John Bald/language and literacy

"I just wanted to grow things..." Alan Titchmarsh

Alan Titchmarsh is to gardening as Jamie Oliver to cooking, and less of a commercial operation. He is excellent, here, on promoting gardens and horticulture in schools, and does equally well in Country Life, even admitting on occasion to an error. Titchmarsh was no academic in school, but he has the gift of clarity, and writes well. His work should be studied.

Whose history? A useful start

Exactly what the key moments in history in the UK are is debatable, but this list from Professor Robert Tombs of Cambridge is interesting. Professor Tombs is, incidentally, a professor of French history, not British. Here is his list:

500 Anglo-Saxon conquest

900 The Danelaw

1066 The Norman conquest

1170 Battle between Henry II and Church

1215 Battle between King John and barons

1258 Consultation of barons and townsmen

1314 Scottish and Welsh wars

1381 Peasants’ revolt

1415 Agincourt and 100 Years’ War

1485 Defeat of Yorkists

1535 Execution of Thomas More

1553 Catholic Restoration

1588 Defeat of Spanish Armada

1611 King James Bible

1649 Execution of Charles I and Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

1689 Glorious Revolution and Battle of the Boyne (1690)

1707 Union of England and Scotland

1721 Beginning of Walpole’s administration

1763 Treaty of Paris, securing Canada for Crown

1769 Spinning Mule invented: key moment in Industrial Revolution

1776 Loss of 13 Colonies

1805 Battle of Trafalgar

1825 Opening of first railway

1832 Reform Bill and 1833 Abolition of Slavery

1838 Chartists and 1846 Repeal of COrn Laws

1886 Irish Home Rule Bill

1904 Entente Cordiale

1919 Treaty of Versailles

1931 Statute of Westminster

1940 Churchill as Prime Minister

1945 Labour landslide

1947 Indian independence

1960 Wind of Change

1969 British troops deployed in Ulster

1973 UK joins EEC

1984-5 Miners’ strike

1997 Tony Blair elected to power

Nothing on the ancient Romans or the ancient Britons other than Boadicea, who was a loser and less important than the two thousand years that preceded her.  I'm not at all sure I'd have included Robert Walpole or the Entente Cordiale, which was less important than WW1. There should have been a place, too, for the Battle of Britain. We were very fortunate that Hitler started to make mistakes just when he could probably have finished us off.

Nick Gibb - Catalogue of Phonics Resources and Training. A Good Start

Schools Minister Nick Gibb has brought together a range of organisations to construct a comprehensive catalogue of phonics resources and training, details here, Any school with Key Stage 1 pupils (infants) can spend up to £6k on these resources, and will receive half of its spend in matched funding. The catalogue is bright, well illustrated and comprehensive, and definitely worth reading. My favourite remains Ruth Miskin's books and ditties, as much for their excellent questions and guidance to parents as for their phonics content.

But - the wordbuilding approach to phonics that is the basis of learning to read needs to be extended beyond the initial stages represented here. There is a "second wind" to phonics as children meet more complex words in junior school (Key Stage 2), most of which are phonically regular, but in which the information contained in letters needs to be interpreted, for example so that children know which part of a word to stress. Some schemes do not tackle what I call second level phonic patterns, such as the softening effects of i, y and e on g and c - city, centre, cycle, gin, George, gyro. Once basic phonics are established, there is a need for schools to tackle more advanced word skills, as these are essential to secondary education.

Word history and teaching English

I almost always ask new pupils how table comes to be spelled as it is. None has ever known the reason, which is that it is a French spelling - if we say the word in French, we can hear the l before the e. It's important as it unlocks and  explains the spelling of a large number of words - cable, stable, staple etc. 

Does that mean that we need to learn French to teach people to read? a teacher asked. 

It doesn't, but it does mean that teachers need to know enough of the history of words to be able to explain to pupils why language is not always logical, and to point out patterns in the irregular words that will enable pupils to make connections between them and learn by analogy. No reading scheme does this and, as far as I know, no teacher-training programme does either. The result is that even schemes that give children a good understanding of phonics do not fully equip them to read in English, as they have to work out irregular words for themselves, and have no basis on which to do this.

It's not that children can't understand this idea - I've never met one that can't, provided it is explained in terms that make sense to them. If I  say to them that the language is a thousand years old, and that if we were a thousand years old we'd have a few wrinkles, this makes perfect sense. If I say letters don't always behave perfectly, they understand this because they don't behave perfectly eiither. If I say that We use what the letters tell us, but we don't believe the letters tell us everything, they begin to understand the system they are dealing with, and adjust their thinking accordingly.

Unfortunately, people who base their thinking about literacy on dogma and politics - the latest contribution of the Left is a professor of education at Greenwhich who has coined the term Conservative Neoliberal Phonics - have either pretended that irregularity can be ignored, or have used it as a reason to dream up various guessing game theories of reading that do not give childre the skills they need. 

The truth is different, and it is time for the truth to form the basis of literacy teaching.

Tania Tirraoro

Tania read my piece on dx on Conservative Home, and asked me to write an explanatory version for parents, which she has posted here. Tania's site is very strong on autism, with a very extensive network of parents and lists of contacts.

What makes a difference? Professor John Hattie.

An interesting call from a training company led me to check the work of Professor John Hattie, of Melbourne, some of which is summarised here. The first three factors he identifies, the quality of feedback to pupils, the quality of instruction, and pupils' "prior cognitive ability" - in inverted commas, as this is hard to pin down - are interesting. I see feeding back to pupils as part of teaching, and can't separate it from instruction - in fact, instruction without careful feedback and targetting is not effective. The other factors he lists are equally interesting - pupils' disposition to learn, for example, is important, but not as important as the quality of teaching, probably because good teaching improves pupils' disposition to learn by giving them success. I'm doubtful about the equation of a factor of 1 with a year's progress or with GCSE grades, as the GCSE grades themselves are so unreliable, and I also have a problem with research methodology that seeks to draw conclusions from a large number of studies that don't provide conclusive evidence themselves. The technique rests on a supposition that errors may cancel each other out, whereas they may just as easily compound each other. Still, this is an interesting analysis for school leaders, and I'll read more of Professor Hattie's work.

The Dyslexia Racket and the Alternative.

I posted the piece below on Conservative Home (here, to include comments from the site), not because I think reading and literacy difficulties should be a party issue, but because of the ways in which dyslexia has been handled by other parties, and particularly by New Labour's partisan civil service. An anti-social superstructure has been allowed to develop which we would all be better off without. The text, with apologies if you've read the key ideas on earlier postings, is as follows:

The dyslexia racket and the alternative

John Bald on the "Special Educational Needs" industry that thrives on failure

Shortly after I started teaching in a secondary school, in the early seventies, I had a conversation with an eleven year old who had “bunked off” my English class, and who, I discovered, could not read. No-one had told me about this when I took over the class – a colleague asked me if I didn’t believe in “self-fulfilling prophecies” – and the deputy head told me with equanimity that “lots of boys in the first year can’t read”.

My response was to become a reading teacher, and from that time onward, I’ve been doing all I can to teach reading and other aspects of literacy as effectively as possible so that people will be able to read, with their problems either knocked out or severely cut down. After a few years, a certain amount of success and a couple of articles, I was introduced to an American book written during World War Two, with the educationally unfashionable title Remedial Techniques in Basic School Subjects, whose author, Grace Fernald, had developed simple and effective approaches to serious reading difficulties, including some caused by brain damage. She had done equally good work on basic arithmetic, and her insights into foreign languages coincided with work I’d done with children who had been failing in French (my degree subject).

While some updating was needed from the state of the work as Fernald left it, her key ideas seemed to me to be right, and the transformation of one child’s life an inspiration – he had been knocked off his bike by a car, suffered loss of brain substance, and was medically pronounced incapable of becoming a self-sustaining member of society. By the time Fernald had finished with him, he was making college entrance grades, and the only remarkable thing about him was that he tended to use more advanced vocabulary than was usual for his age. That, I thought, was the way to do it, and I remain grateful to the late Dr Margaret Peters of Cambridge Institute of Education for recommending the book.

But not everyone agreed then, and still more don’t agree now. Knocking problems out, or “remedial work” might be acceptable in cases of accident, but the approach promoted since Baroness Warnock’s committee coined the term special educational needs is based much more on the idea of accepting differences rather than trying to overcome problems. This is the main thrust of the policies of the voluntary bodies that were placed in charge of the issue by the last government, and which, like many large charities in New Labour’s “third sector” see themselves much more as agents of political change rather than providers of services to those in need. And with this has come a superstructure of expensive reports and assessments, leading to elaborate examination concessions and a complete, self-sustaining carbuncle of a bureaucracy that does very well for itself out of the problem while making very little impact on it.

When I sent evidence of this, and of the alternative, to Sir James Rose’s inquiry into dyslexia , New Labour’s civil service first lost it, then decided they had located it in a folder, and did not bother either to read it or to pass it to him. Whether they really found it or did not want to admit to having lost it, I leave to your judgement. Sir James, to his credit, has apologised for this – though it was obviously not his fault – and is taking a personal interest in the alternative.

Here it is:

1. If the problem is part of a severe general learning difficulty, refer to the techniques developed by Professor Sue Buckley of the Down’s Education Trust. These are very effective for a range of learning difficulties, and can supplement phonic work where children are capable of this.

2. If not, ask two questions:

What is it in this person's thinking that is preventing them from using the information conveyed by letters in order to read?

and 

How do I help them to adjust their thinking so that they can read successfully?

These questions ensure that the teacher or psychologist focuses on the person sitting before them, and not on some programme designed by someone else who has never seen this pupil.

3. Design and carry out a teaching programme that answers question 2.

There is plenty of source material for this, but a principle should be that everything a child does not understand should be unpacked, and explained so that they do understand it. This means that teachers need to know the spelling system inside out, both in its regular and irregular features – very few do, as the irregular features are rarely explained in training. Psychologists should no longer be allowed to write reports without making an impact on the problem. At the moment, they are basing reports on tests that any teaching assistant could administer, and most make no contribution to solving the problem. Of course, in the politically correct scheme of things, there is not a problem in the first place, so they need not concern themselves with a solution.

4. Anyone offering advice in this area must be able to walk the talk. As each case is different, Sir James and I agree that case studies should be the basis of the work. My own latest case study is of a ten year old who had become so upset at not being able to read that he seriously injured himself, nearly died and suffered brain damage. He is now making excellent progress with his reading, and has read over 100 pages of Danny The Champion of the World. Like my heroine Grace Fernald, I’ll be happy when the job is done and he is at university.

I don’t charge for this teaching. Please get in touch if you think I can help.

 

Truancy, fines and parents.

Guardian, here, has a report, followed by a lot of comments, on proposals to deduct truancy fines from benefits. Not in itself a bad idea - if a fine is imposed, it must be paid. But there is a real snag where parents do all they can to ensure that a child attends school, only for the child to refuse to go, or run away once they arrive. Fines should only be imposed where there is evidence that a parent has not done all he or she reasonably can do in order to ensure attendance - and punctuality should be part of this. Otherwise, they will just give more power to Jobsworths. 

Phonics, Reading and Language Development - a note from a parent, and serendipity.

The basis of reading in English, as in any language that uses an alphabetic system, is the information conveyed in the letters, which we learn to use by blending sounds and building words. This is all that synthetic phonics means.

The mother of the very bright pupil I saw last week noticed that I moved quickly from very short words such as his name, or cat, to much longer words that had similar phonic components - catastrophe, catastrophic. I do this both to show that phonics can tell us most of what we need to know in order to read long words - I call this phonics' "second wind" - and what it won't tell us, which is how to pronounce them, and in particular where to place the stress. There is almost always just one stress point in an English word, and it is movable - see photograph, photography, photographic. 

Where a child has the ability to understand more complex vocabulary, as Derek clearly had, I spend a lot of time unpacking and discussing the words, explaining what letters do and don't tell us, and using frequent flashbacks, asking them to read words I pick out from the set, so that they learn to use all of the information contained in the letters, and not just to sound words out.

One of the key features in learning to read in English is that information contained in letters has to be interpreted - eg the difference between can and can't, which caused Derek more trouble than the difference between catastrophe and catastrophic. The only way to deal with this is to explain, discuss and practise. For example, after explaining that some letters give us information about other letters, and once Derek was confident with this on mad and made, I wrote late and plate, both of which he read with ease. Then template, which he read more hesitantly, but could explain to me. Then contemplate, which we discussed, and which Derek told me applied to his brother, a mathematician. We spend similar amounts of time on the origin of the illustrate, in lighting up a text, then illustrated, illustration.

There is probably no alternative, in this aspect of reading and language development, to relaxed but focused conversation with an interested and educated adult, who knows the language well enough to pick out key words to illustrate ideas or patterns, and how can provide Jerome Bruner's "courteous translation" of the adult concepts they contain, so that the child can understand and enjoy them. 

A key element in my teaching is not to teach a word a child has got wrong, but another with the same pattern, almost always the pattern at the end of the word rather than at the beginning. I then explain the pattern clearly, and practise it with other words that share the pattern. Once the child has the pattern clear in their mind, I throw in the word that caused the problem, and they usually get it right. I started using this little technique in the first reading lesson I ever taught at Beaufoy School, when someone could not read round, and I got a pound of of my pocket - still  notes in those off days - and taught the boy to read that. Round was then easy. Since then, the value of this approach has been confirmed and extended in the work of Professor Usha Goswami. Its relevance here is that similar letter patterns can lead us almost anywhere in terms of meaning. As everythinlg must be explained so that it is clear to the child, every esson is therefore different, and more likely to sustain interest.

I'm grateful to Derek's mother for pointing this out so clearly.

New approach to French - Ella Linton

I've been teaching Ella Linton's class at St Matthias Primary School in Hackney for half an hour after lunch over the past two terms. It is a mixed Years 1 and 2 class, and Ella works with me in each lesson. Here is Ella's note on what we have achieved:

Children have learnt that words in French and English have a lot of similarities, especially longer words. They also started to look at which letters differed between the two languages and noticed letters with 'hats' on top of them.

Children have learnt and understood the personal pronouns, and could relate them to each other - hands up if you're il/elle etc. This is due to repetition in every lesson and then practice between lessons 

Due to repetition we have 100% success rate with male and female words and a 90% success rate when hearing if the sentence is a negative or not. Children could identify that 'pas' made the sentence negative. Reading 'Pas maintenant, Bernard' was very helpful for this.

Children were then given five common classroom words to learn. Some found this more difficult because of the lack of repetition as opposed to the pronouns that were taught and heard in almost every part of the lesson. 

You were also able to teach the children as young as 5 years old the difference between singular and plural on instructions, which is quite extraordinary. Lastly it was definitely clear that the children remembered and enjoyed learning French through song and rhymes. 

Overall it has definitely given the school a fantastic base of French and I and the other teachers will be continuing this with the classes.