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 »
As a teenager, I was a regular visitor to Tripoli in Libya. My father was the British Consul there for around four years and being at boarding school, I went and stayed with him during my holidays. One year, it just so happened that hostilities between the USA and Libya were increasing, and many of
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 »
Vale Sir Jim Rose, whose life’s work contributed to the betterment of teaching reading and consequently children’s lives worldwide. He was the author of the UK’s famed “Rose Report” in 2006 which led to vital changes in the way reading was taught in Britain. I interviewed him back in 2018. Here is the transcript: Sir
Vale, Sir Jim Rose Read More »
If parental input is driving your system’s success, there’s something wrong with your system Chilli was a 9 year old boy who couldn’t read or write. He’d been issued with the same type of take-home readers and magic ‘sight word’ list that everyone else in his class had been issued with, year in, year out,
The Home-Learning/Literacy Myth Read More »