DD's teacher says that "bright" children don't need synthetic phonics instruction.

[Avocadoes]

DD1 started Reception two weeks ago. Last night was parents evening (already!). I asked for advice on how to help DD learn to read. She already knows her individial letter sounds. The teacher just said to read with her for 10 minutes every day. In teh teachers words "She is very bright, she will learn without special instruction".

I was a little surprisied by this advice. I asked if I should concentrate on teaching she the sounds of specific letter combinations like sh, ch, ou etc. The teacher said there was no need to. She said that approach amounted to synthetic phonics instruction and DD1 would not need that kind of "intervention".

Is it true that synthetic phonics is only useful in helping slow readers? I am really interested in how I can help DD1 learn to read and enjoy reading.

Slightly different perspective here - OP, are you sure that the teacher isn't telling you that she doesn't need you to do phonics at home with your DD? I'm assuming they do phonics in class in a systematic way and that you reading with her is a matter of reinforcing what she's doing at school, so obviously it helps if you as the parent understand the method - but possibly leave the actual teaching to the teacher?

FWIW my DDs both went through the phonics system, it worked very well for them in terms of getting them to decode, but they did both make a sudden and inexplicable leap to whole word recognition at age 5 - without any intervention they could suddenly do words like 'friendly', which made no sense in a phonics context. Once this happened, their teachers started working on comprehension rather than on phonics and the only phinics work they did was related to writing, not reading - I definitely agree it helps with spelling.

And DD2 is doung -ough words this week - as a Dutch national this makes me laugh, my sister once told me a (scandinavian)friend of her asked her for directions to 'Sluff'.
Phonic knowledge only takes you so far...

Hulababy I don't know how she worked it out but she was reading fluently before reception (Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton sort of level) she only went to nursery very part time for two terms before doing part time in reception for a term and then one term mostly full time. But she was reading before anybody introduced her to phonics of any sorts. She learnt the alphabet non phonetically long before phonetically as well.Dd has autism though and has a near photographic memory so probably not typical of most children's learning style

Agree that phonics certainly won't do any 'harm'. But also agree that some children are likely to progress swiftly onto word recognition if they're that way inclined. DS1 (3.4) started doing phonics stuff with me (on the recommendation of a primary school teacher I was chatting to - she suggested a couple of resources when I mentioned how much he loved letters and words). He now reads more by whole word recognition, and mostly doesn't 'need' the phonics any more. However, I do find that using word recognition causes him to make more mistakes with new words, because he's now less inclined to break them down (e.g. today he read 'diner' as 'dinner' - unsurprising because he'd never encountered the word 'diner' before - but if he'd approached it phonic-ly he probably could have read it correctly). FWIW, if you're looking for phonics resources to use at home, the one that really got DS into reading was a website called starfall.com (American, so expect the odd accent/spelling difference, but fantastic and fun - it's the one that the primary school teacher recommended. And it takes you all the way from individual letter sounds to complex text.)

If a child is enjoying learning to read and clearly making good progress with it, there is no need to worry about DD or DS not doing much phonics. The final aim of reading instruction is simply to recognise all common English words instantly, like putting names to pictures.
In regularly spelt languages like Finnish, Spanish or Italian, children get to that stage by dint of their own efforts, by learning to decode, fairly slowly to begin with, and then getting faster and faster, until they no longer need to decode.

Because English spelling is very irregular, with identical letters or letter strings often spelling different sounds (shout ? should, shoulder) - children need much more help from adults to reach the stage of fluent reading. ? U can see all the spellings which have different pronunciations at englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html (If the URL does not work, please check that this website has not put some extra spaces in it).
English-speaking children keep needing help with deciphering the words that are not entirely decodable. Having parents listen to them read for about 10 mins a day and helping them to crack the words that they get stuck on is the best way to learn.

For many children, the regular phonic patterns don?t need much teaching. They can mostly work them out for themselves. They even manage to decode many of the trickier words by themselves, with help from the context or pictures, because they start to read for meaning quite early on, like Avocadoes?s DD, I suspect. So the teacher is right about her. She seems to be up and away, as far as reading goes.

Everybody needs and uses phonics for spelling. But although learning basic phonic patterns is essential for spelling, learning to spell English ?correctly? involves much more than just that, because 4 out of every 7 English words contain one or more unpredictable letters: friend, build, touch, through, although.... I have listed the 3700 most often used ones at
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html

Most of the letters in those words obey the basic English spelling rules, e.g. fr ? end. In that sense, English spelling is 80% regular, but the surplus or wrong letters (frIend, prEtty) make learning to spell English much harder than all other European languages too, on top of learning to read being harder as well. None of them pose the reading difficulties of English (and ? any, April, father, swan, swam.... on ? only, once, other, woman, women, wore, work...), and none have quite so many words with irregular spellings.

Please note that both the URLs in my message above have an extra space which stops them working. The first has /2009/12/ changed to /2009/1 2/ and the second /2010/11/ to /2010/1 1/.

Have to say that phonics didn't seem to be a big part of life when our dd learned to read. She learned very quickly so we never had to do that sounding out stuff.

However, they do tons of phonics at school which does help with spelling.

So, the teacher is right in many ways. She is also right about reading to young children.

We've never bothered doing phonic stuff at home because I've never got round to finding out what all the sounds are and I'm all for doing very little school stuff at home. (We read tons of bedtime stories though)

asdx2 - my DD learnt quickly by sight too, before phonics, although did know her letter names and sounds. However we discovered a big difference between her reading ability - a few years above her chronological age - and her spelling age in Y2. After tests she was found to have some dysleixc tendancies, but also her phonics knowledge was lacking at the higher levels. She could read the words but not picture them for spelling purposes. So she's had a year and a bit of weekly sessions to make up the gap and ithas made a massive difference. She still has some difficulties which are linked to dyslexic stuff, but her spelling is now at least chronological age. This is where phonics has been a big help for us.

Dd's spelling is really good not really as a result of her phonics knowledge but more because she finds it very easy to memorise the spelling of words as she reads. She doesn't in fact bring any spellings home or practise them but she memorises them as she copies them down and very rarely gets any wrong when she is tested a week later. Her phonics knowledge is pretty sound and she can use them effectively when faced with a word she hasn't memorised though.
It's funny though because the first time she heard about phonics she came home and said do you know the letter s has another name?

DS is in reception and his school insists (sent us all a letter) that all children must learn phonics.

If a child is enjoying learning to read and clearly making good progress with it, there is no need to worry about doing enough phonics. The final aim of reading instruction is simply to recognise all common English words instantly, like putting names to pictures.

In regularly spelt languages like Finnish, Spanish or Italian, children get to that stage by dint of their own efforts, by learning to decode, fairly slowly to begin with, and then getting faster and faster, until they no longer need to decode.

Because English spelling is very irregular, with identical letters or letter strings often spelling different sounds (shout ? should, shoulder) - children need much more help from adults to reach the stage of fluent reading. ? U can see all the spellings which have different pronunciations at englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html (If the URL does not work, please check that this website has not put some extra spaces in it).

English-speaking children keep needing help with deciphering the words that are not entirely decodable. Having parents listen to them read for about 10 mins a day and helping them to access the words that they get stuck on is the best way to learn.

For many children, the regular phonic patterns don?t need much teaching. They can mostly work them out for themselves. They even manage to decode many of the trickier words by themselves, with help from the context or pictures, because they start to read for meaning quite early on, like Avocadoes?s DD, I suspect. So the teacher is right about her. She seems to be up and away, as far as reading goes.

Everybody needs and uses phonics for spelling. But although learning basic phonic patterns is essential for spelling, learning to spell English ?correctly? involves much more than just that, because 4 out of every 7 English words contain one or more unpredictable letters: frIend, bUild, tOuch, althoUGH, prEtty.... I have listed the 3700 most often used ones at
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html

Most of the letters in those words obey the basic English spelling rules, e.g. fr ? end. In that sense, English spelling is 80% regular, but the surplus or wrong letters (frIend, prEtty) make learning to spell English much harder than all other European languages too, on top of learning to read being harder as well. None of them pose the reading difficulties of English (and ? any, April, father, swan, swam.... on ? only, once, other, woman, women, wore, work...), and none have quite so many words with irregular spellings.

When are you going to start haranguing us about getting English spelling changed completely so it's all phonetically regular? Or have you given up that particular avenue of craziness crusade now?

friend - My DS2 was very annoyed to learn how friend was spelled.

He would not believe that 'ie' could make that sound. And keeps on muttering under his breath 'i that shouldn't be there' every time he has to spell it. :)

At least it follows the quasi-rule of "i before e except after c"...

I think your teacher is rightish. "Bright" is a gross oversimplification, but it was just in conversation.
After all most children did learn to read in the "whole words/real books" years. A significant minority failed appallingly, but those in your daughter's category did just fine.

@Feenie,

mashsa has found a new crusade now. She's joined the anti-phonics brigade and is pursuing us with all the energy and persistence that she formerly devoted to spelling reform.

Fabulous!

If a child is enjoying learning to read and clearly making good progress with it, there is no need to worry about doing enough phonics. The final aim of reading instruction is simply to recognise all common English words instantly, like putting names to pictures.

In regularly spelt languages like Finnish, Spanish or Italian, children get to that stage by dint of their own efforts, by learning to decode, fairly slowly to begin with, and then getting faster and faster, until they no longer need to decode.

Because English spelling is very irregular, with identical letters or letter strings often spelling different sounds (shout ? should, shoulder) - children need much more help from adults to reach the stage of fluent reading.

English-speaking children keep needing help with deciphering the words that are not entirely decodable. Having parents listen to them read for about 10 mins a day and helping them to access the words that they get stuck on is the best way to learn.

For many children, the regular phonic patterns don?t need much teaching. They can mostly work them out for themselves. They even manage to decode many of the trickier words by themselves, with help from the context or pictures, because they start to read for meaning quite early on, like Avocadoes?s DD, I suspect. So the teacher is right about her. She seems to be up and away, as far as reading goes.

Everybody needs and uses phonics for spelling. But although learning basic phonic patterns is essential for spelling, learning to spell English ?correctly? involves much more than just that, because 4 out of every 7 English words contain one or more unpredictable letters: frIend, bUild, tOuch, althoUGH, prEtty.... I have listed the 3700 most often used ones at

Most of the letters in those words obey the basic English spelling rules, e.g. fr ? end. In that sense, English spelling is 80% regular, but the surplus or wrong letters (frIend, prEtty) make learning to spell English much harder than all other European languages too, on top of learning to read being harder as well. None of them pose the reading difficulties of English (and ? any, April, father, swan, swam.... on ? only, once, other, woman, women, wore, work...), and none have quite so many words with irregular spellings.

I had put URLs for my blog which lists all the 69 English spellings which have more than one sound and another which lists all the 3700 common English words with irregular spellings, but some avid supporter of synthetic phonics got it removed because of that. SP evangelists detest me for showing what English spelling is like. If u want to see them, u can google my name (Masha Bell)to find them. The first thing that will come up will be my free website which lists the words too (in a slightly different way) and from there u can get to my blog too.
I could also paste in all the spellings with different sounds here, if anyone is interested.

I admit to being a bit of an evangelist too. I want people to understand what makes learning to read and write English so exceptionally difficult.

"I had put URLs for my blog which lists all the 69 English spellings which have more than one sound and another which lists all the 3700 common English words with irregular spellings, but some avid supporter of synthetic phonics got it removed because of that."

What are you on about?

Thanks, maizie (I think!)

If a child is enjoying learning to read and clearly making good progress with it, there is no need to worry about doing enough phonics. The final aim of reading instruction is simply to recognise all common English words instantly, like putting names to pictures.

In regularly spelt languages like Finnish, Spanish or Italian, children get to that stage by dint of their own efforts, by learning to decode, fairly slowly to begin with, and then getting faster and faster, until they no longer need to decode.

Because English spelling is very irregular, with identical letters or letter strings often spelling different sounds (shout ? should, shoulder) - children need much more help from adults to reach the stage of fluent reading.

English-speaking children keep needing help with deciphering the words that are not entirely decodable. Having parents listen to them read for about 10 mins a day and helping them to access the words that they get stuck on is the best way to learn.

For many children, the regular phonic patterns don?t need much teaching. They can mostly work them out for themselves. They even manage to decode many of the trickier words by themselves, with help from the context or pictures, because they start to read for meaning quite early on, like Avocadoes?s DD, I suspect. So the teacher is right about her. She seems to be up and away, as far as reading goes.

I wanted to know what this particular bit of nonsense meant, Masha, hence the quotation marks - I'm not sure why that got merited a whole post regurgitated back at me!

"I had put URLs for my blog which lists all the 69 English spellings which have more than one sound and another which lists all the 3700 common English words with irregular spellings, but some avid supporter of synthetic phonics got it removed because of that."

Omg!
U must all think I am nuts.

I thought my message had been removed because I could not see it at the bottom of the page.

But I have seen just now that there is a second page, with my message there several times over.

I am very, very sorry and blushing profusely.

Feenie, I admit that I would love to see English spelling made a bit more sensible, but I am far keener on helping people to understand what literacy and teaching problems the inconsistencies of English cause.

Ha, you didn't used to be, you ranted and raved for years about it, so why the dramatic change?

Masha how do you account for all the parents on this forum who will happily tell you they (their child ) had no difficulty?
Strange as you may find it most people manage to learn to read and write English words with little difficulty.

Feenie, helping people to understand how current English spelling conventions impede the learning and teaching of reading writing has always been more important to me. (That's what my first book was all about.)

The mere mention of spelling reform makes many people livid and totally unreasonable, and I see no point in continuing to provoke such reactions. I do now and then again, just to test the water, or if I suddenly get really angry again about the damage that English spelling does. (I know through personal experience that more regular spelling systems make literacy acquisition vastly easier than in English, but I don't think I am a good enough writer to persuade enough other people to help bring about improvements to English spelling.)

But understanding what's difficult about English spelling is, IMO, not only absolutely necessary to bring about any changes to it, but very helpful too, for parents, teachers and for everyone who finds English literacy acquisition difficult. So I have been concentrating just on improving that.

Many of the posts on this website, and the TES one and many others, makes it very clear that there is still a vast amount of confusion about it. This makes it easy for evangelists to manipulate teachers into adopting the latest fad and spending money on new schemes which rarely offer anything really new.