This is a 'blast from the past' where England is concerned - but it's still a current scenario in other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US where multi-cueing for guessing unknown printed words still persists.
Subsequent to the 2003 DfES phonics seminar, MP Nick Gibb worked hard to ensure a parliamentary inquiry into teaching beginners to read which was followed by Sir Jim Rose's historic independent national review. In Sir Jim's report, the recommendation was to replace the National Literacy Strategy's 'Searchlights' multi-cueing reading strategies model with the 'Simple View of Reading' model which highlights that reading consists of two main processes: 1) the ability to lift the words off the page (What ARE the words?) and 2) the language comprehension to understand the words that have been lifted (What do the words MEAN?).
http://www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID= ... eNumber=51
Sir Jim Rose's report was published in 2006 but over ten years later, the Book Bands cataloguing system still exists in England so IFERI has published its concerns regarding beginners being asked to read books which perpetuate multi-cueing either by direct teaching or by default.
IFERI provide this information leaflet:
http://www.iferi.org/wp-content/uploads ... oned-1.pdf
Further, there are plenty of signs that many teachers, and others associated with the teaching profession such as teachers' union leaders, who continue to believe that 'no one size fits all' which Sir Jim actually addressed in his report along the lines of...but there is only ONE alphabetic code and phonics skills to teach to
all learners.
So - the debate continues even in England despite many years of trying to introduce evidence-informed reading instruction and truly leading-edge practice.
