Approaches to Teaching Reading

“How does one get a rich understanding? By relating what you are reading to other material that you already know.”  Dandelion Willingham article: http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/winter0607/CogSci.pdf This means that to broaden children’s comprehension we need to teach them vocabulary and loads of history, geography, science, literature etc. Then they can relate what they are reading to what […]

A great deal has be said and written about the importance teaching children comprehension once they are fluent readers.  Well, here is an interesting article by Daniel Willingham about the limited benefits of comprehension instruction. http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/04/collateral-damage-of-reading-comprehension-strategy-instruction.html Thank you Susan Godsland of www.dyslexics.org.co.uk for flagging this up.  

  Read this powerful article by Miranda Devine about ideology in the politics of teaching reading and its tragic outcome. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-crazy-politics-of-learning-to-read-20090320-94dg.html

John Walker of the Literacy Blog exposes a fundamental lack of understanding of phonics  in Wales: http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/prate-and-lyle.html

Read this blog post by Tabularasa about the failure to ensure all children leave school literate and numerate: http://tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/