John Walker, Sounds-Write

Educator, blogger ( Sounds-Write literacy programme

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

Current philosophy of discipline in schools:

"Well, he had a rough background so he gets to do whatever he wants and thereby ruin the learning of every other kid in the school without consequence."

And somehow that's the enlightened, "compassionate" approach

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

NEW FREE POST When inquiry learning is malpractice
We know enough to draw some red lines
Link 👇👇👇

[Pamela Snow @PCSnow1604]

Good explainer by Dr Mark Carter on what explicit instruction is/is not:

Explicit instruction: what works, what doesn’t, and why it matters — EducationHQ

https://t.co/2JFd3jj4Ex

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

This webinar is now available on-demand! 💻

Speech Therapists bring a deep understanding of the mechanics of sound, yet bridging the gap between speech production and proficient reading and spelling can be complex.

Discover how Sounds‑Write, a structured linguistic phonics program, supports that connection and why it is proving successful in clinic settings around the world.

What to expect:

✅ The Sounds-Write framework: An overview of the evidence-based logic that makes this program a "gold standard" for literacy intervention.

✅ Clinical efficacy: Why a structured, linguistic approach that goes from speech to print is often the "missing link" for students who struggle with traditional phonics.

✅ Interventions Masterclass: Insights into using the program with complex cases and private practice caseloads.

✅ Special guest interview: Alison Perry, SLT and experienced Sounds‑Write Trainer, will share insights from her clinical journey and discuss how the approach has transformed her practice.

Access now >> https://t.co/NqRglAm9x6

[Pamela Snow @PCSnow1604]

@TeresaM33982758 @tetheredtoed1 But I’m not sure that teachers “speaking out”
on poverty gets them, or their students anywhere. Changing instructional practices, on the other hand, yields short and longer term benefits. This is good for individuals and good for the collective.

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

📣 Members! Join us this Monday for our latest webinar: Focus On: Teaching High‑Frequency Words.

We’ll be exploring how high‑frequency words are taught in Sounds‑Write and why we don’t teach them as “sight words.”

During the session, we’ll cover:
🔹 What high‑frequency words are
🔹 How they fit into the Sounds‑Write scope and sequence
🔹 Why decoding and not memorisation is key
🔹 What to do when students need to read or write words containing code that has not yet been taught, at both the single syllable and polysyllabic level.

Monday 8 June, 4pm (BST)

We look forward to seeing you there!

Register via the Members' Portal >> https://t.co/lxiUKHFYxh

This webinar is for all Sounds-Write practitioners currently under membership.

[Blue Streak @Streakyblue1951]

@ProudofusUK I particularly like this one. It reminds me of the legend that Joseph of Arimathea was a tin merchant who travelled to our West Country to buy tin - which is quite feasible, as Cornish tin has been dug up by archaeologists in Israel.

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

@eagameover Noted! 😂

[Paul Kirschner @New_Old_Paul]

Why Writing by Hand Beats Typing (in 6 Charts)
Amazing! @edutopia got it just about right!
https://t.co/4eJKKEjh0p

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

I taught remotely in covid and this is what I know.

We were *desperate* to get back into a classroom. All of us. Kids, teachers. We would wear any ridiculous mask to do it. We would stand on one leg if that was the rule.

This makes me sceptical that screens will replace teachers anytime soon.

[Anna Stokke @rastokke]

Pamela Snow @PCSnow1604 has a way with words. From this 2024 blog post: "Education academics are the metaphorical 'huge trees' that 'live in a different climate' " https://t.co/S2clydUA7B

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

@Viora_Tech_Ai @TitaBeaven

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

SIR ALAN BATES - THANKS GOD FOR THIS MAN. EH.

In 1998 Alan Bates and his partner Suzanne packed up their lives in West Yorkshire and moved to a small town in North Wales.

They put everything they had into a post office. Every penny. Every hope. A future they had planned together.

Two years later the software started lying. Money appeared to be missing. He called the helpline 507 times. He kept going. He kept records. He kept asking.

The Post Office's response was simple. It wasn't the software. It was him.

In 2003 they sent him a letter terminating his contract. No reason given. He lost £65,000. Everything he and Suzanne had invested, gone. Their private notes about him, revealed at the public inquiry decades later, described the situation with devastating corporate elegance. He had become unmanageable.

That is what they called a man asking why the numbers were wrong.

So he did what any reasonable person would do after losing everything to an institution that called them a liar.

He spent the next 25 years fighting back with nothing. No legal fund. No media empire. No government support. Just a burning refusal to let them win.

He wrote letters promising his continued and increased resolve to bring this to people who would have no choice but to act, regardless of how many years it took.

It took 25.

While he was fighting, at least 13 people who had been through the same thing took their own lives. People who couldn't hold on long enough. People who needed someone to believe them and found nobody there.

While he was fighting, the Post Office and its lawyers billed £265 million in legal fees between 2014 and 2024. Making sure the truth stayed buried. Making sure men like Alan Bates ran out of road before they ran out of fight.

He didn't run out of fight.

He rejected three compensation offers he considered insults. He watched an @ITV drama turn his life into a television event. He watched politicians suddenly discover outrage they had been too busy to feel for two decades. He watched the country cry at a story it had been ignoring since 1999.

In June 2024 they gave him a knighthood. Twenty-five years after calling him unmanageable.

In November 2025 he settled his compensation claim. He received 49.2% of what he was owed.

No executive has been charged. Fujitsu (@Fujitsu_Global) still holds government contracts. The Post Office (@PostOffice) is still standing.

This country failed Alan Bates for 25 years. It failed every person who could not hold on long enough to see what he saw. It handed him a title instead of justice and called itself generous.

He deserved better. They all did.

Teach this man in every school in Britain. Not as a feel-good story. As a warning about what happens when ordinary people trust institutions that were never built to protect them.

And as proof that one person, with nothing but the truth and the stubbornness to keep saying it, can make an entire country look at itself in the mirror.

Even if it takes 25 years to get them to look.

Sources: @ComputerWeekly | @BBCNews AND many others

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

Imagine memorising the following steps.

1. Write ‘alpha’
2. Plug in the dog
3. Add ice cubes to both sides
4. If it’s blue, stir it
5. If it’s red, put in on your head
6. Repeat until frozen

Now, imagine memorising a whole heap of such random sequences for an exam, including sequences far more complex. It would be hard, right?

Young people are *not* simply memorising the steps to solve maths problems without any knowledge of what they are doing or how and why these steps work.

Our memories are organised by meaning and such a task—memorising all these steps without connecting them to anything else—would be a feat of memory beyond most of us.

It’s not happening.

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

@DanaPalubiak Inquiry learning is less effective than explicit teaching. A literacy inquiry learning unit wastes children’s precious time when they could be learning to read and write. It’s effectually malpractice.

[margaret mckeown @margaretmckeow2]

Gonna have "Decoding is the door, not the room" stiched on a pillow!

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

Wilson wrote this in 1998. It is unbelievably prescient about not just the internet but how AI now dominates information/knowledge today + the idea that information itself becomes nearly free, but synthesis still depends on the prior knowledge a person brings to it.

[John Walker, Sounds-Write @SWLiteracy]

@JChimirie66677 This is a failure of successive governments, isn’t it, Jim?

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

I was speaking to a trainee primary teacher yesterday. An Australian university is requiring her to write inquiry learning units to gain her qualification. Explicit units are not an option. Australian teacher education needs radical reform and fast.
@BenCarrollMP @JasonClareMP

[Greg Ashman @greg_ashman]

Using inquiry learning to teach early literacy or numeracy is educational malpractice.