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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

Like Arteta, I am perhaps a little too defensive.

Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

In short, Arsenal are probably as well set up as any team in European football to compete for the next 3-4 years, which feels like quite the opposite of 'now or never'.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

I vividly remember seeing the same 'now or never' argument about the 22/23 season and the 23/24 season, and yet somehow there's always another season and another opportunity.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

My point is that Arsenal probably have a 30-40% chance of winning the league this season, and the only reason that would significantly drop the following season (and the one after that) would be if they were stupid enough to sack Arteta.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

It's perfectly possible that they get some terrible luck with injuries (see Odegaard setting a record by going off injured three PL games in a row) and fall short again.

Would anyone be surprised if Haaland drags City to 90 points somehow?

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 4d

Why? Their best players are all on long-term contracts and entering their prime years. The exception is Saka, and he's almost certain to sign on.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 5d

Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it. I'm going to make more of an effort to post stuff on here in the coming months.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

Yep. As I say, I think it's perfectly sensible for schools to be embedding pacy reading into their schools day, but it would be great to get some robust research to back it up.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

But I've also read enough literacy research to be cautious in interpreting any single, unreplicated study with no effective control group that has results that appear too good to be true (for relatively weak readers, at least).

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

Again, a central message of my work with schools is that sheer quantity of reading experience is an underrated aspect of reading instruction efficacy, so I am incentivised to just accept the apparently remarkable results of this research.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

Here is a study which apparently demonstrates readily achievable, remarkable progress for struggling readers with aspects of the study design that currently only allow for cautious interpretation... And six years after publishing there is no attempt at replication with a proper control group.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

I also can't help but find it odd that there has been no attempt at replication by the researchers involved given how dramatic the results appear to be.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

Equally, the schools involved being volunteers increases the possibility of Hawthorne effects.

The researchers talk about how they reduced the possibility of Hawthorne effects *between groups* but given that both groups showed similar remarkable results, this is insufficient.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

The fact that the tests used were multiple-choice tests - a type of test that pupils would have been largely unfamiliar with at the first attempt - increases this possibility, I suspect.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

The lack of a control group could well mean that the dramatic effects are the result of weaker readers simply becoming more familiar with the reading test used to judge progress.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 7d

As someone who tends to believe that reading entire books at pace can be a powerful component of reading instruction, I am incentivised more than most to interpret this study favourably.

But I think there are - as you suggest - reasons to be cautious.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

Correction: earlier in the thread I missed out some words when describing prosody.

It is meant to say 'the sound of speech' (I.e. the rhythm and intonation of spoken language).

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

Ultimately, I think that much of the profession hasn't fully come to terms with the reality that parents/carers are increasingly less likely to provide this scaffolded word recognition experience at home and that this is more than ever an essential part of teaching reading *in the classroom*.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

When it comes to the prevalence of dysfluent readers, it is obvious to anyone who works with lots of schools on their approach to reading that the issue isn't an over-focus on phonics.

The real issue is what follows it, specifically the lack of scaffolded word recognition experience.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

The lack of application of the nascent decoding abilities initially learned via phonics is the obvious culprit for dysfluency.

Or put more simply, in many primary schools there is precious little time spent in reading lessons with eyes on text working out what the words are and what they mean.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

Instead, I would argue that more of the *rest* of the school day should be devoted to things like shared, meaningful text experiences.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

If you believe that the balance between phonics and other elements of reading in primary schools is off, then I would argue that the issue isn't that too much time is devoted to phonics.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

But given the importance of reading to pupils' development - and given the centrality of initial decoding ability to this development - spending 30 minutes a day on phonics (or perhaps a little more for those who need extra support) for a few years doesn't seem disproportionate to me.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

One final thing: you might argue that the approximately 30 minutes a day of systematic phonics in most schools has squeezed out all other aspects of teaching reading that also support fluency, such as shared meaningful experiences with texts.

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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 10d

But this does not remove the need for a mountain of scaffolded decoding of unfamiliar words to develop word recognition automaticity.

And this scaffolded decoding experience utterly relies on a pupil's ability to begin decoding words for themselves, the precise thing taught via phonics.

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