I was talking with Nicky Campbell this morning on Radio 5.
It is worth you listening to the whole programme. Here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03s689x
Highlights:
- Nick Gibb, MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton agreed with me, in principle but I don’t think he understood in detail. But that is progress.
- Comprehension comes with fluent reading
- Another speaker from Manchester was confirming my comments on word recognition
- Henrietta Dombey spoke really well on many topics, for example, “Concerned that we teach our children to read not just to parrot the words on the page” “Teach them to read english, where the spelling is not phonetically regular”
- There is a lot of confusion about “look and say” books. This is not learning how to effectively use mental imagery, it is all visual teaching, not visual learning.
Do try to catch up with it and pass on the message.
In addition here is Andrew Davis, Honorary Research fellow, Durham University, doing a short introduction http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qpxlv where he talks about reading for meaning and children who enter quite a rigid school where they are forced back into sounds and blending sounds that is not reading for meaning.
Olivehickmott 