Painting featuring a green field full of purple crocus flowers and yellow daffodils
'Crocus & Daffodils' by UK contemporary painter Susan Entwistle #WomensArt
#spring #March
The most mind-blowing thing I read this week was this by @hollykorbey.bsky.social on the "phonics wars" in the USA. UK readers may well be aware that the USA has only relatively recently got on board with phonics following the "Sold a Story" podcast but....
substack.com/inbox/post/1...
You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.
Happy #DarwinDay, everyone!
Darwin Day, held on 12 February, marks the birthday of Charles Darwin and celebrates his groundbreaking contribution to science – especially his theory of evolution by natural selection, which transformed our understanding of life on Earth.
@humanismedu.bsky.social 🧵
England's water privatisation is an extreme, ideological experiment that has failed since 1989
70% of Tory voters agree
And CONSERVATIVE MP Jack Rankin is saying no to Thames Water's state sanctioned rip off 👇
"Profit cannot be privatised while risk is socialised" 👏👏👏
Breaking News! @suchmo83.bsky.social now has a Substack. A great start as you would expect and I hope that we might see him on here a bit more.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
There’s a whole chapter on waste in my book. You may be pleased to discover that there are in fact solutions!
1/ You may remember our @ITVNews reporting on reading standards in Welsh schools, including the resignation of literacy expert Elizabeth Nonweiler from a Welsh Government panel.
Tomorrow, the Senedd’s CYPE committee will discuss the letter she wrote explaining why she stepped down.
If we want to make life affordable, we need to install clean power and get off natural gas 👇
Natural gas sets our energy price 98% of the time. Gas that is 40% more expensive than wind.
I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this
I believe this meme speaks for most in healthcare, science, public health, global health, research, and anyone wanted a return to precedented times.
youtu.be/jvjJ8Ag0-z0
Brilliant talk, one of many at the National Emergency Briefing. @sioldridge.bsky.social @nfudc.bsky.social @farmerb28.bsky.social
Yesterday’s investiture was the first for ‘services to the non-religious’. Surely a welcome sign of the increasing inclusion of non-religious people in our national life, and a validation of the collective effort of so many in the humanist movement to achieve that recognition.
This year's royalties for The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading have arrived (£5477.65).
As promised, this money has been donated to Malaria Consortium.
This brings the running total donated (with Gift Aid) to about £57,000 in four years.
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The latest episode of the Impact Podcast is out now. Episode 211 - "Why I quit". Literacy Expert Panel Member, Elizabeth Nonweiler speaks out about why she has resigned from the Welsh Government panel & what's going wrong.
Listen here: open.spotify.com/show/778EJMB...
Elizabeth Nonweiler has stepped down from the Welsh Government’s Expert Literacy Panel, raising serious concerns about the direction of national literacy policy.
Read her resignation letter here: readingreform.org/blog/waless-...
Please read Elizabeth Nonweiler's letter if you are a primary teacher or a parent with a primary-aged child in #Wales. 'Wales’s Literacy Plans Must Change' readingreform.org/blog/waless-...
"Triangulation: moving from correlations to causation", Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine Distinguished Lecture 2025, Thursday, October 16th, 5pm, in person or online
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/school-of-...
As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems.
I'd like to explain why I disagree.
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For a pupil to read *anything* with fluency, they must be able to recognise the words with automaticity.
Fluency relies on other things too, but automatic word recognition is fundamental.
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A surprising story about a global seed vault where over 580 million seeds from around the world are preserved safely in the permafrost. This beautifully illustrated book is intriguing and informative. With connections to both SCI and SS, this book belongs in every school library.
Sharing for anyone overseas (i.e., not in NZ) wanting to hear a little of what NZ birdsong can sound like ⬇️
Foundational Reading Knowledge of Teachers of Students With IDD: Examining Experience, Degree and Time Use Esther R. Lindström 1 | Kimberly A. McFadden 2 | Qiong Fu 2 | Molly J. Ruiz 21University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA | 2 Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA Correspondence: Esther R. Lindström (elinds20@uic.edu) Received: 6 November 2024 | Revised: 29 April 2025 | Accepted: 18 August 2025Funding: This work was supported by the National Center for Special Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences (R324B210020) and LehighUniversity. Keywords: intellectual disability | reading | special education | teacher knowledge
🎉 New article! 🎉
Our latest in @jidr-wiley.bsky.social measures what teachers of students with IDD know about foundational word reading and how that relates to their training and classroom instruction.
#OpenAccess version here: doi.org/10.1111/jir....
@kimberlymcfadden.bsky.social
Whoever needs reminding: the Convention on Human Rights is one of the greatest achievements of European civilisation, following one of its greatest tragedies. For us to leave it would not only undermine all our own rights and freedoms, it would be a completely immoral abdication of responsibility.
US ignores home-grown education ideas that are accelerating progress overseas. fordhaminstitute.org/national/com...
Vaccines don’t just prevent deadly and dangerous diseases like measles, polio and COVID-19.
A new study found that people who got the shingles vaccine had a 20% lower risk of developing dementia.
tcnv.link/o9EHsxy
**New blog** - It's been a while so reposts hugely appreciated.
primarycolour.home.blog/2025/08/01/t...
Excellent article on the problems caused by labelling versus teaching kids what they need to know.
From @paulkirschner.bsky.social
🥳 The ‘holy grail’ of reading inventions that was birthed in NZ & exported to the world has finally been dumped. Now the way is clear for children to receive scientifically-based instruction & stop being instructional casualties. H/T @kathyrastle.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
one of my colleagues at UoA Psych has gone into inner-city modern learning environment schools and simply sticks a microphone in them to measure the ambient noise. she told me "they're BARNS. it's so noisy in there that it's like kids are trying to learn next to a LAWN MOWER."
