Imagine hearing your daughter struggling to read a book and hearing her read this sentence: “The fuzzy dog was hit by the fire engine”. “Why would a children’s book include such a disturbing sentence?” you wonder. Curious, you pick up the book once she’s put it down and see that the dog wasn’t hit by the fire engine, but was frightened by the fire engine. You take the book to your daughter, point to the word “frightened” and ask your daughter to read the word. She simply stares at the word and shrugs her shoulders. And you are hit with the reality that your second grader is not being taught to ready by using Phonics, but by a controversial program called “Whole Language”. The premise of “Whole Language” was that reading was learned by immersing a child in a world of words. This actually happened in the 90’s and it caused major conflict between educators and parents all over the United States as well as many other countries. The argument against “Whole Language” was that if you could actually learn to read by simply being exposed to words, there should be little to no illiteracy in the world as everyone is surrounded by words every day, everywhere they go. I was one of those parents. After many frantic phone calls between parents, the School Board was contacted and the parents were shocked to learn that a number of the School Board members didn’t know anything about these new reading programs, but were also shocked to learn that a number of the Board members not only knew but supported the programs. And thus began the conflict between School Board members. The first act by the Board was to form committees to investigate “Whole Language” (WL). The members of the Board in support of WL – we will refer to them as Committee A - ... ... middle of paper ... ...ct as a whole. In the aftermath of the conflict, several board members resigned when they were confronted with these facts and the waste of the Federal Funds that was the rationale behind implementing the program. The Federal Funds that were left were used to immediately bring in phonics instructors to help teachers remediate the students that had not received instruction in phonics. The most important long-term solution to make sure that the needs of the children were put first by the Board was a new rule passed by the School Board that the qualifications for running for the Board was changed to require that all members must be former educators, believing that educators have the children’s interests as their first priority and not politics. Works Cited Cassidy, K. (1996). Phonics vs whole language: The never-ending debate. Primary Educator. Apr96. 2(2), 9 - 13
...dren developing early reading. As the guidance which comes with the Primary National Strategy framework states, schools “put in place a systematic, discrete programme as the key means for teaching high-quality phonic work” (DfES & PNS, 2006, p. 7). By teaching children to decode it helps them to develop their early reading and sets them up with skills to tackle almost any unknown word. There are many programmes which school choose to follow such as the government provided ‘Letters and Sounds’ or other schemes such as ‘Jolly Phonics’ or ‘Read Write Inc.’. Though there are many different companies’ schools can choose to follow the breakdown of how phonics should be taught is the same in all: phonics should prepare children to be able to decode any word they come across and teach itself in a multisensory way, one that interests the children and helps them to learn.
Education in our nation is in crisis, and in order to confront the problem we need to tackle it at the center. We need to target school boards; they control funds, education, and more or less the community. With school boards these days being counter-productive, there seems only one way to solve the problem. Get rid of school boards across the nation and provide each school with its individual power much like private schools, or initiate the creation of a nation-wide school board. With the whole nation on the same page, maybe together we can help save education, and ensure the future of our country. Only until something is done to school boards will there be a positive, productive change towards education.
By having school board meetings, it helps to see what the school’s needs. This is very important for the reason that this may be the only time that a concern parent or person voice might be heard. From this meeting, it was learned that the school board members are willing to help people that have concerns. An example, of this, was when the concern Pre-K parent was worried that she heard that Pre-K has been just a daycare. However, someone from the board mentioned to her that she would personally go with the parent the next day and show her how Pre-K is running during the day. This made the parent so happy because her concerns were being met. I have learned that school board members look out for the students and that they are the number one source that community members should go to if they have a concern or a suggestion to better their children’s
Baron, Dennis. The English Language Amendment: Backgrounds And Prospects. 1988. ERIC. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
This article provides the rationale for introducing a phonics screening check in Australian schools, detailed explanations of its development, implementation, and result in English schools, and also recommendations for a phonic screening in Australia. Furthermore, the author has attempted to research and document a method that is believed can improve Australian children literacy level and their reading ability not only nationally but also internationally. By implementing the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check and demonstrate how systematic phonics is being taught across the country and in individual schools, it is believed that it can improve teaching methods. The article makes an exceptional initiation to implement new education policy scheme in Australia. Despite there was a lot of research in this teaching method, seeing the result and evaluation in the implantation in Australia will add new knowledge on this
In several occasions, conflict occurs in the communication of one or two people. Several people have thought of conflict as cases involving pouring of furious anger in a communication process. Nonetheless, conflict is the misinterpretation of an individual’s words or values (Huan & YAzdanifard, 2012). Conflict can also be due to limited resources in an organization (Riaz & Junaid, 2010). Conflict may as well arise due to poor communication or the use of inappropriate communication channel of transmission of information between the involved parties. Management of conflict has various conflict management styles that include avoidance style, forcing style, passive-aggressive style, accommodating style, collaborating style and compromising style. Workplace conflict comes in two different kinds: task involving conflict, which focuses on the approaches used in resolving the problem and blaming conflict that has the aspects of blame and never brings element of resolving problems between the conflicting parties. In the perception of several individuals, relationship conflict is negative.
In my opinion, people should be given the right to speak and read in any language that they wish. Although, it may benefit them to be knowledgeable in the speech that is being taught and spoken in the common country, everyone has their own cultural background and each has the right to be literate in the way that they desire. They were given the right to freedom of speech through the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights and therefore, have the right to speak in their own native language. Literacy plays a major role in the lives of humans today. It gives us the power to read, speak and write and is therefore a valuable asset to society and the development of its economy.
The superintendent and principal are stymied in their efforts to reach a compromise as Mrs. Durnitz refuses to change her position that the policy must be followed to the letter. She appealed to the teachers’ association for support when it appeared that the administration and board might not uphold her position. The local newspap...
Crossen, C. (1997). Studies suggest phonics help children learning to read. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 16, 2005 from
Ripley, Amanda. "A Call To Action For Public Schools. (Cover Story)."Time 176.12 (2010): 32. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Despite the push for education reform some thirty years ago, the American public education system has still not made adequate progress. The issue of education reform is a very complex issue with many di...
A group can only be called a team if the members are actively working together toward a common goal. A team must have the capability to set goals, make decisions, solve problems, and share responsibilities. For a team to be successful, trust must be earned between its members by being consistent and reliable (Temme & Katzel, 2005). When more than one person is working on a particular task, inconsistent views or opinions commonly arise. People come from different backgrounds and live through different life experiences therefore, even when working towards a common goal, they will not always see eye to eye. Major conflict that is not dealt with can devastate a team or organization (Make Conflict Work, 2008). In some situations, conflict can be more constructive than destructive. Recognizing the difference between conflict that is constructive to the team and conflict that is destructive to the team is important. Trying to prevent the conflict is not always the best way to manage conflict when working within a team setting. Understanding conflict, what causes it, and how to resolve conflict effectively, should consume full concentration.
In order of being able to analyze the sources of conflicts regarding the clothing manufacturer, I will present the Conflict Process Model according to McShane and Von Glinow. Therefore, I will first define what conflicts are, and second present the different sources of conflicts and carve out which conflicts are involved regarding to the given case. The third step is to explain two different strategies to minimize these conflicts in future. Finally, I will provide a recommendation and conclusion.
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
Conflict exists in every organization as a result of incompatible needs, goals, and objectives of two people while aligning to the overall business requirements. Though disagreement is linked with negative impact, the approach has healthy considerations (Leung, 2008). For instance, some conflicts create an avenue for the exchange of ideas and creativity to meet the set organizational purposes. However, damaging disagreement in organizations results in employee dissatisfaction, turnover, and poor services and reduced productivity. The paper establishes different types of interpersonal conflict and key resolution strategies used to address the problem. Human resource managers need to have the capacity to identify different levels of conflicts and the best methods to negate them.