This open letter created a false dichotomy in the schools debate, pitting MH against safety. Thread..

https://t.co/iKGVXcI76Y

@theAliceRoberts @MaryBoustedNEU @ReicherStephen @SusanMichie @alansteinoxford

We are saddened that the signatories of the letter do not appear to have channelled their energy into encouraging innovation in distance learning and support which could serve to bolster children's mental health in order to limit some of harms caused by isolation.
That the potential for the Internet to be used as a "fantastic communications tool" and provide "a creative and visual style of learning" affording "a positive and interactive experience" as identified by @ProfTanya in the Byron Review has not been celebrated is a travesty.
The report identified the internet to be a platform for children and young people to "express themselves and keep in touch" and is "a fantastic place to meet people and find support, friendship and happiness".

https://t.co/Zk7NfW0fK5
When we consider that internet based interventions such as iCBT are now well established psychological practice, it is a great sadness that the expertise of professionals in this field has not been channelled toward helping craft a recovery curriculum children desperately need
The DfE could also have been more helpful in acknowledging discussion and nuanced debate on the true needs of children, rather than ploughing on with a "business as usual" curriculum.

https://t.co/ve1ndPOaHi
This is why our 5 Point Plan, issued in advance of the partial closure, included a call for reduction and reorganisation of the curriculum for at least 2 years.

https://t.co/5iOxZMeZbK
We must stop pretending we can have business as usual, and and demand the very best strategies we can to limit ALL harms to our children.

We must treat children as people, not as an academic football between disciplines.

@IndependentSage gets this right.
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Education

An appallingly tardy response to such an important element of reading - apologies. The growing recognition of fluency as the crucial developmental area for primary education is certainly encouraging helping us move away from the obsession with reading comprehension tests.


It is, as you suggest, a nuanced pedagogy with the tripartite algorithm of rate, accuracy and prosody at times conflating the landscape and often leading to an educational shrug of the shoulders, a convenient abdication of responsibility and a return to comprehension 'skills'.

Taking each element separately (but not hierarchically) may be helpful but always remembering that for fluency they occur simultaneously (not dissimilar to sentence structure, text structure and rhetoric in fluent writing).

Rate, or words-read-per-minute, is the easiest. Faster reading speeds are EVIDENCE of fluency development but attempting to 'teach' children(or anyone) to read faster is fallacious (Carver, 1985) and will result in processing deficit which in young readers will be catastrophic.

Reading rate is dependent upon eye-movements and cognitive processing development along with orthographic development (more on this later).

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