Category: Literacy
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Are Interim Assessments a Waste of Time?
There was a relatively recent Hechinger Report article by Jill Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: Researchers blast data analysis for teachers to help students” that seemed to indict any and all assessments and data use in schools as a royal waste of time. It bothered me because the only source cited explicitly in the article was a…
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An Ontogenesis Model of Word Learning in a Second Language
A recent paper caught my eye, Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation, and despite the immediate mind glazing effect of the word “ontogenesis,” I found the model well worth digging into and sharing here—and it may bear relevance to conversations on orthographic mapping. Bordag, D., Gor, K., & Opitz, A. (2021). Ontogenesis Model of…
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The Common Core: An Opportunity Squandered
Back in 2013, I wrote a series of posts for the Core Knowledge Foundation blog that were titled, “Promethean Plan: A Teacher on Fulfilling the Intent of the Common Core.” Unfortunately, they don’t appear to be available there anymore, so I thought it could be fun to re-post them collected here as one post, both…
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A Healthy Diet of Openness and Skepticism Towards Education Research
A review and recommendation to read Andrew Watson’s “The Goldilocks Map”
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Phonemic Proficiency: A Hypothesis to be Tested
There’s been a kerfuffle in the reading nerd sphere for a while now about Dr. David Kilpatrick’s theories of orthographic mapping and the advanced phonemic awareness activities promoted by his Equipped for Reading Success program. At issue have been the following: Are phonemic awareness activities without letters time well spent for Tier 1 instruction? Are…
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What does it take to internalize the cipher?
What does it take to get an individual child to internalize the cipher of written English?
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Advancing Literacy for Black boys
I’ll never forget the moment when I realized that the students in a school I was supporting had not read anything more than a few pages of text for close to two months. There were a myriad of potential excuses for it. They were ramping up for test prep season, there was a spring break…
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A Finale: Learning to Read and Write is a Remarkable Human Feat
What have I learned from my exploration of whether learning to read is natural or unnatural? It’s complicated.
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The Relation of Speech to Reading and Writing
In this post, we examine another argument made against the naturalness of reading by Alvin Liberman in 1992. The distinction, according to Liberman, may be that one is biological in evolution, while the other is cultural.
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An Interlude: What do we mean when we say learning something is unnatural?
An interlude reflecting on what we’ve learned from the Goodmans and Gough and Hillinger on the debate of whether learning to read is natural or unnatural.
Language & Literacy 