Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Stephen Krashen Blog 9-27-14

SKrashen:





Phonics “pays off” only on tests of phonics
Sent to the Guardian, September 25".... phonics method pays off" (September 25) provides evidence only that intensive and "sysgtematic" phonics instructions will produce higher scores on tests of phonics. In the test, known as the "phonics check," five and six-year old children were asked only to pronounce words presented in a list.  There is substantial research show

SEP 23

Flocabulary?
Exaggerated Claims of "Educational Hip-Hop": A Review of Flocabulary ResearchStephen Krashenhttp://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=6649Advertised as "educational hip-hop" (flocabulary.com), Flocabulary is a direct instruction program designed to help middle school students increase their academic, or "tier 2" vocabulary. It consists of units, each containing 15 target
Judy Blume’s comments on Accelerated Reader
I love it when I hear from teachers that they've read the Fudge books aloud to their kids and how this has started kids on the path to wanting to read. "I want more funny books. Who else writes funny books like this?" There are certainly many, many, many wonderful books to recommend. I love to hear that they can use a book like Blubber or another one of my books in the classroom and that
Does Accelerated Reader promote altruism?
Stephen KrashenAccelerated reader (AR) is a reading management program in which students take quizzes on what they have read, and are awarded prizes for the points they earn on the quizzes.Despite the failure of research to demonstrate that AR) promotes literacy development (Krashen, 2003, 2005) and the negative attitudes many students have about AR (Smith and Westberg, 2011), there may be one red