Yesterday I went to the Inside Government conference on phonics in which Gordon Askew laid out the principles of systematic, synthetic phonics for an audience of assorted teachers and academics (though mostly teachers). I thought Askew was very good indeed and that he said nothing that most ;-) of t...

More on this story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... world.html and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-244 ... WEET914854.

Here's news (from the TES) of yet another OECD survey showing that adults in UK lag behind other countries in literacy and numeracy skills. http://news.tes.co.uk/news_blog/b/weblog/archive/2013/10/07/quot-a-wake-up-call-for-the-government-quot-uk-literacy-and-numeracy-levels-lag-behind-other-nations...

Yes, Susan. 'Up' definitely doesn't belong with 'good', etc. However, 'tune' could go with 'flew', 'moon' and other /oo/ words, I think, especially if you come from London, a pron which, in the case of 'tune', has carried over to the States .

The 'error' is the coding of 'caught' as <c> <au> <ght>, isn't it? Of course, the spelling of /or/ could be <au> if she teaches the spelling of /t/ as <ght> but it does seem rather unlikely :???: . Then there's <oor>, <aw>, <au>, and <ore> for /or/ followed by, three columns on, another spelling of ...

You're right, Susan! It's terrific! I only wish I'd had this as a resource when I was teaching 'The English Language: past present and future' course for the OU. Students would have loved it. The project is a veritable cornucopia of different items. And so much to download and look at in more detail...

Susan Godsland has just alerted me to Mike Lloyd-Jones's latest posting on The Phonics Blog: 'Reading German, Talking Nonsense'. http://www.phonicsblog.co.uk/#/blog/4565770755/Reading-German-Talking-Nonsense/5737449 I loved his suggestion that '...many phonics-phobics must have had the syllogism-byp...

Hi Debbie, I should have made clearer what I meant by setting in groups. I wasn't referring to whole classes, but to catch-up groups. Specifically, if one were to put together children who are still having some difficulty with CVC words, putting them with children who are able to blend and segment w...

In the absence of a reply from Susan, I want to take up an issue to which she might be alluding [I could be wrong!]. She writes: ...the phonics check needs to be well understood by advocates of good SP instruction; that means that some of the legitimate concerns raised by teachers who have seen prof...

Well, I'm appalled that you weren't told that your views on the screening check would be presented as part of a 'debate', Debbie, but, nevertheless, I thought you acquitted yourself very well by anticipating some of the usual nonsense a spokesperson from UKLA would come up with. I do agree with you ...

Well that makes sense! And it gave them a neat, jazzy brand name for the product.

Hi again Volunteer, Don't get me wrong! I'm not averse to teaching pupils the metalanguage. I've always been comfortable with teaching even fairly young children terminology such as 'digraph' and so on. The problem comes when you're talking to parents and, as the jargon, rolls off our tongues, so th...

'Tetragraph' isn't any worse than 'digraph' or 'trigraph'; nor is it any better, in my opinion. Surely though, the terms two-letter spelling and three-letter spelling are more accessible, aren't they?

Congratulations to Debbie on a fine exposition of the case for a screening check! Debbie is absolutely correct when she says that Foundational literacy skills are so fundamentally important that they affect not only academic potential and future livelihood but also the very core of well being and he...

In the EYFS, Tickell had this to say: ‘The language should be revised to replace jargon and unnecessary complexity, as far as possible using terms which everyone will recognise. This is critical if the revised framework is to be fully effective as a vehicle for bringing parents and carers into close...