Changes

:: Look and say, teaching the "shape" of words, is the only other commonly-applied theory in the United States, so I am quite aware of the difference, and I was taught phonics.  As I said, I have a friend in South Carolina who attended a school that taught the word shape method.  Your understanding of this issue is quite contrary to reality:  her teachers conspired to teach phonics against administration demands (which stemmed from parent demands), and a teacher was fired when they were found out.  I haven't asked extensively about who was taught what, but it was always my understanding that South Carolina's aversion to phonics was closely related to their 49th in the nation status in education. [[User:SBaynham|SBaynham]] 22:25, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

:: Look and say, teaching the "shape" of words, is the only other commonly-applied theory in the United States, so I am quite aware of the difference, and I was taught phonics.  As I said, I have a friend in South Carolina who attended a school that taught the word shape method.  Your understanding of this issue is quite contrary to reality:  her teachers conspired to teach phonics against administration demands (which stemmed from parent demands), and a teacher was fired when they were found out.  I haven't asked extensively about who was taught what, but it was always my understanding that South Carolina's aversion to phonics was closely related to their 49th in the nation status in education. [[User:SBaynham|SBaynham]] 22:25, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

:::It is perhaps worth noting that there are many attempts to introduce the elements of synthetic phonics into whole language/psycholinguistics teaching - but they are so very different in their application that these are just as harmful to a child's progress as having no synthetic phonics teaching at all. Similarly, if a teacher uses a synthetic phonics approach, but her classroom library has books only written for a psycholinguistics approach, the children are being deprived of the phonically-written/aware books that they need for this method to be successful. Like any other method, poorly-taught phonics will lead to poor learning outcomes. But I'm digressing. The point here is that synthetic phonics has not been mandated at a federal level and although it is supposed to be taught as part of the Reading First inititiative, it still isn't - for most schools - the main method: psycholinguistics ''is''. I admit I'm not up to date on current US legislation, but I do know that back in 1999 a Sense of the Congress Resolution, introduced by Congressman David McIntosh of Indiana, "Expressing the Sense of Congress that direct systematic phonics instruction should be used in all schools," received 224 in favor and 193 opposed, but because a two thirds majority vote was required for passage of bills brought up under suspension, the resolution was not agreed to. From what I can gather, California, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts and Ohio now have State legislation requiring "direct phonics instruction as a first step in teaching children to read," but in practice implementation of synthetic phonics is actually being strenuously resisted by the "educators", who are actually simply repackaging psycholinguistics under a different name, eg California's "Reading Recovery" scheme, which has begun to spread to many other states. [[Image:User Fox.png|10px]] [[User:Fox|Fox]] <small>([[User talk:Fox|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Fox|contribs]])</small> 05:46, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

:::It is perhaps worth noting that there are many attempts to introduce the elements of synthetic phonics into whole language/psycholinguistics teaching - but they are so very different in their application that these are just as harmful to a child's progress as having no synthetic phonics teaching at all. Similarly, if a teacher uses a synthetic phonics approach, but her classroom library has books only written for a psycholinguistics approach, the children are being deprived of the phonically-written/aware books that they need for this method to be successful. Like any other method, poorly-taught phonics will lead to poor learning outcomes. But I'm digressing. The point here is that synthetic phonics has not been mandated at a federal level and although it is supposed to be taught as part of the Reading First initiative, it still isn't - for most schools - the main method: psycholinguistics ''is''. I admit I'm not up to date on current US legislation, but I do know that back in 1999 a Sense of the Congress Resolution, introduced by Congressman David McIntosh of Indiana, "Expressing the Sense of Congress that direct systematic phonics instruction should be used in all schools," received 224 in favor and 193 opposed, but because a two thirds majority vote was required for passage of bills brought up under suspension, the resolution was not agreed to. From what I can gather, California, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts and Ohio now have State legislation requiring "direct phonics instruction as a first step in teaching children to read," but in practice implementation of synthetic phonics is actually being strenuously resisted by the "educators", who are actually simply repackaging psycholinguistics under a different name, eg California's "Reading Recovery" scheme, which has begun to spread to many other states. [[Image:User Fox.png|10px]] [[User:Fox|Fox]] <small>([[User talk:Fox|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Fox|contribs]])</small> 05:46, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

== Constance Weaver ==

== Constance Weaver ==