The Teaching of Reading: What can parents do???

[Catflap]

Hi there to all who have followed my phonics ramblings on many a thread, and indeed to those who haven't but are interested in this thread title!

I have commented a lot on the state of poor reading teaching in schools and described the effective method of synthetic phonics which is beng taught in a few schools but largely ignored by the educational establishment.

It has been fascinating reading the comments and observations that everyone as parents has on their children's reading - it amazing how many of you pick up on things that the teaching profession are not accepting. I have always found parents to be a preceptive lot. However, what is also sad in this case is how many of you put your trust and support in your children's teachers - which I wholey support because we are losing that fast - but in this case it is sadly misplaced.

The Reading Debate is discussed quite widely online now and has made its appearance in the news recently. You can do a search for 'synthetic phonics' and it will present you with plenty to read, but a thorough site for discussing the issues and providing you with information is the Reading Reform Foundation website

The thing is, lots of you are recognising the issues and are understanding the sort of methods that I describe and see that it makes sense. But what do you do??

I thought I would just post with a few suggestions, as it would seem pertinent after all my advices to offer some pointers for more positive action! Thing is, it's not that rosy an outlook, all the while the Government continue to rrefuse to accept that there might just be something in this synthetic phonics lark and teachers are driven by pressure from above...

However, should you believe that there is something in it and feel it could help your child, I would personally suggest that you have the following options open to you:

1. Do nothing. The chances are that your child will eventually struggle through like many thousands have in the past and will read successfully, or in some fashion, or will struggle and be offered some sort of remedial help eventually.

2. Teach them yourself. Get your hands on some resources and information and provide your child with the skills and knowlegde they need. This is of course is labour intensive, has some financial implications and could be seen as not your job...

3. Find a reading tutor that practices the same philosophies. This could be hard as there are few scattered around, but by posting on the messageboard of the above RRF site, I'm sure you will find someone who could help. (I myself am planning to get into that at some point, but not whilst dd is still so small and more are planned!)

4. Hound the teacher and then the school. Equip yourself with all the necessary facts and information and maybe get a team of parents and ask questions and get answers. Maybe even contact your LEA.

Meanwhile, online tuition will continue to be available whilst I am still managing to access this board!

Hope this helps give a bit more direction and a conclusion to previous discussions.

Hi there QofQ; I'm really glad your ds is doing well and that you have such faith in and support for your school - that is what we all want, really. However, this thread wasn't really aimed at lucky parents like you - it was more in response to all the people to whom I have chatted who are very disillusioned with the teaching and are concerned with their child's reading. I wouldn't dare assume that there is something 'wrong' was all schools and that you should all be investigating, otherwise I'd have millions of people on here defending their schools. However, I taught in a school that had a similar OFSTED report and comments to yours. They didn't teach synthetic phonics (well, except me!) and there was heaps wrong with the reading that could be easily ignored - especially the poor struggling 25% for whom comments like those never applied. It is those children for whom I 'campaign' really - as well as those average achievers who could progress so much more - and even the more able, to a lesser extent, who I have seen positively fly when taught SP.

When my ds started reception he found the concept of reading very difficult. I tried to make it as much fun as i could but he just wasn't keen.

I have followed catflaps advice since the beginning & have found it to be excellent. I recognised that the problem with my ds was that he wasn't taking in the whole word recognition & therefore felt he couldn't read. This knocked his confidence greatly & stopped him being able to enjoy reading.

I worked with him on the letter sounds & suddenly it fell into place. He realised he could bring a book home & despite having never seen the word\words before he could read it because he had the skills to break it down. He now enjoys reading & has even started picking up books around the house to read. It's wonderful to see the change in him.

I personally think that as not all parents can be winners in the lottery of getting their child into a primary school with an above average track record, we need to be aware of the potential benefits of phonics teaching for the average child or even those who would be classed as not even achieving average targets.

I feel that the results speak for themselves and if one considers the effect that struggling to learn to read has on the confidence of a child and the possible behavioural problems stemming from the frustration of not so readily grasping a basic skill, which some of the child's peers can be seen to be succeeding at, the potential effect on the whole class is awful thought for teachers and children alike.

If a nationally adopted phonics strategy (and I don't mean "adopted", I mean actually carried out !) pulled a greater proportion of children up into the reading more fluently category earlier, could it not have an effect on classroom behaviour freeing a small amount of time for teachers and support staff to reach out even more to the category in need of greater help still.

If nationally results improved more schools could achieve improved Ofstead reports giving parents more confidence in local schools and reducing the perceived need to shop around and cart children miles each day in the car or pay rather high fees to try and achieve the education they would like for their children.

BTW .- Reality check, the sky is still blue in my world (not purple with green spots).

Just a thought. (I am not a teacher and admire the profession on the whole but the older I get the more of a social conscience I seem to be acquiring).

This was mean't to be a post in support of catflap's very informative posts but I realise I have rambled instead, apologies.

I believe that both of my dd's learnt to read using a variety of "methods" applying different ones at different moments during the process. However it is clear that children do need to learn how to read. Sometimes the teacher may not recognise that a particular child hasn't "got it" at a given time because they aren't listening to every child read often enough in large classes. In the school where my dd2 learnt to read they were each heard every day and it was easy for any gaps to be addressed straightaway.
No-one came out of the reception class unable to read (although some were keener readers than others!) So it seems what is paramount is the amount of 1-to-1 time the learner readers get (and in some cases here this has had to be a task taken on by the parents). I did listen to my dd read almost every night as well during that period.

scotlou
Ginn totally contradicts Jolly Phonics as it is a whole word reading scheme that introduces words very slowly in a repetitive fashion as it recognises it is hard to take on a lot of words this way. Following Ginn, children are expected to read words like 'here' and 'where' before they can sound out words like 'sun' and 'peg.' If your ds is already familiar with JP it wouldn't harm things at all to use it a bit more thoroughly at home. Your final sentence describing the whole word approach has it spot on - what you describe ds doing this way is the method that the children are taught. And while memory is important in reading, what he is doing is remembering what the whole page says, and rattling it off without actually using the letters to read. This gives the impression of reading for many children for a long time and many struggles can go unnoticed this way.

cam
memorising is important, but with the knowledge to support it. Children have to be able to remember what sounds all the letters stand for as well as remember the look of a word they can already decode, or they would be sounding out laboriously forever. However, memorising like this should come with familiarity and prcatice, not used as a primary tool. Blending sounds like you describe is also crucial and if you follow something like JP is matter of course. The emphasis is on blending sounds all through the word, which is where some more traditional phonics ideas fall short, often only focussing on what sound words begin with.

Ijustdontknow
catflap - a relevant name on so many levels.... lol
JP is perfect for pre-school children, at the level of using the pictures, stories and actions to introduce them to the spoken sounds of our language. You can also begin to introduce letters if they show signs that they are ready and have an understanding of what print is for. Also, synthetic phonics is by no means a new thing by nowadays, schools are so prescriptive in what they have to cover and be seen to be achieving, providing evidence to so many people, there is less freedom to practice your own preferred methods. The NLS has always been optional and schools are welcome to follow whatever Literacy plan they like, as long as it is seen to come up with the same results. However, it is easier to just follow something already laid out, in which there is a lot of training and it seems to work...

QueenofQuotes
Your list of advice is interesting. I myself have sent out similar lists and seen all sorts go out as well. However, reading really is quite a complicated issue, unlike any other school subject. There is a lot of research now available and a lot of evidence to show how children learn to read best and how best to teach them. This information is just not freely circulated amongst schools and teachers. - it is out there to be read, but not distributed as a matter of course - not even in the teacher training institutions. Teachers often freely admit that they are in the dark about how to teach reading really effectively. But, there are activities that are frequently practised and seem to work, so these are continued. I'm sure there were great intentions behid this list of guidelines, and there's nothing much wrong with some of them, except they are at a very early level and don't really deal with the issue of reading e.g. decoding the letters on the page. Also, it is scary how statements like these are readily accepted by parents - because the school should know what they are talking about - when perhaps they do not have all the evidence and knowledge behind them. Take for instance "Remember memorising text is an important first step in reading." Why should you remember this? Why is it an important step? Does this mean that if my child just memorises a book we have shared, then that is ok and it is reading? I would suggest that it is an important step for toddlers who are becoming aware that books have stories and undertsand that the print carries the meaning and like to pretend to read to toys etc, but to find this acceptable in Reception for a child who is clearly beyond this early step is just delaying the development of a crucial skill.
"Encourage your child to use the pictures to help them read the text (do not cover up the pictures)" Why??? Why would you do this? Pictures support a story and provide additional enjoyment, but they do not help you read - or rather, they shouldn't! Our written code was specifically designed to represent our speech sounds with letters and groups of letters, adn that is what tells us what the word says. Using pictures only distracts and delays from that as well as resulting in a lot or random guesswork. It also gives the children a confusing message about what reading is. They have put 'don't cover up the pictures' as some parents obviously do - well, well done them! They clearly have more insight on this than the parents do.

homemama
A lot more words are perfectly decodable with adequate phonic knowledge than is commonly believed. Your example - it is the 'igh' spelling for 'ie' that is an alternative taught in just the same way as all the other sounds and letters - just as 'ai' 'oa' 'sh' and 'f' are taught. There are a group of words that spell like this - fight, flight, sight, bright etc - you know them. There is nothing tricky about this and no alternative methods needed to teach it. There are very few words that have to be learned totally by sight, but these are where they have a spelling for a sound that is totally unexpected and not used anywhere else and nearly all the word is 'tricky' - I would say 'one' and 'eye' fit in this. But very few others. Even 'yacht' isn't that weird - the 'y' and the 't' are quite regular, so it's just a matter of remembering 'ach' for 'o' with a good visual or auditory stimulus.
I do appreciate you feeling you must defend the profession - but it's my profession as well, and I have quickly realised that children are not helped by defensive teachers. It will not help those 25% that constantly struggle. I think parents should be aware of the reading debate and should know that perhaps their children might be failed by the school - because a quarter of them are and as a parent, I would want to be concerned that mine wasn't going to be one of them.

Thanks for your comments, coldtea, soapbox, singersgirl and chocolate girl

it took me ages to do that in between phone calls and sorting dd out - and two more people have repsonded in the meantime!

ijustdontknow - good points; I followed the ramble!

cam - most children do learn to read through a variety of methods; I know I did and had loads of kids doing it before I started implementing sp. I just worry so much for those that don't - and have seen those more able do SOOOO much better with more thorough teaching. And when you can read, so much else can fall into place. I have to say, from a teacher point of view, that whilst your comments about hearing individual readers are very true and no one can dispute the value of one to one time, it is just not possible to do this to the extent that it is required, without the other children suffering somehow and with the pressures of completing the rest of the curriculum - the key issue being, what do all the other children do whilst you are hearing individual readers? The beauty of sp for me, was that I didn't have to hear individual readers - I knew all my kids could read. I did group reading and loved to hear them read to me whenever the situation allowed, but it was not necessary. What individual reading does is allow you to really teach that child to read thoroughly. What sp does, is allow you to do that to all the children, at the same time. I hasten to add, the children still all progress at different rates, but they do all learn to read - really quickly!

Thanks catflap. Think I will try doing more jolly phonics stuff with him. I so want him to enjoy reading and at the moment it just seems a slog for him.

sorry - but still feel that you're been very condrasending (sp) of the methods which other teachers used. I have no doubts that JP is excellent, and although I don't think they use that phonics method at DS's school they do use a phonics method.

"And while memory is important in reading,"

"when perhaps they do not have all the evidence and knowledge behind them. Take for instance "Remember memorising text is an important first step in reading." Why should you remember this?"

EVERY child that has left this school in 'recent history' has been able to read AT LEAST to the level 'expected' at the end of y2, and many exceed it.

I was talking to my mum about this earlier - I learned to read before going to school - she taught me......but when I mentioned 'phonics' and how they're used to teach - she'd didn't have a clue about them (she's not a teacher BTW, and failed her CSE's at school). She DID however teach me to read extremely well, I read Lord of the Rings (in 3 weeks) at 9yrs old on my own, and understood everything that I read.

If you had bothered to read all of the 'advice' our school gives you'd see that the next points (after the memorising bit) were

• Rereading a book helps build on initial decoding to allow your child to enjoy the story and illustrations

• Encourage your child to use the pictures, sight words and phonics (letter sounds) to decode words (as they progress)

"Decoding" and "phonics" - both mentioned.

I want to stress again that I have no doubts that JP is very good, but please don't assume that any teacher that teaches in any other way than "pure" JP is somehow doing our children a 'dis-service'.

I must say I don't read catflaps posts as being condescending, in fact I've enjoyed reading them.
Thanks for posting so comprehensively on this subject catflap.

My 2 dd's learnt to read without any problems but I'm still very interested in the process as obviously it is ongoing as new words are come across all the time by children and adults.

Plus my dd2 is learning to read French and will be learning Latin next year.

To think of my posts as condescending, QofQ, is really in ignorance of the matters at hand.

I am not here selling Jolly Phonics - but more the method that it is employs. There are many other schemes that teach synthetic phonics - it's just that JP is the most popular and mentioned most often on here.

I have already said that this thread is clearly not aimed at you as someone who is thoroughly satisfied with their child's teaching. Lucky you. Lucky them. Really. But as you are not aware of the issues, please do not begin to question what I am saying, unless you really do want to open this thread up to the whole Reading Debate. I have already given links where you can ead this for yourself.

However, in brief, Ihave never said that schools do not do phonics and decoding. They do. I know they do - I have taught in schools. I know what the NLS framework contains. It is the mixture methods that is damaging for many children - the phonics is incomplete and so alternative guessing strategies are promoted which give mixed messages and result in inaccuracies. With a bit of training into the complex world of phonics, teachers can deliver effective teaching that is successful with 99% of children and I don't care how successful an OFSTED your school has had, they won't have achieved results like that.

And again, I am very pleased you learnt to read so quickly and so effortlessly - so did I. I am not claiming no one can. Thousands of people do. It is the people that don't that concerns me, as well as those that could be spared a school life of learning to read through confusion and delay.

Find the evidence for yourself and read it. Many teachers are doing their children a dis-service. However, like I said, your ds has done really well, so this thread really isn't aimed at you.

thanks for your comments, cam

To illustrate what Catflap is saying, my ds's school uses NLS mixed strategies (although I think they have recently and belatedly begun to introduce Jolly Phonics to the younger children). He is now in Yr 2 and is not reading as well as he could, partly because if he is not sure of a word he tends to look at the first letter, look at the picture then take a guess! When prompted he can actually 'read' the word by breaking it down into sounds but it is really hard now to break this habit of 'guessing' as this is one of the reading strategies he has been encouraged by the school to use.

"With a bit of training into the complex world of phonics, teachers can deliver effective teaching that is successful with 99% of children and I don't care how successful an OFSTED your school has had, they won't have achieved results like that. "

I'm amazed that you know how well my DS1's school manages to teach reading - as I've already said "EVERY" child leaves the school at the end of the Y2 reading at, and the majority 'above' the 'expected' reading levels for that age group.

"Many teachers are doing their children a dis-service. However, like I said, your ds has done really well, so this thread really isn't aimed at you."

Well seen as though you've claimed that the mixed reading teaching isn't as good, and can't be possibly teach them to ready as effectively as phonics teaching - you obviously are aiming this thread at people like me,

Because - shock, horror, I actually have faith and belief in a school with an excellent track record in it's literacy teaching - regardless of what method they use!

There really are bigger issues here, QofQ - the assessment methods are also key here - it is only every child that can read according to the assessment methods used - some of these children are bound to look like they are reading because of reliance on other strategies - not because I am such a cynic but because I have seen the facts.

What exactly is your argument with me? Are you really so naive to believe that just because your son and school have had such success then that must be the case for everyone? All I am doing is in the interests of those children who do not experience that success - what is your problem with that?

issymum - the whole philosophy of JP and suchlike schemes is that the phonics is taught effectively enough not to need other strategies and words are read that only contain the sounds and letters used so far. So, to use ORT as reading material totally contradicts this as ORT is a whole-word scheme built upon using the pictures and context as clues to working out words. So many schools do this - JP is not just a phonics resource.

Books without pictures for this purpose are a complete waste of time. So many children have all the skills needed that these books might purport to encourage just from regular picture books. Once a child is ready to learn to read, these books do nothing practical at all.

No, children should never be encouraged to guess at a word - not during structured, directed teaching. Of course this will happen as they try to read words they experience out in the big wide world, but the idea is they only experience words in teaching within their teaching/learning level/limit and this happens at such a fast rate, they soon can read nearly anything anyway.

This is a tricky one as it happens so often and I no doubt will encounter it at some time in the future with dd. To be honest, I think I would refuse to use them and invest in some JP books to ue at home. First I would question how the ORT is supposed to support the JP that is used as they seem to have different philosphies and then ask why they don't use JP readers as supporting material. I doubt you'll get anywhere, but it would be worth showing where you are coming from and then politely declining to use them. This is what I would have to do. However, with JP teaching, once spelling alternatives have been introduced, ORT is much more decodable from Level 5 and I used to use it from there with much success. You do have to change the letter sound introduction from JP though to match it e.g. teaching 'all' as in small, wall and tall

HTH

Not wanting to fuel an argument here, but catflap is right. I have a background as an academic linguist, and when dd1 started school I was shocked by the phonological illogicality of the reading books, especially at the early stages. ORT are particularly guilty of this -- with the pictures the text is highly guessable, without the pictures often impossibly difficult. Some of the early books (stage1 or 2?) have words like 'guitar', 'headache' or 'chicken', which are complex and often irregular in spelling, and which a beginning reader stands no chance of decoding. Would really like to have a decent discussion with the genius who decided to put in 'chicken' rather than 'hen'. Or 'guitar' rather than 'drum'. What is that all about?

On the other hand, from about stage 4 or 5, the ORT books are actually quite good, with a lovely series of stories about a magic key that takes the children on adventures. They're excellent for building up fluency once a child has 'got' the basics of how reading works.

Personally for the early stages I would stick with something strictly phonic. My dd1 bypassed early ORT by teaching herself to read on old Peter and Jane books, but a lot of her classmates really struggled (and are still struggling in Y6). Whereas my ds, who is bright but not exceptional, was taught using the RML (Ruth Miskin Literacy), and could sound out quite complex words early on. It was noticeable that he never tried to guess; if he didn't know a word he would slow right down and have a sensible phonetic stab at it.

Issymum, I think the wordless books are designed to introduce children to how books work and how stories are structures, as well as introducing the main characters from the ORT series, who will become tediously familiar. I could never really see the point, but I think that's because I could take it for granted that my children knew how books and stories worked. Clearly that's not the case in all families.

issymum , it is very common for schools to use both, not that it makes it ideal. They do still need to have sight words which ORT introduces in those early books plus learn the the disciplines of reading - holding the book the right way, turning pages form front to back, learning the concept of a story and retelling it themselves, identifying characters, interacting with an adult as they read and so on. It may sound obvious to most but there will be some children for whom it is all new.

I think as long as the decoding is emphasised you could just go along with the ORT. They will probably do more of the work around both the schemes in class so don't think you can ignore it !

I think catflaps posts are absolutely fascinating, have led me to further reading and to using JP with my son who is now in love with reading (he turned four two weeks ago). I don't think they are in the least condescending. And she's right. The best way to teach reading to all children is using phonics. Study after study proves it. Some children learn to read quickly however you teach them, but others do not. And it seems like common sense that looking at pictures and memorising are not reading. They may be fun but they aren't reading.

And jumping back in here again, to support Catflap, ChocolateGirl and others, though many children do succeed with "mixed" methods, it's the ones who don't that need help. And since synthetic phonics works for virtually all children, those children who would have succeeded anyway still succeed (possibly faster!) and those who might not have will have a much better chance.
My own sons go to a very good school that gets A in comparison to similar schools for all subjects. But apart from the ablest readers, who (lucky them!) have absorbed the rules somehow, very few of the children have by Y3 intuited how to build up words. When I suggest that they do this with even quite simple words like "greeted" or "important", many look blank. And not all of these are classed as failing readers - many are children who have reached the required standard for reading in KS1 SATS, because they have memorised just enough words to get them that far.
"Guessing" isn't helpful on so many levels. By year 3 you still have poorer readers desperately scanning the picture for clues.
I'm not a teacher, but since my elder son started school, I have followed the whole reading debate with great interest and have read widely about it.
I think it is fantastic that this topic is debated with such interest on this site, to be honest, as the more parents are aware of the issues, the more opportunity they have to make the choices that they feel will be right for their children. I chose to school-proof DS2 because as a summer-born boy he seemed to be in the group that mixed methods are most likely to fail!

And Aloha, my DS, who was 4 a month ago, is also in love with reading now too! The phonics approach has made it logical and transparent to him.

For a really in-depth (but very readable) account of the issues, I would recommend Diane McGuinness's book Why Children Can't Read .

My ds, who is also summer-born, learnt via the RML phonics scheme, and is now reading his way through Harry Potter independently, having turned 6 over the summer. And he's by no means the best reader in the class.