An important piece about a very important and special lady.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... yce-morris
How utterly tragic that, to this day, we still have such widespread lack of knowledge and understanding about the importance of phonics, about the content of phonics teaching, about the nature of the English spelling system and how best to teach it, about the huge body of research on reading and phonicsphobia is, without doubt, still in existence.
Further, the latest NFER May 2014 report in England, commissioned by the Department for Education, provides evidence that perhaps up to three quarters of the teaching profession in England still believe in and promote multi-cueing reading strategies that work against high-quality short-term and long-term reading - and that are warned about as a consequence of research on reading.
Joyce Morris was one amazing lady - a shining example to us all of how to be observant, reflective, scientific, determined, steadfast and pioneering.
Joyce Morris obituary
Educationist who improved the literacy of generations of children
Joyce Morris, educationist, who has died aged 93
Joyce Morris was instrumental in developing the phonics-based system of teaching literacy
Greg Brooks and Roger Beard
Friday 16 January 2015
Joyce Morris, who has died aged 93, was a tireless worker for the better teaching and learning of literacy. She influenced generations of children through her input to the pioneering BBC television series Look and Read (first broadcast in 1967) and Words and Pictures (from 1970), and her Language in Action series of initial reading books (1974-83). Both were informed by her analysis of the phonetics of English – a system that she dubbed Phonics 44, published in 1984 but devised much earlier – and by a keen appreciation of how to make reading appealing to young children.