julietnetmum - no, I didn't see your post, sorry. I have only just popped back on here in the light of the patest news and wondered if people were chatting about it!
Not much advice, really... if you visit the syntheticphonics.com message board or the Reading Reform Foundation messageboard I know there have been similar discussions.
To be honest, you have probably got to roll with it, or refuse to read the ORT books, or go in for a chat to discuss it and see what they have to say.
Hallgerda's comment "But I do have a problem with the exclusive use of a single technique which takes a "walled garden" approach. For one thing, I believe other techniques are also valid, may help some children, and would have to be introduced at a later stage in any case. For another, use of a single technique could damage parents' confidence in their abilities to teach their own children without recourse to expensive resources. Catflap's Stalinist line also makes me wonder whether we will see a return to the days when schools actively discouraged parents from teaching their own children, or tried to stipulate how we should do so."
- so many people have a 'problem' with a single approach, but why?? There is not this discussion with any other subject area! There are many ways to aproach a subject within the same knowledge base, but everyone is just allowed to get on with that. There is pretty much only one way to teach children to read music, to read maps, to colour mix etc etc - they need to know what the musical symbols stand for, they need to know the map codes and they need to know what colours mixed with ther colours make different colours.
Well, there is only one way to teach children to read - to interpret and blend the letetr sequences. You can do this a few ways, but it is that which enables them to read. If this is not taught, then children who read anyway are figuring the phonics out for themselves but in a haphazard and by chance kind of way. Or they are not figuring it out at all.
Other techniques are not valid - it has been proved. Children do still learn to read, but it is usualy despite these methods, but because some children are able enough to do it anyway, we think these methods are valid. They are not. I have read the evidence but also seen it in my own classrooms when I analysed my own practice years ago.
About damaging parents' confidence - I actually find in reading of boards like this and chatting to parents that they generally know more than the teachers do. One parent on another board I used commented on a similar thread "I don't know if I am being really stupid, but what OTHER way is there to learn to read other than by learning how letters and groups of letters sound? Its how I learned to read a million or so years ago, its how I'm teaching my little boy. I was suprised to see that its being heralded as a new way!"
However, parents who do struggle are also a product of inefective teaching, as in, they don't have all this knowledge either, unless they have worked it out themselves. However, hopefully, the next generation of parents will be a lot more knowledgeable.
My Stalinist line?? I always wonder why people are so against my views. I only want all chidlren to be able to learn to read because I am so saddened by being in a profession where children suffer terrible low self-esteem because they fail at something it is our responsibility to teach. What is wrong with that? Does that make me a bad person and a terrible teacher??
And I don't think it is moving toward the things stated at all - who on earth could tell parents what to do at home, especially when, as I have said, most are doing a better job than the teachers anyway...
homemama - this is very exciting; I would love to hear all about the methods your school used - what scheme/resources did they follow and use? Was it really taught exclusively without any other decoding strategies?
yes I don't doubt that for a couple of children it didn't work - but could they really read nothing ??
I think that it is a magic cure in that it is going to help a load more children read than would succeed under current methods, and that has to be a good thing, surely. I don't think we'll ever get to the stage when we can sit back and sigh happily that every child has been educated to perfection. But, if the NLS currently has about 75% success rate in teaching reading and SP has 99%, I know which one warrants the support.
titchy - "How do you teach a child to deal with cough, bough, though, through, trough etc." well, pretty much as you have laid out here - words do fit into groups where there are other words with the same sound/spelling pattern, so they are taught together. Word lists of the same sound/spelling pattern are displayed for reference. Children learn which words fit into which patterns.
yes it is complicated, but so is our language. Teaching SP simplifies it as much as possible by providing a consistent method with little guessing or randomness. There might be lots of rules, but without them, there are even more things to remember. Remembering words by their whole shape multiplies the things to be remembered by hundreds. Guessing enables little to be remembered, especially of your guesses are wrong.
The thing is, our language just does represent our spoken sounds with letters. This is how it is constructed. It was created that way, hundrends of years ago. It happens in every word. Sure some are a bit more tricky than others, but why teach anything else than how to interpret those sounds and letters?
You drive a car by understanding what the pedals, gears and steering wheel do and how to do it all at appropriate times. Why teach anything else when that is how it works? The same can be said of playing a musical instrument, or reading a map, or all the other subject areas. I am always mystified why people think that reading can somhow be done differently.
And errmmm yes, the 'a' for 'o' thing does still stand in most words. Yes, there are always exceptions - you are being a bit pedantic. And I'm sure you'd be pleased to know I didn't teach my kids the word w*nker.