Appalling reading advice for parents and TAs

[Feenie]

This document is being flagged up in lots of the teaching pages i've liked on Facebook:

literacyforpleasure.wordpress.com/ta-guide-to-listening-to-reading-making-comments/

It's terrible, full of recommendations to encourage children to guess. Really depressed at the number of teachers tagging others to flag it as 'useful'. It really, really isn't.

If you're starting as a reading volunteer in September, I hope you're not given anything like this. Any advice encouraging children to guess words is really poor and awful practice.

If a child is 'stuck', encourage them to look at the sounds and blend - or if they're really stuck, give them the word and come back to it later. Feedback to the teacher on the sound they couldn't recognise is fabulous.

And thank you for volunteering in the first place - your help is invaluable and much appreciated.

I'm assuming with my ability to read exam question, to have managed to get through GCSEs, A Levels, a science degree and a PGCE - that I was taught to read adequately in the 1980s.

I still manage to know when I need to pay attention to the exact text written, and when I don't.

I also learnt a great skill at uni - how to find stuff out. So if there's a word I don't know, I know a few ways to figure out what the word is, if it matters.

Incidentally,

I can think of 20+ different ways to teach the electron arrangement of atoms in the periodic table and its significance to chemistry. I know some methods of teaching work better than others. I don't go around saying "this is the only way and if you teach it another way YOU STE WRONG".

Phonics is a vital skill and is fundamentally important in teaching reading.

those pesky Maths teachers who insist on absolute accuracy when calculating,

Let's talk of maths teacher shall we

How many methods of multiplication and division can you think of? How many different ways are children taught multiplication and division between years 1 and 13?

That's very nice for you. I'm alright, Jack, and that.

Now would you like to go and explain that to some struggling KS3 readers whose teachers also thought it was fine to teach them guessing strategies instead of how to, you know, actually read - 'cos that would have been so anal wouldn't it, to just stick to something that taught them to decode accurately in the first place?

How many methods of multiplication and division can you think of?

How many ways can you think.of where it's fine to guess and any sensible answer will do?

To me, reading can be used for lots of different things. Pleasure, learning, following instructions, work.
The important thing is to be able to do it accurately.
My children have learned using phonics. Guessing, picture clues etc have always been discouraged. You seem to be suggesting that this somehow hampers enjoyment. For my children, that hasn't been the case. I suspect that treating reading like learning a code has helped them learn more quickly, thus promoting enjoyment by reducing frustration and increasing confidence because they have a reliable skillset to let them succeed.

As someone said FATEdestiny you're not a child and you aren't struggling with reading (although accuracy might be/is an issue) and as you said yourself you know when not to skip but a beginner/struggling reader does not! Therefore teaching skipping as a strategy is poor practice

Let's actually substitute numbers into the reading advice given above:

Sometimes children will misread a number. That's ok; sometimes they will self-correct. You do not need to tackle every misread calculation, particularly if their choice makes sense

Yeah, a round about ball park answer is perfectly OK.

Always remember, children are allowed to skip a number or two; come back to it; they can guess what a number is if they want to

Some of you might be interested to read John Gatto's 'Weapons Of Mass Instruction'. Some of it is a bit left-field but he makes a compelling argument that administrators, publishers, testing boards, multi-nationals and therefore government are in the business of what Gatto calls 'extending childhood'. That is to mean that they will use instruction, systems and behavioural teaching concepts as a means to slow learning processes down for children. He states a number of reasons these interest parties may wish to do so. He also states that many teachers get conditioned into this way of thinking - that or they are so are so tightly managed and the policies are so controlled and loaded with this agenda, teachers give way to the weight of what the interested parties want.

He does briefly talk specifically about the nature of teaching reading as one example.

Can you explain how John Gatto supports your argument that phonics should only be used as a back up strategy?

I haven't been conditioned into thinking it's important that children are taught to read accurately. It is important so that children don't end up being older, frustrated, skipping guessers who can't read accurately enough to access the KS3 curriculum.

Blimey, you are all over the place now, lit4pleasure.

Speaking of paediatricians, what about the paediatrician who was mistaken for a paedophile and had her house graffitied? Does it matter that the culprits didn't bother to read the words properly, or guessed?

How many ways can you think.of where it's fine to guess and any sensible answer will do?

I can think of a division method that involves guessing at a sensible approximation of the answer and then working with more in-depth methods to come to the exact answer.

Nice example. Works well as a comparison to using a toolbox of methods to read.

There will always be phonics. It will always be the most important method to teach reading. No one disputes that.

What we're disputing is whether guessing the answer is actually reading or not or whether an exact answer matters or not. We are discussing advice like this:

You do not need to tackle every misread word, particularly if their choice makes sense in the context of the story

Your Maths examples and mine involve getting to an exact answer. And so, of course, should reading.

It is important so that children don't end up being older, frustrated, skipping guessers who can't read accurately enough to access the KS3 curriculum

I'm a "older, frustrated, skipping guesser" (who can read perfectly well) and can access the KS3 curriculum well enough to teach it.

The fault in your point is that older, frustrated, skipping guesser readers can read. They still use phonics. They still decode.

Bully for you!!!! God almighty. But, as you know perfectly well, there ARE older, frustrated children who cannot access the KS3 curriculum because they have been taught to guess and or to skip words and have no other strategies to decode.

What we're disputing is whether guessing the answer is actually reading or not

Child full flow. Let's say average year 1. Had read correctly 100 words so far. The books says:
"He lifted the bucket, it was high above his head...
He reads as:
"He lifted the bucket high above his head..." (and continues full flow)

Do you stop and correct? I wouldn't. I would consider that reading. That's where our dispute lies.

Struggling over a complex word, that different. I would use phonics to decide.

... because they have been taught to guess and or to skip words and have no other strategies to decode

Your sarcasm is blinding you to the point that other strategies goes alongside phonics and decoding - taught as the primary method of learning to read

So driving along yesterday, DD saw a road sign to "Salisbury", she's just out of reception, summer born 5 year old, and said to me there must be a hill there, we could go there and sing. So she was clearly not just using phonic decoding, as she read it as the less likely phonically, but correct (as a Southern England speaker) to rhyme with the Solsbury of the Peter Gabriel song that she knew.

She must've been using some guesswork based on knowledge that it was a place name and therefore what the likely pronunciation was, so she was sort of doing the Veronica / Verona option from the examples above, but I guess she was really just choosing from various phonetically plausible options?

Anyway, I clearly think phonics makes much more sense than guessing from pictures, but I can see how as an adult we use those other techniques to actually decide between phonically plausible options bases on homonyms, word roots, previous knowledge etc.

"He lifted the bucket, it was high above his head...
He reads as:
"He lifted the bucket high above his head..." (and continues full flow)

Do you stop and correct?

Yes

Yes.

Your sarcasm is blinding you to the point that other strategies goes alongside phonics and decoding

I'm afraid your ideology is blinding you to the fact that other strategies should NOT be used alongside phonics. Study after study has shown that teaching phonics alone will result in 95%+ of pupils learning to read adequately with some studies having a 99%+ success rate. As soon as you start mixing in other strategies the success rate reduces to 80%. Why are you (and far too many teachers) determined to use methods which reduce the number of children who will learn to read successfully?

How many methods of multiplication and division can you think of?

There is a significant difference. There are several approaches to multiplication and division that work well. Brain scans of adults reading shows that all good readers are subconsciously sounding out and blending at high speed. Poor readers use a totally different part of the brain. It appears that there is only one approach to reading that works well.

I have no knowledge of Irish but I can figure out how to pronounce a lot of Irish names by using the few I know and matching the letter groups to the sounds. How can you guess if you don't know the building blocks? It must be like seeing Siobhan written down for the first time!

As a parent of a weak reader- the advice to allow children to skip difficult words is stupid. Weak readers often want the reading session to end because it's hard work. My son would be furiously trying to suss out the minimum number of words that he had to read in order to proceed to the next page.

My children and I have enjoyed playing Pokemon Go this summer. The names of the Pokemon are great phonics practice.

They are! I use them often with Y2

Poor readers use a totally different part of the brain

That's really interesting. I have no idea what my brain scan would look like. But assuming you are correct in the all-or-nothing theory then I must use this completely different part of the brain (I assume this infers not using the 'other' part of the reading brain at all).

I use loads of methods - deducing, decoding when needed, reading every word if the document requires, skimming if not, even skipping sections if they don't affect the overall understanding (I'm thinking the massive chunks of Fifty Shades I skipped).

Yet I am a good reader. By that I mean I read widely. I read academically. I read for pleasure. I read professionally. I read socially. I read for current affairs. I read for instruction and education. I read. I read well.

So... what would I be defined as in the poor/good reader stakes? I could pigeon hole myself as a "Successful Poor Reader" I suppose. But I must use the different part of the brain to Good Readers.

I am not being sarcastic, this is interesting from a scientific and educational point of view. Maybe the problem here is what defines a "poor" reader actually does not mean someone who doesn't read.

I am a reader who can decode. I know how to. It is often the last thing I do when reading a text. Its not the first. Its definitely not something I do subconsciously and at high speed . I don't think so anyway. When I come across a word immediately recognise - I make a series of subconscious decisions at high speed

• does the fine detail of this whole text matter? (yes - decode)
• if no, does this particular section of text matter to overall understanding (yes-decode)
• if no, is this word important to the subject matter and/or likely to come up again (yes - decode)
• Do I understand this sentence/section without the word (no - decode)
• If yes then I'm likely to just skim the word. This doesn't mean I can't decode it, just that it's not my priority when reading.

None of these are conscious thoughts, they happen in an instant as I am reading. So because decoding is my last option - I would be defined as a "poor reader", yet I read perfectly well.

There is a problem with the definition of "poor reader" and "good reader".

Further, if this is a matter of brain function, then by not catering for the differing learning styles for people (adults and children) who are hard-wired to learn to read in a different way, they are setting these children up to fail and doing them a huge disservice.