As much as I have reservations about the “phonics approach” to teaching reading, I firmly believe that any skill worth teaching can be taught well. Just because phonics, spelling and grammar can be taught in a very dry and mundane way, doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable and it doesn’t mean that it can’t be delivered in a style in which students enjoy.
Plans for new primary school grammar tests in England will hold a “gun to the head” of teachers, experts say.
The National Association for the Teaching of English says a revised focus on spelling, grammar and punctuation will “impoverish” teaching.
Its chairman, Dr Simon Gibbon, says the reforms are based on ministers’ “diminishing memories of their own grammar- and public-school educations”.
It’s not the content of the tests that I am concerned about, it’s the tests themselves that bother me.
Click on the link to read my post on the phonics debate.
Topical Teaching 