David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

A useful place to find helpful blogs and websites with a wealth of information about reading.
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Susan Godsland
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Joined: Sun May 24, 2015 1:32 pm

David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

Post by Susan Godsland »

David Didau is a secondary English teacher, freelance writer, speaker and trainer.
He's written some excellent blog posts on literacy from a secondary school perspective and on dyslexia.

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

Re: David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Thank goodness the very popular and well-respected David Didau is on board with evidence-informed reading instruction - read his latest blog posting (where I've posted a comment re endemic 'word skipping' - one of my bugbears!):

From Scared Straight to Reading Wrong

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/reading/fr ... ing-wrong/
Education has suffered similar victories of ideology over reality where teachers and policy makers have opted for intuitive, easy to understand ideas over the complexity of how children actually learn. Despite the fact that teachers’ judgements are entirely subject and dubious at best, we go with what feels right and damn the evidence!
When David tweeted about this posting, he added the comment 'batten down the hatches' as he knows full well that any time 'phonics' is mentioned on Twitter, battle royal ensues!

It really shouldn't be like this - but demonstrates that there is no shared professional understanding when it comes to reading instruction - and that phonics detractors abound.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

David writes a blog posting with the theme:
Reading difficulty is a teaching problem not an intelligence problem
http://www.learningspy.co.uk/literacy/i ... as-failed/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

David Didau on:
Who is dyslexic and why does it matter?
http://www.learningspy.co.uk/myths/who- ... it-matter/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: David Didau's Learning Spy blog.

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

David Didau writes a post of the article published in 'Teach Secondary':

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/reading/ev ... able-read/
What every teacher needs to know about… students who leave secondary school unable to read

If a student leaves secondary school unable to read it is the school’s fault. I’ll leave that opening sentence hanging, parked like a tank on your lawn, while we consider what is actually involved in teaching students to read.
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