Sam Blumenfeld has made a huge contribution to the reading debate and to education particularly in America. http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/crimes-of-the-educators-author-dies/ IN MEMORIUM 'CRIMES OF THE EDUCATORS' AUTHOR DIES 'Lonely voice in the wilderness' on topic of trouble in public schools Blumenf...

You can read more about teacher-training in different parts of the world on this thread:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/for ... .php?t=782

Chris Pyne is known to be very pro-phonics, so hopefully this news bodes well for Australian teacher-training: https://ministers.education.gov.au/pyne/new-aitsl-board-appointed The Hon Christopher Pyne MP Minister for Education and Training Leader of the House The Minister for Education and Training...

One of my sisters was asking me about 'twin studies' recently and coincidentally, within a day or two, someone flagged up Dorothy Bishop's paper to me in which the abstract states: Abstract Developmental dyslexia runs in families, and twin studies have confirmed that there is a substantial genetic c...

A post has been deleted from this thread as it did not comply with the agreed 'Terms and Conditions'.

Greg Ashman writes another good post to which I've added my comments about the context of the Education Endowment Foundation in England: 'The truth about teaching methods' https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/the-truth-about-teaching-methods/comment-page-1/#comment-268 Please note that Greg i...

There is so much 'alphabetic code' to introduce to learners, that basic skills lessons are inevitably requiring, in the main, repetitive routines as each part of the alphabetic code is introduced (the letter/s-sound correspondences), then applied to the phonics skills for reading, spelling and handw...

As a teacher-trainer in literacy basic skills, I am always trying to design diagrams which might make it easier and more memorable to assimilate information - particularly when that information involves many component parts. I have always included 'handwriting' in my description of phonics skills as...

In response to a parliamentary inquiry in England in 2005, Sir Jim Rose was commissioned to conduct an independent national review of teaching reading in the UK. In his final report, Rose recommended a model of understanding the two main processes of 'being a reader' in the full sense called the 'Si...

When it comes to the intervention programme, Reading Recovery, I often use the words 'entrenched, establishment programme' and I speculate whether it is SO entrenched that, as a world, we shall never be able to stop its use and proliferation, despite the review of its research, and despite its cost ...