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.

This is really interesting. My experience with DD was that the focus on phonics meant she saw reading as a process of decoding each individual word and found it stressful and dull. She was so focused on sounding out the words she was unable to follow the story and now as a teen never reads as it simply isn't pleasurable.

DS on the other hand was at home with me during reception / year 1 thanks to COVID. I really struggled to teach phonics, balancing a full time job with home schooling and no experience. We just read a lot together and he is now way above his reading age.

I taught all my children to read, using synthetic phonics, before they started school. The evidence base for synthetic phonics is overwhelming, and having most of my relatives in education, my family advised me to teach my kids this way in case their school didn’t. My family members who are teachers had too many children in KS2 who had been failed earlier on and struggled with literacy as a result.

Some of the problems resulting from early teaching of less effective reading techniques can be addressed through interventions later on. But the loss of confidence - a child feeling thick because everyone else can read and they struggle - takes years to address.

Unfortunately there are still some parents and a few teachers who rely on their gut feel for how reading should be taught, and unnecessarily leave children behind as a result.

Could someone tell me who are the kids who don’t work well with phonics? Are they, for example, dyslexic? Or do they have a common trait that makes phonics not work for them? I’m not dyslexic btw, and I don’t think phonics would have worked for me (although I don’t know) and I’m just interested

This is the attitude that bothers me. I think there are far more important factors to consider than the reading method used. Such as, do parents read to regularly with their child? Anecdotally, I was reading chapter books in reception using what you refer to a less effective method.
I think we need to remember there are many reading skills. It's not just about being able to read out loud.

I think a lot of children struggling not with learning phonics but just how dull it is. Parents read other books with children to keep them engaged as they don't enjoy reading the same book over and over again. This is ultimately a blended approach and perhaps masks some of the problems with phonics as a method.

I'm on my phone and multitasking so please excuse me if it's not explained tippity top.

But OP, you were a clever child who took to literacy and had access to books. You taught yourself phonics rules and ran with it. This is not the case for all.

Also, there is zero need to re-read the same dull books in a scheme (and Biff & co are fairly old hat). Leaf through the school readers if you feel you must to complete the reading diary honestly, and use some fun modern phonics sources, once only, until your child is off and running.

Also, the “alien” words are such a small part of the phonics picture. They are not even the main part of the phonics screening test.

The thing I found with my niece is that she could ‘sound out’ words with phonics but she had no idea what any of it meant. She couldn’t follow it as a story. Just like I can read German pretty well and understand the ‘rules’ of how you pronounce things so I could read out a complex text quite passably but I wouldn’t understand a lot of it! It was like she was just taught how to sound things out but nothing about context or understanding what the phrase meant.

also people not actually using the sounds makes no sense and I see that a lot. ‘Muh - uh - muh, what does that spell’

mum

well no it doesn’t does it, it’s mmm uuh mmm for mum but where people don’t actually sound the letter out properly it just makes it another complicated way of ‘learning that this is how you spell a word’

I'm sorry, does that mean I'm not allowed to pass comment?

I don't think you have addressed my main concerns.

This is the main problem I see with phonics. Reading and writing is about comprehension. Being able to read out loud is one reading skill. Guessing words from the context is a step towards inferring the meaning of unknown words from context.
Again, there is nothing wrong with phonics. I think it's a useful reading skill but not the only reading skill.

Sorry if I misunderstand, but when you say that parents read books with children and that’s a mixed method what do you mean? Because any classroom environment will involve all sorts of books being shared with children. Phonics will be taught as research shows it’s the most effective way , but the classroom will be filled with of books that can be shared. All schools I have worked in and my children have attended have had reading for pleasure books as well as phonics books. They are read stories everyday. They talk about books, as you said reading involves many skills, and the teaching of phonics doesn’t mean other skills aren’t taught. It just means children are taught to decode efficiently and given appropriate books to be able to practice this skill.

You should have a listen to the Sold A Story podcast. The people who sold that type of reading method to schools, made billions of dollars and denied there was a problem with it for years.

But they also learn special words. I was also skeptical about phonics as I learned differently. But so how quickly mu son read. By the end of reception he could read most words even those that don't follow the phonics pattern. By end of year one he probably read better than I did in year 3 and seemed to look-say what wasn't phonetically readable. So I suspect teachers do mix. It seems to work amazingly for most kids. But am just a parent not a teacher. Will be glad to hear teachers e.g does it lead to poor spellings especially for kids that are too dependent on phonics?

What you've described seems to be a blended approach, albeit phonics-led. I don't debate that at all. The problem I have is with people who say that research shows synthetic phonics is far more effective. When was this research dated. What were the measures of "effectiveness". I think an exclusively phonics approach eldoes impact spelling, but more importantly whole reading and comprehension skills.

Just to be transparent, I teach English as a foreign language which is where my bias comes from. I do teach phonics and recognise their importance but I worry that teachers are under too much pressure to use this approach leaving less time for other important reading skills.

Phonics has been great for my son as he can sound out the words he doesn’t know or is unsure of, making reading more interactive and stimulating for him than if I just told him the words and expected him to learn them by rote.

I feel that what you think is happening in the teaching of reading isn’t what is happening.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664f600c05e5fe28788fc437/The_reading_framework_.pdf

This is the reading framework for teaching reading in school. The research clearly shows how effective phonics is for teaching reading and as has been pointed out, we are all using phonics no matter what method we use, just less explicitly, and the reason it is effective is because many children need it to be more explicitly and will not see the patterns etc without it being taught. That doesn’t mean schools do not read and expose children to a range of books and explore comprehension, ask questions, learn common exception words etc. Reading for pleasure should leads be the heart of my schools curriculum and the guidance says that, so if schools aren’t doing that it is a school based issue not an issue with phonics in general.

@HowManyDucks @babybythesea

Unfortunately phonics has become cult like and it seems teachers aren't taught other ways to help struggling students except more phonics.

The phonics tests are awful and again promote only phonics.

Many children cannot read via phonics and children with dyslexia or literacy issues can often be phonics blind and they can't get the sounds.

For many children phonics is a barrier and over complication of simply learning to read.

I have 4 DC 3 of whom learned via phonics and I never gave it much thought until no 4 who didn't seem to be getting it and progressing in the same way. We were told to wait and wait and unfortunately whilst waiting for phonics to work she's failing Tests and her self esteem is plummeting.
We got a specialist dyslexia tutor who kept pushing the phonics.
A family member said why not just try the old look say method?

So we did and once I had decoupled from the phonics train I did lots of research and we went back to basics with, look say.
After about 3 months of completely starting again she started to become a confident and fluent reader. It was remarkable and simple and yet not something accessible to her at her outstanding state school.

Isn't that shocking?

She's not an avid reader now like her siblings but she will read in her own time chunky novels. She reads out loud really well and has no issues at all with word pronunciation.

One wonders what would have happened to her had we not gone down this path and what is happening to the kids at school with no other options.
It should be widely known and promoted,if your kid is struggling with phonics just try another way

One way of doing anything will never ever fit all children and it's very clear entire cohorts are being cut out of education from primary because of this obsession to phonics.

@JillAndJenTheFlowerpotMen that's really interesting that teachers by year 2 feel children can't learn too read because they have been failed presumably by their previous teachers in their own school to teach the basics?

One hand your saying over whelming evidence shows it's the best way but then you say teachers say too many children can't read and it causes problems (blaming that on not learning the phonics properly). Easy to see his the system is self trapping.

That was my DD, but the problem was phonics!

Not all children need this over complication of reading, they really don't

I can see that schools can be slow to pick up on kids that don’t respond to phonics, I think that is often down to inexperience. But some of the claims made on here about phonics are wildly inaccurate, it works for the majority of children, and has been proven to be the most effective . Unfortunately until a lot more money is available, a more personalised learning experience will not happen and interventions will only happen when children are behind. It’s wrong I agree but that’s an issue with the system not phonics.

This is a great post. It aligns closely with my view. Interesting to hear you view on this...for the children that DO recognise patterns. That ARE intuitively grasping phonics. Is teaching phonics taking away from their reading experience? Narrowing the scope and complexity of texts they are exposed to and limiting their opportunity to be autonomous learners from the start of their education.

My other concern is that while children may be able to decode more effectively, our reading for pleasure rates are dropping off a cliff.
https://literacytrust.org.uk/reading-for-pleasure/#:~:text=Our%202024%20research%20report%2C%20taken,in%20the%20last%20year%20alone.

“Our 2024 research report, taken from the results of our annual literacy surveyof over 76,000 UK children and young people, records the worst levels in nearly 20 years.
Children and young people’s enjoyment of reading is at crisis point, falling drastically in the last year alone.”

It’s no good having amazing decoders if they actually don’t read. I think phonics schemes like our current one we use at school are partly to blame.

Read the books multiple times, even if you found it boring the first time round.
Read the books you are told to read in a set order with no choice.
Reading is a list of rules to be memorised.

You can have a ‘reading for pleasure’ book to take home but we need you to read this one to mum or dad, and if they’ve only got time or inclination to read one book with you it won’t be the fun one…

Phonics is definitely a key part of it but I’ll say it again, there need to be other strategies for the kids who don’t get it and that’s where we are failing with a total reliance on phonics.

Phonics didn’t work at all for my child.
He was later diagnosed with asd and adhd. Dyslexic too. No intellectual disability though.

I would say the way phonics were taught ruined his experience of learning to read.
The whole thing was too complicated for him as well as too boring in his eyes. He saw he wasn’t keeping up with the class - not through lack of effort on his or my part I might add - and so his self-esteem plummeted also. The school tried putting support in place, but even though he had one-to-one sessions, they were just teaching more of the same which didn’t work.

He ultimately had a breakdown and dropped out. Learned to read by reading high interest stories, using games etc.

The way phonics is taught might be a system that works for most, but it certainly doesn’t work for everyone 😕

@babybythesea of course there does it's ridiculous to even have to be discussing it.

I also think it’s a bit of a money making racket.

When our new scheme was brought in, because the old one was no longer certified, we had to buy all the resources (flash cards, wall charts etc) plus enough reading books. Not only all the books in the scheme but multiple copies of each book because they are supposed to read them in groups. If one gets damaged or lost at home it will have to be replaced. Meanwhile all of our old books (including a series that were set on a farm that loads of our rural children love because they can relate to them) can’t be used..

The worst part of the scheme is that they aren’t supposed to read 1-2-1 with a teacher but only be heard in groups. I strongly disagree with this but we are short on time if we’re hearing them all read in groups 3 times a week. And the scripts for each lesson do my head in.

Display slide 1. Say “the rule is …” Ask the children to tell their partner what the rule is. Say “the rule is..” Display slide 2. Ask the children to write the word in their book. Say “the rule is…”
It is mind numbing and turns reading into a list of rules to be memorised.

And then they don’t read for pleasure…

Phonics are decent building blocks but as with anything they are one tool. Mine also had sigtht words and rule words in separate spelling list.
Like magic e changing the sound of a

As well as teaching it I have personal experience with my youngest who is profoundly dyslexic. Couldn’t read until Year 4 despite multiple interventions all based around more and more and more phonics.
What eventually happened was that she built up a big enough word bank to be able just to sight read. And she can make inferences about what new words might be based on context. It doesn’t always work but she does read for pleasure now (aged 12) and you wouldn’t know she had struggled for so long (unless you look at her spelling!!). I’ve done a lot of work on dyslexia because of this and I find it beyond frustrating that I can’t use it in the classroom because “phonics.”