Recommended links for student teachers and NQTs X

The Simple View of Reading (SVR): Reading ability is based on two major, essential, interacting but different components: phonics decoding ability x language comprehension (vocabulary and general knowledge) Note that both components are essential but neither is sufficient on its own.

SVR: Phonics Decoding:

It is still unusual for nearly all of a primary school's children to regularly finish year 6 able to decode and spell at a level that allows them to deal confidently with the word-level reading and spelling demands of the secondary curriculum. However, some schools are managing to change this deplorable state of affairs...

Elmhurst Primary is in Newham, east London, an area of high deprivation. Synthetic phonics (Read Write Inc) is used to teach children to read at the school. The headteacher, Shahed Ahmed, says, “More than 90 per cent of our pupils speak English as an additional language and we have 20 per cent mobility. The school ''has 1,000 pupils and not one of them leaves unable to read'' (TES. Lightfoot. 12/08/11) Furthermore, ''No child has been identified as having dyslexia since we adopted the [synthetic phonics] programme in 2004'' http://goo.gl/g4rJzQ

Curwen primary school is also in Newham, east London. A teacher at the school says, ''Ten years ago 40% of our children left us not able to read properly. Now all of them leave us reading well...There are more EAL and economically deprived children in the school than there were 10 years ago. So, how come reading results are better?..The difference is purely down to the change in teaching methodology. We teach reading solely by using synthetic phonics [Read Write Inc]. It works''.

Another primary school which, through teaching the linguistic phonics programme Sounds-Write ''with fidelity'', has superb reading and spelling results, is St Thomas Aquinas in Milton Keynes.
https://theliteracyblog.com/2016/03/23/st-thomas-aquinass-remarkable-results/

St George's is a small primary school in Battersea, London. Half of its pupils have English as an additional language and over half are eligible for free school meals. The school uses Sounds-Write to teach reading and spelling. All its children have reached the required standard in the phonics decoding check 6 years in a row and all the children in Y1 and Y2 (2018) can spell at chronological age or better; good evidence that high quality linguistic phonics teaching in the early years actively prevents children from becoming ''phonetically deaf'' or 'dyslexic'
https://theliteracyblog.com/2016/03/27/the-best-that-we-can-be/

SVR: Language / 'Reading' Comprehension

The end of KS2 Reading test examines children's reading comprehension (English vocabulary and general knowledge), not fluent and accurate word reading. To increase the probability of performing well in the Reading test, pupils require an extensive, knowledge rich (English) vocabulary, drawn from a wide variety of different subjects, especially the humanities and sciences (Christine Counsell) Schools in areas of deprivation, especially those with a high percentage of pupils who speak English as an additional language, can find filling the knowlege and vocabulary gap an enormous challenge. Schools that draw the majority of their pupils from wealthier, English-as-first-language, more middle-class areas find it much easier to achieve high scores in the Reading test, even if their pupils have received flawed or limited phonics instruction in the early years.

''The average socioeconomic status (SES) of the student body of the school...strongly predicts the average reading achievement of the school's students'' (Dr. Hollis Scarborough. underline in original)

''Vocabulary size is the outward and visible sign of an inward acquisition of knowledge'' (Christine Counsell)

X In the early grades, U.S. schools value reading-comprehension skills over knowledge. The results are devastating, especially for poor kids.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-radical-case-for-teaching-kids-stuff/592765

X Reading comprehension: a new approach
https://medium.com/solomonkingsnorth/reading-comprehension-a-new-approach-570d39ffac79
“A child’s inference cannot exceed their ‘mental models’, background knowledge or vocabulary. These are the things that poor comprehenders lack and no amount of comprehension-strategy practice can fill this gap.”

All reading comprehension tests are really “knowledge tests in disguise.” (Prof. Willingham)

https://thetraditionalteacher.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/how-not-to-prepare-for-reading-tests.
''Those who do particularly well without a knowledge rich curriculum succeed because of the knowledge and vocabulary they have acquired outside school''

''(O)nly curriculum-based [reading] tests can be fair and educationally productive'' (Hirsch 2006 p108)

https://thetraditionalteacher.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/general-reading-tests-are-always-unfair/
''E D Hirsch describes how several recent studies have conclusively shown that background knowledge is the number one factor in reading [comprehension] ability, trumping academic ability and IQ in pupils, and complexity in texts''

http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/CogSci.pdf
Prof. Willingham: Decoding, knowledge and reading comprehension.

Jon Hutchinson explains how knowledge organisers and work booklets can be used to help provide a fail-safe, knowledge rich curriculum, giving equality of curriculum content for all pupils:
- https://www.teachwire.net/news/how-to-get-the-best-out-of-knowledge-organisers-in-your-classroom
''Now, we have our knowledge organiser. A single sheet of A4 paper with all of the essential facts that together represent the schema of a topic...a useful primer and aide memoire for pupils''
- https://www.teachwire.net/NEWS/save-on-time-and-workload-with-work-booklets-you-can-use-year-after-year
''When writing the booklets, we assumed that if children didn’t learn it in lessons, they wouldn’t learn it. This is because for some of our kids, that will be true''

Why is it Essential to Teach Phonics Decoding (Synthetic Phonics) in the Early Years?:

For the majority of children it doesn't seem to matter if the multi-cue word-guessing method is used to teach them to decode. Over time, in primary, despite flawed or limited phonics teaching, most children manage to memorise many of the high frequency words by sight and invent strategies to work out longer, trickier words in their leveled reading scheme books. Sadly, a significant percentage of these, to all appearances, successful readers, will have had a more difficult time learning to read than is necessary, will remain poor spellers and will be unable to read accurately the more unusual words found in secondary level literature and advanced educational texts (school English books contain around 88,500 different words (D.McGuinness ERI p216)  The insidious effects of flawed decoding methods create many young people who dislike reading and writing and are the cause of vast numbers of teenagers who stall in their studies at the secondary stage.

''Multi-syllable problems are decoding problems! The point that I have to make all the time is that if students can't read multi syllable words well, we aren't finished with decoding instruction'' (Sara Peden. Twitter)

https://theliteracyblog.com/2014/05/28/why-cant-children-read-dickens/
Why can’t children read… Dickens?

The ability to read and write well is key to a happy and successful passage through life in our society. Professor MacDonald wrote, ''My own research on the psychology of adult illiteracy has amply demonstrated that the ability to read is probably the most significant factor (out of many) in determining a person's sense of autonomy and self-worth.''(MacDonald p5) Intellectual independence also relies on good reading skills. ''Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself.''(Gatto p56)

''The Centre for Social Justice found there are significant literacy and numeracy problems in 50-75% of children who are permanently excluded from school. Many children were found to “display challenging behaviour to hide the fact they cannot read.” (DfE.Evidence paper p1)

Can Reading Problems Affect Mental Health?
https://thinkingreadingwritings.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/can-reading-problems-affect-mental-health/

''Reading failure correlates with aggressive, anti-social behaviour more strongly than any social or economic indicator'' (Turner/ Burkard p13)

The Reading Wars:

You do not have to delve very far into the world of educational academia to discover the so-called 'Reading Wars'. This is a long running and acrimonious debate between those who say that synthetic phonics is the most efficient and effective way to teach decoding and spelling and those who insist that reading through multi-clues (guessing) and memorised sight words, a so-called 'balanced approach', works just fine. The controversy extends into the progressive education community. Many of its members believe that nearly all children, given an environment full of books with helpful, literate adults on hand, can teach themselves how to read, just as they learnt to walk and talk.

''The essential constructivist principle is that teachers should teach nothing directly, but rather function as coaches while their students basically teach themselves''. Professor Stephen Krashen, ''a self-described 'staunch defender'' of whole-language, believes that, "(A)ny child exposed to comprehensible print will learn to read, barring severe neurological or emotional problems...Kids learn to read by reading'' (Charlotte Allen)

Another of the major exponents of whole language, Margaret Meek, has famously said that children learn to read, "when there is something they want to read and an adult who takes time and trouble to help them". Whole language enthusiasts suggest that structured teaching to develop reading skills is not only unnecessary, it may be positively harmful'' (Palmer. TES. 10/11/95)  Australian children's book author Mem Fox also believes that ''all children will learn to read if they are exposed to enough books, words, stories..''

Fact and fiction with Mem Fox
https://www.spelfabet.com.au/2018/11/fact-and-fiction-with-mem-fox/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2017.1346660
The home literacy environment: ''Storybook exposure was not a significant predictor of children’s outcomes. In contrast, direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of reading / spelling skills."

https://learningspy.co.uk/psychology/can-learn-evolutionary-psychology/
X ''Surely if children can learn something as complex as speech without much effort, why do we need to go to the trouble of painstakingly teaching them phoneme/grapheme relationships?''

For an idea of the difficulty involved in learning to read using an opaque alphabet code, look at this re-coded, first line of a well-known nursery rhyme and work out what it says: ytoxto hruxsz ub ldyyuos xtmo (answer at the base of this page) ''This example provides the adult reader with some idea of the child's first experience with print. If you stared at this passage for years, you wouldn't have the slightest idea how to decode it. Why then should we expect a child to decipher the English alphabet code, one of the most complex ever designed, without direct instruction?'' (D.McGuinness WCCR p17)

Multi-Sensory Learning:

Advice, commonly given, that the choice of method to teach reading should depend on your child's particular learning or thinking style, is incorrect. Although this advice sounds, on the face of it, sensible and reasonable, it does pupils no favours. ''Excluding students identified as “visual/kinesthetic” learners from effective phonics instruction is a bad instructional practice—bad because it is not only not research based, it is actually contradicted by research''
(Stanovich p30 http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/Stanovich_Color.pdf)

For true multi-sensory learning, lessons should provide multiple tasks that reinforce all possible sensory and motor systems in tandem: listening (phoneme analysis), looking (discriminate letter shapes/learn spelling patterns, visual tracking), writing (kinesthetic movement), and speaking (speech-motor system, auditory feedback) to anchor the spelling code in memory as quickly as possible.

Diane McGuinness explains multi-sensory learning:  
''The cognitive systems of the brain rely on cross-modal processing to form what are known as "routines" or "subroutines" -- which are carried out in the dendrites in "neural circuits." In a complex act, various subroutines/circuits are linked up in the brain (via neural pathways), because each one of them occurs in a different region. Thus, if you teach phonemes linked to letters, and reinforce this via writing, you have connected up the auditory cortex language areas of the medial left hemisphere, (phonemic analysis and synthesis already in place because of language), with something NEW - i.e. visual symbols (not ordinarily part of language processing) which engage the posterior occipital regions of the brain responsible for visual pattern analysis, and then link both to a kinesthetic response by writing what you hear and see, which engages the fine motor processing systems governed by the motor cortex (usually left hemisphere superior motor gyrus). When you link all three as you process text (or generate text via writing), these three systems of the brain "cooperate" and reinforce one another, and this doubles the speed of learning. You have three different parts of the brain (plus their subsidiary regions) acting in tandem''

Children rely heavily on good auditory skills to learn to decode and spell accurately (Macmillan p126-132), writing being a coded transcription of the sounds in our speech. Children who suffer from hearing loss in early childhood are at increased risk of difficulties with learning to read, as are those who have acquired a dominant visual reading habit as a result of faulty initial teaching. Both sets of children need much more practice in the auditory aspects of reading, working at the phoneme level. This does NOT mean that time should be spent on discrete listening (phonological) exercises. Research shows that what develops children's decoding skills best is time spent working with the phonemes AND letters (spellings) together.

''Teaching children to manipulate phonemes using letters produced greater effects than teaching without letters'' (USA.2000 National Reading Panel. See Chapter 2: 6, 21, 33, 41)

https://seidenbergreading.net/2017/03/08/really/
''The basic principle is that reading depends on speech, at every level.''

Phonics Instruction Around Europe:

On the best age to start teaching children to decode and spell English, in school, using synthetic phonics, the Rose Report gives the following advice: ''(F)or most children, it is highly worthwhile and appropriate to begin a systematic programme of phonic work by the age of five, if not before for some children'' (Rose Report 2006. para89)

Sir Jim Rose noted that ''(A)n appropriate introduction to phonic work by the age of five enables our children to cover ground that many of their counterparts in other countries whose language is much less complex phonetically do not have to cover''(Rose Report. 2006 para99)

''When living in a print-saturated environment, many children attempt to read at a very early age. Letting them drift along using their invented strategies, without intervention, may harm them for life'' (D.McGuinness WCCR p153)

As evidence of the benefits of waiting until children are aged seven to start direct teaching of reading, the Early Years lobbyists can be relied on to flag up Finland where all children become accurate word decoders within weeks of starting formal school - aged seven. What they don't tell you is that Finland has a very transparent alphabet code and many Finnish parents teach their children to read pre-school as it's so easy to do.

''One-third of Finnish children can already read simple text when they begin school'' (https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2018/10/34-1-joseph-buckingham.pdf)

''Currently, the most vehement opponents of synthetic phonics are the Early Years lobbyists. Their belief system has it that teaching five-year olds to read is detrimental to their physical and mental well-being. They quote Finland where children do not begin ‘formal teaching’ until much later and learn to read easily to bolster their case...But there is nothing ‘formal’ about synthetic phonics teaching. It is multi-sensory and fun and can be achieved in 30 minutes a day, leaving several hours to be filled by child-initiated play, sand, water, painting, outdoor play, you name it.'' (Shadwell. issue 88. 2006)

http://edexcellence.net/articles/finlands-joyful-illiterate-kindergarteners
Debunking the Finnish fantasy, one piece at a time...

''(O)ur alphabetic system is not transparent as it is in Finnish, where there is only one way to spell each sound in the main. Our code needs to be introduced carefully from the simple to the more complex by teachers who understand it themselves. Left until six, our children will already have developed look and stare strategies, along with guessing and be well on the way to making a dog’s dinner of understanding the code.''(Shadwell. issue 88. 2006)

The Early Years lobbyists consistently fail to mention the evidence from Denmark, possibly because it doesn't suit their agenda. ''Danish shares with English the features of a deep orthography and a complex syllable structure. In Denmark children do not enter primary school until they are 7 years old. Despite this 2-year age advantage, they experience difficulties in acquiring the logographic [sic] and alphabetic foundation processes which are comparable to those observed in English, although less extreme'' (Seymour/Aro/Erskine)

English, Danish, Portuguese and French are, in that order, the European languages with the most 'opaque' alphabet codes. English and Danish also have a complex syllable structure. Greek, Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch are much easier to learn as they have a majority one sound / one spelling correspondence.

http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/05/reading-instruction-across-countries.html
X Map of Europe showing % of errors in word reading at the end of first year of formal school, by country. 2003

http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/the-pirls-reading-result-better-than-you-may-realize
''Orthographic depth correlates with incidence of dyslexia...Syllabic complexity correlates with word decoding''

Two cultural factors hugely influence the speed and ease of learning to decode and encode a written language accurately: the transparency of the language's spelling code (orthographic depth) and the method used to teach reading and spelling.

Having a transparent alphabet code is not the only reason why children in most European countries learn to decode so successfully (accurately) and rapidly; many European countries teach reading using synthetic phonics; letter names and sight words are not taught. The combination of a transparent alphabet code and the synthetic phonics teaching method means that, ''poor readers (children who can't decode) are rare to nonexistent in many European countries'' (D.McGuinness GRB p240)

''In countries with a straightforward alphabet writing system, where each sound is represented by only one symbol, learning to 'crack the code' takes about twelve weeks for all children'' (D.McGuinness GRB p9)

Ofsted's 'Bold Beginnings':

The statutory Early Learning Goals guidance says that by the end of the early years foundation stage (Reception year) children should be able to, ''use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately'' and, ''use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds''. Further guidance from the DfE notes that ''Most phonics programmes encourage the teaching of at least one grapheme for all 40-plus phonemes [a simple/basic code] by the end of Reception, alongside the skill of blending sounds together to read words'' (DfE) N.B. not all schools begin teaching phonics from the beginning of Reception and not all children have a full year in Reception (parents have the right to defer until the term after their fifth birthday).

Prof.Daniel Muijs: Bold beginnings and the importance of reception
https://researched.org.uk/bold-beginnings-and-the-importance-of-reception/

X Literacy in the early years: Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings report on Reception teaching was controversial, but it may ultimately serve to open some eyes and minds, writes Debbie Hepplewhite
https://senmagazine.co.uk/home/articles/senarticles-2/literacy-in-the-early-years

2018. Effectiveness of Preschool-Wide Teacher-Implemented Phoneme Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge Instruction on Code-Based School-Entry Reading Readiness
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1525740118789061
''Overall, preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused PA and LSK instruction can support code-based reading readiness skills for children with SLD and TD''

https://johnkennyweb.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/young-children-only-stand-to-benefit-from-explicit-instruction/
Young children only stand to benefit from explicit instruction

https://www.tes.com/news/if-we-truly-want-all-children-thrive-reading-we-need-introduce-phonics-early-years
''If we truly want all children to thrive in reading, we need to introduce phonics in early years''

The most important socialising force for a child is their peer-group. Their influence is especially strong during middle-childhood (6-12 yrs) (Harris p226). This factor needs to be considered in the reading equation. A child, whose everyday companions, in school or out, consist of other children who think that reading is boring or unpleasant, will copy those attitudes, ignoring those held by parents or other significant adults. This is another important reason for most children to begin a systematic synthetic phonics programme by the age of five (Rose Report 2006. para89), before any anti-book, peer-group influence takes hold.

Parents may be concerned that their children will be damaged if they start to teach them to read pre-school using synthetic phonics, having heard that it is dangerous to impose anything 'developmentally inappropriate' on young children. There is no scientific basis to this idea.

Many parents have successfully taught children much younger than five to read using a suitable synthetic / linguistic phonics programme. If you are uncertain about how well the schools in your area teach early reading and spelling, then this isn't 'hot housing' but a wise precaution. 'Bright' children will also benefit from an early start. Chartered psychologist Professor Joan Freeman writes, ''In my practice I see several children a week who can read, write and make excellent conversation, and who are well under school age, some as young as 2. No parent or teacher can make a child do this if they are not capable. The children are otherwise normal and happy and keen to learn. The numbers of them that I can see could doubtless be multiplied by many hundreds around the country. The proposed prohibitions by the anti-early-literacy group to stop enthusiastic children from getting the basics of literacy at nursery would be a cruel blow to their lively searching minds'' (Guardian.letters. 25/07/08)

http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/teaching_reading_before_5yrs.htm
X Recommended resources for teaching pre-schoolers to read.

''Once a child can read independently, the growth of many other skills is promoted'' (Research cited- Macmillan p7) ''Reading...opens some important doors...it gives the young learner a degree of autonomy and independence...also gives a child access to the whole culture of literacy. Reading makes it possible... to have access to vast quantities of stored knowledge'' (Howe '97 p154) ''The increased reading experiences of children who crack the spelling-to-sound code early..have important positive feedback effects. Such feedback effects appear to be potent sources of individual differences in academic achievement'' (Stanovich. Matthew Effects p364)

Delaying the start of direct instruction can be detrimental, especially for boys, ''(D)elaying the start of school for a year has no benefits and is likely to lead to a substantial drop in IQ...the largest reading ability sex differences in the world occur in countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden where children don't start school until age 7'' (RRF 51 Macmillan)

''(W)hy do we insist on waiting for children to be ‘ready’, only to then label them SEN when they don’t miraculously discover or do what everyone’s waiting for?'' (Quirky Teacher. Twitter 26/07/18)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/youngest-kid-smartest-kid.html
''(A)t age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less. A separate study, of the entire Swedish population born between 1935 and 1984, came to a similar conclusion''

What reading does for the mind: Cunningham&Stanovich
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/springsummer1998/cunningham.pdf

Teaching ‘advanced academic content,’ in early years ‘'associated not only with improved math and English/language arts achievement but also with improved social-emotional outcomes''
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831218813913

Death of a dogma? ''The dubious concept of developmental appropriateness has had its day''
https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/death-of-a-dogma/

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/willingham_1.pdf
Prof. Willingham examines Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
''(R)apid acquisition of reading ability might well help develop the lifetime habit of reading''
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9383616

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3117/abstract
Research: Impact of a play-based curriculum in the first two years of primary school: literacy and numeracy outcomes over seven years. ''It appears that no extra positive effect can be found for the play-based approach on reading and maths outcomes, and that perhaps a slight negative effect is evident''.

Early Years 'expert' Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, is one of those who tars the teaching of early reading using synthetic phonics with the 'formal and risky' brush, once describing advocates as, ''(A) rabble of back to basics diehards'' (Palmer. TES 10/11/95). More recently she opined that it was ''cruel and mad'' to expect the majority of five year olds to be able to write simple sentences (NurseryWorld 11/1/12). But, as Sir Jim Rose said, ''The term ‘formal’ in the pejorative sense in which phonic work is sometimes perceived in early education is by no means a fair reflection of the active, multi-sensory practice seen and advocated by the review for starting young children on the road to reading'' (Rose Review.2006 Summary p3)

https://theliteracyblog.com/2012/01/15/sue-palmer-too-much-too-often/
''I can’t help thinking that Sue Palmer, the literacy consultant and author of Toxic Childhood, doth protest too much, too often. This time she’s complaining about the government’s new EYFS writing target''

http://www.thelearningzoo.co.uk/2016/09/18/why-upstart-is-a-nonstarter/
X Why Upstart is a non-starter. ''Upstart Scotland is actively campaigning to introduce a Nordic-style kindergarten system between the ages of three and seven, with learning being undertaken through ‘creative play’ rather than ‘formal’ learning''

Rudolf Steiner:

The following ''non-experimental'' study is commonly quoted by those who suggest that it's unnecessary, even detrimental, for children to begin to be taught phonics around the age of five, as we do in England, and we should wait until the age of seven (when children's adult teeth usually appear). The main author, Dr.Suggate, is a strong supporter of Rudolf Steiner's theories about education.
http://web.uvic.ca/~gtreloar/Articles/Language%20Arts/Children%20learning%20to%20read%20later%20catch%20up%20to%20children%20reading%20earlier.pdf
In the following RRF messageboard thread, educational psychologist John Noble and Simon Webb, an author and blogger, comment on the Suggate study. http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4328

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/11/what-every-parent-should-know-about-steiner-waldorf-schools.html
''Steiner was very clear about why delayed reading was a good idea – not because older children can learn to read better, but because memorising and reading interfered with the incarnation of the etheric body. It could damage a spiritual protective sheath around the child leading to illness and spiritual degeneration. ‘Developmental needs’ in the Steiner world are to do with the incarnation of spiritual entities. Only after adult teeth have appeared is a child spiritually ready to learn to read''

Written Word Processing and the Brain:

Evidence suggests that many of those who have been taught to read through whole word memorisation along with guessing strategies for decoding, are handicapped by their lack of phonemic awareness and their limited knowledge of the advanced alphabet code. As a result they have difficulties accurately decoding unfamiliar words (especially multi-syllable ones) and with spelling.

Individual letter/sound correspondence processing is necessary because many words differ from another by only one or two letters - sad/said, diary/dairy, four/floor/flour, quit/quite/quiet... If, during reading, many words are guessed at and misread, it can completely change the sense of the text making it a meaningless, confidence-sapping exercise.

People interpret the meaning of the term 'sight word' in different ways. The most common understanding is that sight words are high frequency words (HFWs) which have to be visually memorised as whole shapes (customarily using 'look-say' flash cards). This is advocated by infant teachers who use mixed decoding methods. The HFWs, they believe, are mostly ''non-phonetic'' or ''too irregular'' to be learned through phonics. Additionally, they think that if their pupils get off to a rapid start with the school's leveled scheme books, aided by those memorised sight words and multi-cueing (guessing) strategies, this will be 'confidence-boosting'. Yet, as researchers Ashby and Rayner point out, ''(O)ne could argue that these children are only pretending to read, as the inherent magic of reading rests on the reader's independence'' (Ashby/Rayner.p60)

Synthetic / linguistic phonics practitioners say that a 'sight word' is any word (real or nonsense) that a reader has successfully decoded phonologically many times before. As a consequence, whenever the reader encounters it in text, they decode it so rapidly below conscious awareness that it seems as though it is being read instantly, without any phonological decoding taking place.

Prof. McGuinness points out, ''One should never think that just because "it seems like" we read instantly, this is, in fact, what we do. Our brain processes millions of bits of information all the time that we are not consciously aware of, because the processing speed far outstrips our ability to be conscious of it. An efficient reader has "automatized" or "speeded up" the decoding process to the point where it runs off outside conscious awareness'' 

Highly skilled readers may feel that they are bypassing phonological decoding, going directly to each real word's meaning but, in addition to lacking a credible research base, the theory was challenged convincingly by Glushko back in 1979. He argued that the brain automatically processes ALL the information available about the input signal from each word in parallel, processing multiple modalities simultaneously (much of which does not reach consciousness) and processing is not carried out along two separate routes or pathways (D. McGuinness ERI p289)

Modern eye-movement studies confirm that skilled readers, even when reading silently, parallel process each word, and this processing includes the word's phonological information. Researchers Ashby and Rayner explain: ''The word-superiority effect demonstrates that skilled readers process all of the letters when identifying a word'' and ''represent complex aspects of a word's phonological form, including syllable and stress information'' (italics added. Ashby/Rayner p57/p58), but this is done at a subconscious level. Only when the skilled reader comes to a previously unencountered word do the skills of phonological decoding come back into consciousness. 

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Lyxgk3cF6B4C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
X Handbook of early literacy research Vol.2 -see Ch.4 by Ashby and Rayner on eye movement research.

Diane McGuinness discusses Dual Route at length in 'Early Reading Instruction' p287-> especially Glushko's  insights.

http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2013/01/23/silent-reading-isnt-so-silent-at-least-not-to-your-brain/
Silent reading isn't so silent, at least, not to your brain

''(R)ecent brain studies show that the primary motor cortex is active during reading, presumably because it is involved with mouth movements used in reading aloud. The process of mentally sounding out words is an integral part of silent reading, even for the highly skilled''
(p90 www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/reading.pdf)

''The adult brain does not use global word shape: it still processes the letters, but all at once (in parallel) and this results in skilled readers having ''an illusion of whole-word reading''
(Prof. Dehaene: how the brain learns to read bit.ly/28QsScK )

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4.full.pdf?ijkey=0GSjhNaccRKTY&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi
Literature review on eye movement & word identification: ''(R)eaders naturally access the sounds of words while reading silently'' p16

''(R)ecent brain studies show that the primary motor cortex is active during reading, presumably because it is involved with mouth movements used in reading aloud. The process of mentally sounding out words is an integral part of silent reading, even for the highly skilled'' see p90 www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/reading.pdf

''For skilled readers, phonological coding may be consciously experienced as inner speech, or the voice they hear in their head during reading'' (Ashby/Rayner p54)

''We have known for about a century that inner speech is accompanied by tiny muscular movements in the larynx, detectable by a technique known as electromyography. In the 1990s, neuroscientists used functional neuroimaging to demonstrate that areas such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area), which are active when we speak out loud, are also active during inner speech. Furthermore, disrupting the activity of this region using brain stimulation techniques can interrupt both “outer” and inner speech'' (http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech)

Read the following (real) book title to examine your own phonological decoding skills. As an expert reader who implicitly understands how the Alphabet Code works (whether through direct phonics instruction or deduced over time) you'll find yourself tracking through the unusual words slowly left to right, segmenting one GPC at a time, mentally sounding out as you go, then blending the sounds as you proceed. 'Nonscience and the Pseudotransmogrificationalific Egocentrified Reorientational Proclivities Inherently Intracorporated In Expertistical Cerebrointellectualised Redeploymentation with Special Reference to Quasi-Notional Fashionistic Normativity, The Indoctrinationalistic Methodological Modalities and Scalar Socio-Economic Promulgationary Improvementalisationalism Predelineated Positotaxically Toward Individualistified Mass-Acceptance Gratificationalistic Securipermanentalisationary Professionism, or 'How To Rule The World'. Brian J. Ford (Wikipedia. Nonscience)

Do fluent, adult readers read whole words as 'sight words'?
https://theliteracyblog.com/2015/10/22/do-fluent-adult-readers-read-whole-words-as-sight-words-nooooooooooooo/

X 3 Reasons why segmenting is the mother of all skills in learning to read and spell
https://theliteracyblog.com/2018/01/10/3-reasons-why-segmenting-is-the-mother-of-all-skills-in-learning-to-read-and-spell/
''As a literate adult, you may not realise that when you are reading, you are segmenting words into their constituent sounds and then blending them to form words''

http://tinyurl.com/zba3jvv
X Share: On the Anglocentricities of Current Reading Research and Practice. Includes extensive discussion of the late stage sight word theory.

Decoding and Intelligence:

There is a, ''widespread and pervasive misunderstanding that poor decoders are, in some way, intellectually inferior'' but, ''we can make no judgements about an individual's intellect based upon their decoding skills'' (Elliott. LDA Bulletin p13) Alexander Faludy, described as ''so severely dyslexic that he can barely write'', won a place at Cambridge University at the age of 14. (Times 17/01/98) Another high IQ 'dyslexic' (he has the spelling ability of an 8 year old), Ben Way, was a multi-millionaire businessman by the age of 20 (Telegraph 10/01/00)

Children with hyperlexia are self-taught, fluent word readers from an extremely early age, but when hyperlexia is accompanied by an intellectual disability (it is commonly linked to autism) reading comprehension will suffer.
A parent on Mumsnet reported that her son with hyperlexia could read the Financial Times at age three. She also said that he was badly handicapped by a lack of phonics knowledge as he progressed through school and this resulted in him being unable to spell: ''What happened with my son was that because he was an exceptional reader he was never taught phonics and in Y6 he was still not writing anything! His teachers and numerous Ed Psychs were totally fooled by his apparent fluent reading (if only the PSC had been around) and dismissed his difficulties because of this''

Children with serious intellectual disabilities can be taught the mechanics of reading. Mona McNee, founder of the UK Reading Reform Foundation, taught her own son to read using synthetic phonics, despite the fact that he has Down's syndrome (McNee p8). The researchers Cossu, Rossini and Marshall found that Italian children with Down's syndrome could decode quite competently, having been taught the transparent sound-symbol correspondences of the Italian alphabet code, but they lacked comprehension of what they read.

Canadian SEN teacher Susan S. notes that, ''You find the phenomenon of children who decode very well but understand almost nothing in only two populations: children with intellectual disabilities and children with very limited English'' (Kitchentablemath blog 30/12/08)

Can children with intellectual disabilities learn to read?
http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2014/07/can-children-with-intellectual-disabilities-learn-to-read/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12272/abstract
Does Learning to Read Improve Intelligence?
A Longitudinal Multivariate Analysis in Identical Twins From Age 7 to 16

Word Calling / Barking at Print / ''Ron Burgundy Syndrome'' (Old Andrew)

There is a widely circulated myth that too much emphasis on decoding through phonics causes children to 'bark at print' aka ''Ron Burgundy Syndrome'' but, as Prof. Stanovich points out, ''There is no research evidence indicating that decoding a known word into a phonological form often takes place without meaning extraction. To the contrary, a substantial body of evidence indicates that even for young children, word recognition automatically leads to meaning activation..when the meaning of the word is adequately established in memory''(RRF 50 Stanovich p8)

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/3-ways-phonics-denialists-will-try-to-fool-you/
See- Ron Burgundy Syndrome

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ldrp.12024/full
Specific Reading Comprehension Disability: Major Problem, Myth, or Misnomer?
''Although poor reading comprehension certainly qualifies as a major problem rather than a myth, the term specific reading comprehension disability is a misnomer: Individuals with problems in reading comprehension that are not attributable to poor word recognition have comprehension problems that are general to language comprehension rather than specific to reading''

''Experienced practitioners and teachers point out that, in the course of phonics teaching, as children 'start to get the hang of it', they begin to self-teach and 'need to read a lot to consolidate their skills', that is, to develop effortless reading and focus more and more on comprehending the text. At this point, children may appear, some would say, to be 'barking at print' without fully understanding what they are reading. Although this is often levelled as a criticism of phonic work, such behaviour is usually transitional as children hone their phonic skills. Given that even skilled adult readers may find themselves 'barking at print' when they are faced at times with unfamiliar text, it is hardly surprising that children may do so in the early stages of reading'' (Rose Review para 49)

http://oilf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/who-speaks-for-reading-writing-and.html
Who speaks for reading, writing and literature?

Parents, Poverty and Reading:

Research, studying factors that predict children's reading ability, showed that in Britain the strongest predictor at age seven was the mother's level of education rather than the child's IQ (D.McGuinness WCCR p29). 

''When teachers don't teach, the education children receive from their parents becomes of paramount importance, and the children of ill-educated parents are at an overwhelming disadvantage'' (Burkard.2007.p30)

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/psychology/can-learn-evolutionary-psychology/
Education isn't natural - that's why it's hard. ''Schools exist to teach the hard stuff that children are unlikely to just pick up from their environments''

https://heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/schools-shouldnt-be-relying-on-parents-to-teach-reading/
''Most schools rely on parents to teach children to read..''

''I still can’t help but be concerned about the fact that only 44% of disadvantaged, white working class males achieve an acceptable outcome by the end of reception year'' (Quirky Teacher. twitter 06/03/18)

https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/in-education-is-poverty-destiny/
In education, is poverty destiny?
''At an academic level, we should again focus on the agency of the school. An approach to early reading that places heavy emphasis on children taking lists of sight words home to learn is inequitable. So is an approach that hinges on practising reading at home. Instead, children need to be explicitly and systematically taught to read while they are in school''

''Avoid parent-blame. It is not the job of parents to teach children how to read.'' (Prof. Pamela Snow)

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Willingham.pdf
Why do wealthy kids usually do better in school than poor kids?

Answer: London Bridge is falling down

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