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.

Majorca, I've seen some books like that in the library and in some larger book stores. They have titles like 'Red Hen' and are specifically designed for children learning to read through phonics. Dd used to love reading them and we found they were good for her confidence when she was first figuring out how to 'sound' a word.

I'll have a look online and see if I can find them for you.

majorca - yes, 'Jolly Readers' are now available. They closely follow the groups of sounds and letters introduced in JP and go up to quite a high level. You can visit www.jollylearning.co.uk but the info there is actually fairly limited - there should be books in shops to view.

The Diane McGuinness book is FAB and it is what got me into this whole synthetic phonics business in the first place - before I even knew there was a reading debate. I was in the bookshop desperately looking for something to fill me in where training college and school had left me sadly lacking, and she popped up. It made so much sense to me, I was so excited. Finally I had found something that, had someone just told me about it years ago, I would have had so much more of a grip on the teaching of reading. And do you know, it's not even on the reading lists of teacher training colleges.

I wrote a summary of the main prinicples of synthetic phonics of the book to share with colleagues who I knew wouldn't manage to read the whole thing. If anyone leaves their e-mail address here or contacts me via CAT I will send copies of it out.

When engaging in discussions such as these, I am used to meeting lots of opposition. However, the support that has come out on this thread is really heartening - thank you for all contributing and I'm glad this is of interest to so many of you and so pleased that the sp message is making it through to children that would need it! There are so many posts of so much sense here, that I feel I am hardly needed any more!

oxford reading tree also do a range of phonics books (but I have no idea how good they are). I would check your library first (if you have a good one). I also found the Dr Seuss books brilliant when dd and ds were first learning to read because the sounding is so fantastic (all the rhyming) - cat in the hat, fox in socks etc.

My ds still wants to guess words though, and I still have to show him that with sounding out you get it right first time, not umpteenth time! He's impatient like his mother!

Completely new to all this, but very grateful for the info as dd is starting to express an interest in reading and I now have some ideas of how to support that. Was very surprised to put it mildly that my neighbour's son, just 4, who has NO interest in letters at all, was being given little laminated whole words to learn as homework. SOme of the words were tricky - like "the" for example. Only last week, before reading this thread, I was asking my neighbour how he was meant to learn a word like "the" if he couldn't even yet sound out C-A-T for example. She said it was something about recognising words that appear very frequently. It made no sense to me, and reading this thread has helped me realise that schools use a variety of methods. Am hoping to get my dd reading before she starts reception so that she won't be confused. Thanks again.

Merrygoround, there are a few very high-frequency words that aren't readily decodable by phonic methods. "The' and "a" are among them, and because it's pretty much impossible to construct reasonable quantities of text without them, it makes sense to teach them as exceptional 'sight words' that you just have to learn.

But it makes absolutely no sense to teach 'mum' and 'on' as sight words, as the National Literacy Strategy lays down, because they're completely phonologically regular. So why teach the word when you can teach the rule for decoding the word, which would enable a child to decode not just that word, but any other that follows the same pattern? It's like the old proverb about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish for himself.

Frogs, totally agree! And good analogy too. On is so easy to decode! Madness.

been out, and quite frankly can't be ar*ed to read all the comments saying what a "god" catflap is and how 'right' she is.

But one thing struck me as I was at choir pratice. You say that having words memorised is ideal for toddlers. But not for reception children. Isn't it odd that

a) many other countries children don't even go to school until they're 1 or even 2yrs older than children here....and that's when they start reading 'properly' - yet they still managed to learn to read as well as us.

b) How many of us, when reading "spell out" words......and how many of us look at words and "remember" what they say?? I know I certainly do the latter, I've "remembered" how the words are said - so memorising continues through to adulthood IMO,

But then Catflap knows so much more than anyone else so I may as well shut the f*ck up hey.

neither of those things is odd - and I'm unsure how your first comment relates to what i said about memorising texts (not words).

Children on the continent learn to read far moe easily than us as their alphabets are far more transparent, that is, they have less spelling alternatives for each sound, if any. Far less complicated; if only ours were that simple. There are fewer incidences of dyslexia in most other countries that don't use English, as their languages are far easier to teach and learn.

It's not odd that people 'remember' how to spell words at all - I'm always looking at things and thinking 'that doesn't look right.' Memory plays an important part in spelling and is how most of us have been taught. I know, though, that there are many words I always used to misspell - like 'liaison' and 'weapon' until I acquired phonic knowledge and finally didn't have to rely on dodgy memory any more but could work it out and then remember which spellings it was with more accuracy and understanding.

Why so cross QoQ. There are loads and loads of studies that show that phonics teaches more children to read more successfully than any other method (or mix of methods). It really does work. And we can use phonics all our lives, every time we meet an unfamiliar word. Imagine you had to memorise every word you used! Thousands of them! Our memories just aren't good enough. Which is why children who appear at first to be good readers start to fall behind as the vocabulary of what they are reading starts to increase. Their memories just can't keep up. It's a near impossible task. In countries where the language relies on memory (eg China) because the words are all symbols, illiteracy is rife and learning to read takes much, much longer. Phonics means you can read anything, including a word you have never seen before. Phootle - now there's a word you've never seen before, I bet! I made it up, yet you can still read it easily not because you memorised it, but because you can decode it - ph = f, oo = ooh and t = tuh etc.
That, to me, is what phonics is about. It lets children read ANY word - without picture 'clues', without memorising the whole word, just easily and naturally.
Many children are able to absorb the 'rules' of phonics naturally by seeing lots of words and realising how their components work, but plenty of children never 'naturally' learn to break down words, and for them reading will be a lifelong struggle. Phonics seems to me to be a key that makes sense of how our language is structured and opens the door to reading.
Twas brillig and the slithy tove did gyre and gimble in the wabe, as Lewis Carroll wrote, and we can read!

Where did I mention spelling? I was talking about reading - which I thought this theead was about.

But then again, I am talking cr*p as I'm not an ex-teacher (or a current one).

oops, meant 'reading' depends on memory, not 'language'.

QoQ you are a funny girl, no-one is arguing with you

have I said the phonics don't work???

No I haven't.

All I've said is that I don't believe that teachers are doing children a "disservice" by teaching a mixed method!

But then I forgot - we're supposed to worship the ground that Catflap and co walk on

QoQ, I'm not an ex-teacher either (nor a current one) just a mum who has read some of the research into synthetic phonics and is convinced by it!

I honestly don't understand why you are so cross QoQ! Really I don't.
She's not talking about you!

oh yes Cam - hahahaha - bet you're all rolling on the floor in hysterics.

FFS - where did I say that phonics don't bl**dy work???

Show me it.......

QoQ???

And it's not just catflap saying mixed methods don't work as well and certainly not as well for everyone as phonics. There was recently a huge study saying exactly the same things. Some kids learn well however they are taught, but it's not the best method.

Are you QoQ

Go on, admit it, you could read phootle couldn't you?

yeah yeah yeah whatever, I'll p*ss of the thread now and leave you all to it.

I'd say calm down but I know it would make you go off POP (probably quite justifiably). I know you are v stressed atm though. But really, this isn't about you at all.

I mentioned spelling as I misread QofQ's comment where she referred to decoding as 'spelling out' - I forget people used to call it that.

Really, the thread was originally about reading and spelling as the two are inter-twined, really.

So, now I've read it carefully, in answer to QofQ's comment:

"How many of us, when reading "spell out" words......and how many of us look at words and "remember" what they say?? I know I certainly do the latter, I've "remembered" how the words are said - so memorising continues through to adulthood IMO"

is quite right on some respects - I have always said that a visual memory is vital to learn to read, or we would have to sound out every word every songle time which would be terribly tedious and laborious and destroy all meaning we could possibly obtain. Those of us who read fluently do remember what the words say - however we were taught them. However, i) studies have shown, through observation of eye-movement, that we still attend to every letter in sequence and ii) you are thinking of this as a fully literate adult - for many adults and children, poorly taught, they cannot read fluently by just remembering all the words, particularly if they do rely on whole word shape clues, as so many words look similar. (This is just one example)

QofQ - you only have to sit in on the group of chidlren who can't read to see what a dis-service mixed methods does. I can still picture a little girl in my class years ago, her eyes looking up at me full to the brim with tears because, after 3 weeks, she still couldn't remember what 'here' said. It was then that I realised - why on earth should she be able to remember what this odd assortment of shapes says, especially such an abstract, boring word. It was because of her and all the other children like her that I changed what I was doing and wish other people would too. It's for the huge proportion of illiterate adults that I wish teaching would change. It's for all the parents here that have expressed concern over their LO's ability to read. It's for all the children that commit suicide out of total lack of self esteem because they cannot read and that has shut so many other doors for them. I'm sure you'll accuse me of playing some sort of emotional game, but this is real stuff that occurs because children are not taught to read properly. It is really quite narrow-minded to assume that because you feel your school is great and that your ds can read properly, that this is how it is for everyone, because it isn't.