Can someone explain to me the big deal with phonics?

[HowManyDucks]

Why does the UK curriculum prioritise the phonics method for reading over other approaches eg. Look-say? Particularly interested in hearing from the perspective of teachers. Do you think it is the most effective method or would you prefer to use other methods? I have always thought that phonics are a usefulness supplement, important for understanding how to say unfamiliar words. Wouldn't look-say be more effective for early readers, especially given that English isn't considered a phonetic language?

Happy to stand corrected.

I'm a retired Reception teacher and I agree. It works for most children but not all. It didn't work for my dyslexic grandson who can read perfectly well now. I learned to read with Look and Say myself during the late 50s, phonics came into use later with spelling.

My son learned through phonics some years ago. I believe it worked well for him, although I think any method would have suited him. At home, we did reading every night but I didn't know what phonics was then, so didn't follow it.
My son was a very good speller, but he had a photographic memory for spelling tests - he only had to look at the list once or twice and could remember them all. So his spelling was more of a look and repeat method, rather than sounding the word out.
I don't know what method I learned by - I started school in 78 but I could already read a lot of words by then. I was a good reader but when I read to myself and came across complicated words, I often did not bother to decode them and so never found out what they meant. Perhaps if I had learned through phonics I might have.

However I was taught to read back in the 60s was fine. I could speak before I could read, knew what a cake was so I just needed to know how to spell it. I don’t know what the reading method was called back then though. Whatever it was it worked.

children become ambitious writers because they're not always asking for spellings.

Agree with this 100%. Better to spell wrongly an ambitious word than be timid about using words you've heard of but are unsure how to spell.

@herbalteabag even with phonics reading words in a book on a topic unfamiliar to you (my son in grade 5) struggled with the words orchestra symphony metronome not because of the pronunciation but because they were both never encountered and never heard (yes we lived extremely rurally).

There is overwhelming evidence that phonics is the most effective way of teaching reading. If you want to see what happens when phonics isn’t taught systematically, look at the US. www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

I've taught for over 30 years, many of those in Foundation and Year 1.
Synthetic phonics is by far the most effective method for teaching children to read. I was so glad when the Rose report came out and all schools started teaching phonics systematically.

By the end of Reception, most children can decode simple words that include the sound/letter correspondences that they have been taught.

Those people who say that English isn't a phonetic language are misled by the fact that we have a complex code.

Chinese, for example, is a character based language where you have to learn to recognise countless characters which represent different words.

English is phonetic because each letter shape represents a sound. Some languages, like Spanish, have a fairly simple phonetic code and consequently fairly low rates of dyslexia.

English has a more complex code where a sound can be represented by different combinations of letters (play, rain, they, cake, sleigh) and one group of letters can represent several sounds (tough, though, through, bough) so, not surprisingly, we have higher rates of dyslexia.

The complexity is because written English is essentially a mongrel language because of our history - Germanic from Anglo-Saxon invaders; French from the Normans; an extra h in words like ghost because of Dutch printers trying to make words look more like the spellings that they were used to; silent letters in words to reflect a medieval pronounciation - the sounds have been dropped in speech but are still there in the spelling etc etc

Some words do need to be taught as whole words to beginner readers. But that's not because they aren't phonetic, it's because they're useful, common words but are beyond a beginner reader's current phonic knowledge.

I think this can be very dependant on the schools approach. At our school most become free readers in year 2 where as I know of other schools where it's more like half way through year one. Despite our school seemingly being slower with it, the end of year 1 phonics screening routinely has 98% of children passing it.

It sure is a miracle that so many millions of people learned to read before they introduced this style of phonics.

This is how I learned to read. I always though phonics was useful for deciding uncommon words. Its interesting to hear the different opinions about phonics as the primary method, both positives and negatives.

Absolutely! I don't know how I managed it using only flash cards and Janet and John books (while reading Enid Blyton's Famous Five at home).

I realised it wasn't working for my grandson when he was struggling with phonics but could read Polish footballer's names in his sticker album.

I agree it works for most children but not everybody.

@SpanThatWorld i meant it came naturally for my kid.

Schools have to test children at the end of Y1, and the school has to report their Phonics results to the local authority.

It's a statutory requirement, and a poor Phonics result will reflect extremely badly on the school.

I was a school governor in a school that went into special measures, and one of the things that the LA was VERY keen on was increasing the number of pupils that passed their Phonics at the end of Y1.

Phonics is great and it works for many children, but not all. But part of the reason for the focus on Phonics and not on other methods is that the schools have to report on their Phonics test results.

I'm sure plenty of teachers would love to have a) the time b) the resources and c) the flexibility to be able to determine an individual approach for each child. But truthfully, they'll be expected to deliver children who can pass the Phonics test in Y1 so this has to be the main focus.

My DS is autistic and just couldn't do Phonics -but I appreciate he's very much the exception to the rule.

As an aside, the comments re spelling - I think for many children the very best way to learn how to spell is to read, read, and read. The child automatically starts to absorb words and how they're spelt without having to consciously "learn" their spellings. Both my DC didn't perform well on spelling tests but have excellent spelling now, and that's based on extensive reading.

DS is Y11 now, but really struggled with phonics. His school thought he was dyslexic at one point so we took him to see a private EP. He isn’t dyslexic, but it was identified that he has a very specific issue with blending - i.e he was one of the children phonics just didn’t work for. It was no bother, as school just took him off phonics and taught him to sight read, which worked much better for him and he reads perfectly well now. It was a worry at the time, but quite interesting looking back now.

I thought the same as you OP until I watched my kids and their friends learn to read across various British schools abroad. There was a clear pattern where kids were reading better in schools that were fully committed to teaching synthetic phonics rather than mixed methods. Now I’m a total convert.

My kids were early readers but the best thing about synthetic phonics is that, provided kids are given books at the correct phonics level, they can read them confidently from almost the very beginning of the program. I agree that sometimes the prose feels a bit forced because of the need to stick to a limited number of sounds at first, but there are some good schemes out there and the early look say books are pretty dire too.

It's wonderful that it worked for you both, however, it very much didn't work for everybody. Confidence in reading and overall literacy levels were lower in the past than they are now. Nobody is arguing that other methods don't work, just that the data shows that those methods don't (and didn't) work for as many children as synthetic phonics does.

I said it works for most, I'm not advocating abandoning it, but there should be recognition that some children need other methods rather than banging away at the same thing when it isn't working.

Exactly!

I was a fluent reader by the end of Reception despite what I now know to be not brilliant teaching methods.

But I (like the posters who always crop up on these threads to say that they or their children were reading Charles Dickens at the age of 4 without any of the new fangled phonics nonsense) just happen to be one of those lucky, bright kids who picked up reading naturally and would have learned to read easily whatever method I had been taught.

The beauty of synthetic phonics, which is based on solid research (the Rose Report drew on the Clackmannanshire study) is that it enables the vast majority of children for whom reading doesn't come naturally, to become fluent readers.

Remembe tthat all words are unfamiliar to new readers. So this is a system they learn so that they can read most words. They also learn about tricky words that don’t conform such as should, would and could and climb etc

You are extremely rare!

There are about 2 or 3 readers in every class of year 1s that learn by sight/ shape/ repetition. Mostly they all learn predominantly by phonics with the pictures and shape helping.

Phonics doesn't really work for my dd. She was fine up to a point, but either can't or won't apply them if she doesn't know a word. Her year didn't have the Y1 test because of covid, and I do wonder if something would have shown up. She consistently skips words, guesses pronunciation and struggles with spelling. They have never had spelling homework since early Y1. Now at Y6 she chooses almost exclusively to read graphic or illustrated books. She will occasionally try a chapter book but it's difficult. Meanwhile her same-age friend is reading The Hunger Games.

The phonics screen is made up of ‘alien words’ like shelb, fime, soad. Using their phonic knowledge to read them plus some real words. You could test her yourself. Must be some info online.
What was said at last parents evening?

When I was at school these were words you just learnt the spelling of, you weren’t given an explanation other than a letter was silent. I know nothing of phonics (way after my time and too long ago with my kids to remember how they learnt) how would these spellings be explained today?

I know phonics works for most children but my youngest son massively struggles with it. He is in year 2 and still on very basic books, but he can read a lot better than his books indicate as he has learnt by remembering words in general life. I actually pointed this out to his teacher at parents evening and he agreed that he had noticed it too, but said DS needed to grasp phonics before moving on as they have to teach that way. Obviously I still work on his phonics when we read at home but I'm not worried as his reading is constantly improving. He just hates having to go with year 1 for phonics