John Walker, Sounds-Write

Educator, blogger ( Sounds-Write literacy programme

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

To love France was always a little cheesy, a touch of a cliché. Yet if you’re a romantic, it simply can’t be helped.

France, to me, was the cradle of European civilization.

We think of the Enlightenment and its luminaries, Voltaire and Diderot; of the Impressionists who rebelled against it and in Monet’s dissolving light and Debussy’s dreamy melodies, produced art of staggering beauty; of those long, searching existential conversations through the haze of cigarette smoke at the Café de Flore; of a nation that raised art, wisdom, and love itself to life’s highest purpose.

Civilization, as Werner Herzog once put it, is a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

For France, the ice has cracked.

Excellent piece by @DouglasKMurray

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

In which Chen, Marcus and Sweller park their tanks on the constructivists' lawn.

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

I will do a Strictly podcast about the insanity of Lucy Powell’s policies and how she makes Bridget Phillipson look perfectly reasonable soon…

But my goodness, do we have an Education Secretary determined to ruin the lives of disadvantaged kids!! 🤯🤯

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

Join us for an introduction to the principles of linguistic phonics and their application to the teaching of reading and spelling. Explore the structure and development of the English writing system, understand the rationale for a speech-to-print approach, and discover how these principles are implemented through Sounds-Write.

Agenda
✅ A deep dive into the English writing system and the rationale for a linguistic phonics approach
✅ The key principles that underpin linguistic phonics
✅ The distinction between speech-to-print and print-to-speech approaches to the teaching of reading and spelling
✅ How a speech-to-print approach supports reading and spelling development
✅ How the principles of linguistic phonics are applied through Sounds-Write classroom practice
By the end of the webinar, you'll gain a clearer understanding of linguistic phonics, the principles that underpin the approach, and its practical application in supporting children to become successful readers and spellers.

[Stuart Lock @StuartLock]

This would be obviously gameable and gamed, and hence lack validity or usefulness.

Key Stage 2 exams have been necessary and desirable to help drive up standards. I can think of no good reason to remove them.

[Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo]

Forensic analysis here from @BodilUK

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

Develop your expertise in teaching reading and spelling. 📚

Join Alison Perry, Speech Pathologist and Sounds-Write Trainer, for our intensive 4-day Practitioner Training.

Over four days, you'll learn how to:
✔️ Teach the skills, concepts and code knowledge that students need to become confident readers, writers and spellers.
✔️ Deliver Sounds-Write in whole-class, intervention and one-to-one settings.
✔️ Teach through errors, use formative assessment and adapt teaching to meet learners' needs.

Find out more and register your interest today.

[Paul Kirschner @New_Old_Paul]

We beschikken over meer onderzoek dan ooit naar hoe het brein daadwerkelijk leert. En toch worden in het ene land na het andere juist onderwijsmethoden gepromoot die volgens dat onderzoek het minst effectief zijn voor beginners. Blog van @Barbara97881398
https://t.co/mL7ZA1USzn

[Tom Bennett OBE @tombennett71]

Good relationships are the outcome of a successful school culture, not its cause.

If you want relationships built on trust, first:
1. Be trustworthy
2. Create predictable systems of behavioural expectation
3. Imbed these as routines
4. Uphold, monitor, challenge and support
5. Relationships flow from these mutual, authentic expectations.

Relationships in a school are not based on affection. Nor is that the purpose. The purpose is the flourishing of all

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

@PieCorbett Great idea, Pie, and it’s clear that many children a real delight in manipulating language 👏👏👏

[Pie Corbett @PieCorbett]

I’ve posted a child’s poem daily for a month. Katya’s incantation seems a great way to end. Magical. I’ll put them all into a PDF so you can have the series plus a few extra notes.

[Pie Corbett @PieCorbett]

Only one more day to go - this was an amazing moment as she dictated the words transfixed by the primulas. 6 yrs old. A real Ted Hughes moment.

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

@tombennett71 @Aptus_org ¡Brilliance! ¡Bien hecho!

[Tom Bennett OBE @tombennett71]

Look at the magnificent turnout for researchED Santiago today. LOOK #rEDchile So proud of Rodrigo and his team at @Aptus_org for bringing the dream to LATAM

[beanie0597_2.0 @0Beanie05923291]

I’m not interested in hearing about your “passion for social justice and equity” if you promote inquiry-based learning over explicit instruction, believe ambiguous, skills-based education is superior to knowledge-rich, content-focused education, and advocate for restorative circles instead of clear, consistent discipline.

You can’t say you’re passionate about social justice and equity while supporting practices that perpetuate inequitable access to knowledge and policies that harm students who are victims of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of their peers.

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

The one thing I’d want everyone to know about Direct Instruction is that the methods, materials and routines are far less important than the underlying drive behind it: the unswerving belief that EVERY child can achieve, regardless of circumstance.

DI is based on a deeply held conviction that if a child didn’t learn, it was because the teacher (or curriculum) didn’t teach them properly. In that sense, it is a movement rooted in social justice but one which takes responsibility for outcomes.

In the 60s and 70s, there was a view in the education academic establishment that formal academic work was premature for 4-year-olds, and doubly so for poor ones; so what they needed was enrichment and play.

Worse still, in the early 70s, some academics described DI as a racist enterprise*. Engelmann's own memoir notes that he and Bereiter were called “Nazis” and “kid-haters.”

Despite this, Engelmann taught disadvantaged 4 year olds to factor and to solve simultaneous equations, and filmed it. Bereiter and Engelmann’s argument, set out in ‘Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool’, was that the disadvantaged child was not “behind” in some general developmental sense but behind in specific, teachable things, that all kids could learn with the right scope and sequence.

The preschool they opened in the mid 60s ran for two hours a day, with three twenty-minute lessons in language, arithmetic and reading, taught to small groups by a teacher following a specific DI sequence. Those kids made huge gains which faded when they went to normal public schools.

DI has its limitations like everything but the drive behind it is sincere. As #SoldAStory season 2 will show, it has been portrayed as something very different to what it actually is and the animating principles behind it.

*Baratz and Baratz, ‘Early childhood intervention: the social science base of institutional racism.’

[Pamela Snow @PCSnow1604]

History catches up with the education establishment in this important Season 2 of Sold a Story. Meaningful education advances could have been made in the last 50 years, as has occurred in other fields, where evidence is weighed more carefully and objectively. But they weren’t, and socioeconomic status continues to drive education outcomes, where classroom instruction should have the upper hand on this.

[Bodil Isaksen @BodilUK]

The Secretary of State can not mandate oracy any more than he or she can mandate formative assessment, or peer tutoring, or anything else in the EEF T&L toolkit. The SoS can use the levers at their disposal: Ofsted, KS2 tests, National Curriculum, and GCSE specs. 🧵

[Pie Corbett @PieCorbett]

Children’s poem of the day - it was Sally who said that poetry when you, ‘try to say what things really are.’ I’ve always loved this tender little poem.

[Adam Boxer @adamboxer1]

I am interested in learning from a secondary school that currently embeds an "oracy" programme which is the type we are supposed to emulate.

What exactly do they do?
How do they assess it?
What are their general outcomes as a school?
Which demographic do they serve?

I think this will be the last post I do on oracy for the minute. It's important that if, as a profession, we are going to implement something we know exactly what it looks like and where it works.

Please share widely 🙏🙏