seem to find so strangely difficult to accept - is that other methods can work alongside it, for those children (not all) who benefit from different approaches.

I have no idea why this should e controversial.

And no, claig, I have never, ever come across the faintest whisper of controversy in ELT over phonics or anything else.

We're all reasonable people and listen to new theories with interest, and apply them where practicable.

Obviously, most of our work is not with children and by definition, is not aimed at those who are learning English as their first and only language.

That said, I've taught plenty of ESOL students who were functionally illiterate in their own language to come to terms with reading English.

But never heard anyone row about it.

Still seems strange to me.

When I first came out of university nearly 20 years ago, I was also convinced that mixed methods suited children best. But I soon found that there were children who were not learning to read, and whom we were failing.
I became a Literacy co-ordinator, read up on current research, Jolly Phonics and the drive for synthetic phonics teaching and made sure we were teaching to the best methods we possibly could. Since then, we have made sure that every child is able to read by the time they leave our school - there are some children who are SEN and haven't been able to reach the 'expected level', and for those we have searched to find any programme we can (sometimes excellent, rigorous one to one phonics teaching, and sometimes sight reading to ensure that child achieves as highly as they possibly can).

Yes, I am slightly evangelical about it - but when professionals post things that I know cannot possibly be true, or that have actually been found to damamge children's reading later on, then I post accordingly and point it out.

'You are outrageously wrong on the English is a phonetic language thing - this has now been pointed out to you by a number of posters (including myself) and yet you continue to isist this is the case.'

Hehe, you are still here, embarrassing yourself further then granted? Talking drivel and doing so in a inelegant fashion to boot.

Just re-read your post, claig, and realised I misread it - I meant to say that it is the controversy that is missing in ELT, rather than the phonics.

Re phonics, my main 'use' of it is to explain patiently that English is not a phonetic language and words cannot be pronounced as read. My focus is more on pronuciation than fluency in reading, in the sense that a non-native speaker might learn the place-name Leicester Square and read it as Ligh-chester Square (eg an Italian). They'd have no problems reading it in the sense of recognising it again and understanding the meaning - but might well hit problems if they try to ask for directions.

So reading skills merge into speaking skills and listening skills - quite a different ball-game.

"All that is being suggested - and that uou seem to find so strangely difficult to accept - is that other methods can work alongside it, for those children (not all) who benefit from different approaches."

I find it strangely difficult to accept that:

a) a teacher of reading teaches that the Engish language is decodeable, but openly says on a public forum that it is not.

b) a teacher seriously thinks that phonics teaching precludes the teaching of comprehension

c) a teacher in this day and age, with what we all as teachers now know, doesn't know that teaching the use of picture clues/guessing isn't often damaging to a child's reading later on.

Those are the points I have argued on this thread.

I did not say, anywhere, that every single child should be taught synthetic phonics to the exclusion of sight reading. It should definitely be the main teaching of first reading skills - try stopping a child who learns by sight reading along the way! But a child who only uses sight reading may come unstuck in reading/spelling later on.

Hello, moondog, still stalking my posts, eh?

Go and get a job.