Today’s word is ‘receive’. It comes up almost every time I ask a room of people about difficult words. It’s almost always taught alone as part of some list or other in some kind of spelling sequence, but again, if you look under the bonnet and see what drives this word and other words like […]
Speech to Print Solutions: Receive Read More »
Here’s one of my favourites: necessary. My approach was once to come up with a cute memory trick like the ones you see on YouTube, but back then, I wasn’t in the habit of lifting up the bonnet on words like I am now. This made my teaching a bit hit and miss. I want
When high quality teaching is ‘necessary’, S2P won’t help Read More »
Today’s Speech to Print and other dubious practices solution centres around the word ‘was’. Since my first article on the S2P movement, there have been a great number of comments from S2P practitioners along the lines of ‘Oh we absolutely teach morphology and etymology…after second grade/after the initial code/CCVCC’ etc. When I ask: Why wait?
Speech to Print Solutions: ‘was’ Read More »
Today’s popular words are ‘said’ and ‘their’. Guaranteed to come up whenever you ask a room of teachers about tricky words. Use the irregular words to tell the stories of the language. They aren’t irregular for a laugh. Each time you encounter one, you stand at a fork in the road. You can either gloss
Speech to Print Solutions: said and there (and Robert Frost) Read More »
I go on leave on Dec 9 and won’t be back on social media, my phone, or even email until Jan 3. It will be the longest break from work I have ever had, in my almost 30-year career. Don’t get me wrong; I love my work, but this has been a big and wonderful
Culty as Charged Part 2: Some solutions Read More »
‘Get the popcorn out, Lyn’s about to make a statement that’s going to annoy some people!’ My job isn’t, in fact, to annoy anyone. Nor is it to poke fun, be disrespectful, or rain on anyone’s parade. My job, as I see it, is to do whatever I possibly can to get the best deal
Culty as Charged: Why the Speech to Print Movement Needs Brakes Read More »
Excited attendees in the Main Ballroom March 2023’s Plain Talk 28th Annual Conference in New Orleans was a fantastic opportunity for me to immerse myself in the world of cutting-edge literacy and learning. The conference brought together a diverse group of experts and practitioners, sharing their insights and experience on a range of topics, from
Plain Talk New Orleans – Research and Practice Read More »
Recently, in my pre-breakfast glance at social media and emails that have come in overnight, I happened to catch a post on the Levelled Literacy Intervention for Teachers Facebook page that warrants some attention. It neatly highlights the difference between the culture of the science of reading, and cultures who reject that science. I read
The Culture that Kills Pt2: Student Blaming Read More »
Tutor Puppy-Farms: Find the right tree to bark up It’s true that many children have missed out on vital parts of their education over the last two years. My own dyslexic daughter completed her final education certificate mostly via Zoom and though concessions for the pandemic were on offer, she still missed out on gaining
Tutor Puppy-Farms: Find the right tree to bark up Read More »
It’s been a bit of a tough week for literacy giants Fountas and Pinnell. Firstly their products were reviewed by edreports.org and found to be wanting. That’s a pretty damning indictment right there. As a damage-control measure, the authors decided to try to ‘navigate to a place of clarity’ by producing some strange, very unclear
The Culture that Kills Read More »