Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

Sorry maizied - you know what I mean! Can't help it if I'm not an intellectual

@mathanxiety,

IRISH! Not far off then and you have obviously spent a considerable time in the US!

"I believe that rigid adherence to any one system doesn't serve the best interests of all students, all the time. Maybe most students most of the time, but each individual student goes to school all bright eyed and bushy tailed and it's a huge pity to see them come out of Reception with a poor self image because the expectations placed upon them were not appropriate for them at that age, whereas waiting a year and exposing them to more pre-reading experiences might have made a big difference. Waiting a year isn't going to hurt those who are ready at four either. Hurrying up the exposure to formal teaching of reading just creates unnecessary academic casualties."

I actually have no quarrel with some of what you are saying here. I think we start children at school so early because the teaching of reading has been so appalling for so many years that there has been a tendency to get children there earlier and earlier to gain more time for the attempts to get them reading successfully!

However, so far as the teaching of reading now is concerned, whatever you 'think' the fact remains that children are far more likely to end up failing at reading, and thus with a rock bottom self image, if they are taught with the 'mixed methods' which have been used in the UK for years, sight words and all. I know it is impossible to convince all you determined 'my opinion counts more than the evidence of what actually happens in the classroom' folks, but the best readers I encounter are all able to effortlessly decode and blend and the poorest don't have a clue.

And the children I work with (KS3)nearly all make improvements on an unadulterated diet of synthetic phonics; some spectacularly so.

Once children start being taught the different ways English sounds can be spelt, they are really no longer taught phonics, in the sense of learning the relationships between letters and sounds, which is the normal meaning of the words.

Knowing that the f- sound can be spelt ff, ph and also gh would be of more use if gh always spelt the f-sound. What makes children hesitate over words in reading are the different sounds for identical letters such as ou (count, country, groups) or the ough in ?thought, through...etc.? And it?s not phonics that helps them to read those, but just going over them again, again and again.

And however much SP fanatics may deny it, it is only the abuse of the alphabetic principle in words that are now called ? tricky? that makes learning to read English much slower than all other European languages. The different pronunciations for the following spellings are what makes learning to read English difficult:
a, a-e, ai, al, all, are, au, augh, -ay, b, ch,

e, -e, ea, ear, e-e, ei, eigh, ew, -ey,

ge/i, - gn, h,

i, ie, i-e, mb, mn,

o, -o, oa, o-e, -oe, ol, oo, -oor,

ou, ough, -ought, oul, our, -our, ow,

qua, -se, th, --ture,

u, wa, wh, wo, wor,

y-, -y, --y, y-e.
The above are the main ones, there are also some lesser ones like eo (people, leopard, leotard).
If u are not sure what the different pronunciations for all the spellings listed above are, look at literacyinthenews.blogspot.com/
Some of them occur in far more words, or far more common words, than others.

The main troublemakers are:
a (and - any, apron)
-e (gave - have)
ea (treat ? threat, great),
ei (veil ? ceiling, height),
ie (field ? friend, diet),
o (on ? only, once, other, wolf),
o-e (bone ? done, move, women),
ou (sound ? soup, couple, shoulder, should)
oo (food ? good, blood)
ow (down ? blown)
and
undoubled consonants after short, stressed vowels, (e.g. hideous - cf hidden, hide).

Who said we need a rolly eye emoticon?

^Mashabell Tue 15-Feb-11 07:02:10

Once children start being taught the different ways English sounds can be spelt, they are really no longer taught phonics, in the sense of learning the relationships between letters and sounds, which is the normal meaning of the words.

WHAT!

Masha would you like to visit a reception class to see how it is done?

Isn't it a shame that parents feel they can't ask questions about their child's development at school for fear of being seen as pushy? Schools should be far more open about how they are educating our children. When I used to be a teacher (Reception age) I held evening drop-in sessions (the head teachers idea) where parents could come along and see how literacy and numeracy were being taught - they were always very well attended.

Getting a good education is so important - I'd rather be seen as pushy but feel confident that I know what's going on than not ask a question that's bugging me.

What an interesting thread.... I haven't had chance to read it all... has anyone mentioned Precision Teaching?

mrz, it really is not phonics if there's no constant relationship between the letters and the sounds they make. It is memorisation of the whole word that defies the rules of phonics. If you are teaching the pronunciation of an individual word or a group of three words, you are not teaching phonics, but rather identifying those three words and becoming familiar with them. Phonics is a system that has a general application.

I'd be very interested to know where, or who, your definition of 'phonics' comes from, mathanxiety.

Phonics is the cornerstone of decoding for beginning readers. Recognition by sight happens once the phonics-based decoding stage has been passed. My DCs went from synthetic phonics in Kindergarten to embedded phonics up to age 8, with carefully graduate readers designed to improve decoding skills and relate decoding eventually to context as well as individual sounds. The overall aim was increased fluency. They then branched into formal grammar and reading for comprehension for the next few years. Only when fluency was achieved did their school reading programme tackle the irregular spellings, through various reading and writing exercises and through general reading.

In order to learn decoding skills and consistently decode, letter-sound relationships must be presented in a certain order, with all the many exceptions kept out of reading materials until the basic and regular sound and letter relationships have been mastered. Individual letters are followed by blends. The important thing in systematic phonics instruction is that it not be random; some sort of logic should drive the sequence. The whole point of it is that there is predictability to some sound-letter combinations, some pattern, some rules that apply across the board.

The general rules that govern regular words have to be mastered or internalised before children move on to master the irregularities, and they master the irregularities by sight and not by connecting letters or letter combinations to specific sounds, because the letters and sounds vary in the irregular words from word to word. No systematic application of rules is possible.

When I started school (at five due to September birthday) I had a reading age of 9 or 10. I always did pretty well academically but some of my friends did better and they weren't so advanced for their age in the early years of school or even took a long time to get into reading...so I tend to think while of course it matters that kids learn to read just because they are clever for their age when they are little doesn't mean that others won't catch up later.

mathanxiety I assume you haven't understood what I said ... I do not teach children how to pronounce words so they can memorise whole words ... I teach children how the 44 phonemes of the English language are represented in writing and how the same grapheme can represent more than one phoneme. I teach them to blend the phonemes to read words and how to segment words for spelling.
I teach them to use their knowledge of phonemes and apply it when they are reading and to expect what they read to make sense. Therefore when they encounter words containing graphemes that can represent different phonemes they are equipped to work out for themselves which is correct (so I don't need to tell them how to pronounce the word). Children are not encouraged to sound out the same word on every page but rather to remember what they decoded previously to develop fluency.

Are you not intending to answer my question, mathanxiety?

Where has your definition of phonics come from? At the moment it seems that your understanding of the term and that of SP teachers are completely different. I'd be very interested to know on what authority your understanding is based.

Oh yes you do teach them how to pronounce or read written sounds so that eventually the sounds disappear into the words and they can be retrieved from memory without the need for the various steps of decoding and blending . Nobody goes through life 'sounding out' words, right?

'Children are not encouraged to sound out the same word on every page but rather to remember what they decoded previously to develop fluency.' There, you said it yourself.

Every single definition of phonics I have ever some across emphasises the systematic nature of the approach and the need to introduce sounds/letters in careful order to reinforce the general rules that apply to most letters. My understanding of phonics comes from a psychology background - behaviourism/ constructivism. The most recent books I have read on the subject are 'Understanding Phonics and the Teaching of Reading' by Goouch (phonic that one!) and Lambirth (quite critical of synthetic phonicsa) and 'The Roots of Phonics; a Historical Introduction' by Miriam Balmuth, but that one has more of a US slant.

Just catching up with this thread and, no, Masha, I'm not Debbie Hepplewhite. Just one of hundreds of tutors who read Diane McGuinness WHY CHILDREN CAN'T READ and feel eternally grateful. Look and Say, Whole Language, mixed methods, and a year's part-time dyslexia course still resulted in the bottom 15%-30% failing.
Synthetic Phonics has changed all that. Any 'mix and match' is fatal for struggling children. They need to understand the logic of the alphabetic code and need plenty of appropriate decodable readers to give them the practice they need.

My understanding of phonics comes from a psychology background - behaviourism/ constructivism. whereas my understanding of phonics comes from a linguistic /educational background

There's no real dichotomy. Phonics stems from behaviourism and is based on what (relatively little) we know plus a lot of conjecture about how children learn. (In practice it appeals to or repels people based on factors that are entirely separate from its merits or disadvantages.)

You put it into practice every day. I know the theory behind it, and also that the practice isn't set in stone, that feedback from practice shows above all that each student is different and has a unique style of learning and comes to school with a different set of preschool experiences from the child sitting next to her.

No phonics stems from speach and is based on language.
The central rationale of Linguistic Phonics is that children understand the relationship between their spoken language and the written word.

The initial emphasis is on developing attention and listening skills and oral language. This is followed by a focus on phonological awareness so that children learn how to identify syllables, rhyme and eventually, individual phonemes (sounds) within words. Each phoneme is then matched with its corresponding grapheme. (letter or letter-combination)
All learning takes place within a meaningful context: sounds within words; words within texts. Children are given strategies to help them investigate and problem-solve; challenging them to take responsibility for their own learning. Parallel to the development of decoding skills, is an emphasis on the development of receptive and expressive language so that children are constantly developing their capacity to interpret what they read and to communicate their ideas more effectively.

Stage 1:- One letter one sound (yellow) ? children need to understand that sounds are represented by letters for reading and writing.
Stage 2:- Building Longer words (orange) Children need to understand one letter to one sound correspondence.
Stage 3:- Multi-Syllable words (blue) ? Children need to understand that longer words are made up of blocks of sound (syllables)
Stage 4:- Sounds represented by more than one letter (green) - Children need to understand that a sound may be represented by more than one letter.
Stage 5:- Categorizing Sounds in Single-Syllable words with Orthographic Diversity (red) ? Children need to understand that a sound can be represented in more than one way and that the same letters may represent more than one sound.
Stage 6:- Multi-Syllable Words with Orthographic Diversity (purple) ? Children need to be able to read longer words and to understand the impact of schwas, unusual beginnings (prefixes) and endings (suffixes) often derived from foreign languages such as Latin, Greek and French

Phonics theory draws heavily from behaviourist theory: Skills are broken down into small units (listening skills, phonological awarenmess, individual phonemes, etc.) reinforcement/encouragement/checking is a primary feature of the student-teacher interaction. Even though the children may be challenged to take responsibility for their own learning, this takes place within a framework of feedback from the teacher, and the role of the teacher remains central. Learning is passive insofar as it is the teacher who decides the subject matter of the lesson and how it is to be approached. Students must learn the correct response and learning leads to an external reward. Knowledge is a matter of remembering information. Understanding involves seeing existing patterns. Application requires transfer of training, which requires common elements among problems (the heart of phonics where a system is introduced that allows students to make the necessary links, for instance from cat to flat, sounds within words, words within texts). Teachers must direct the learning process. These are the elements that go into the making of the classroom environment where phonics is taught, the classic behaviourist classroom.

I am a trained teacher, and wholeheartedly believe in phonics, I can't agree though that adults use phonics for reading as experienced readers. The constant exposure through literature enables common words to be embedded in the memory and read automatically. It is only when we encounter a less familiar word we fall back on phonics.

My 5 year old dd is already doing this and she has been taught to read using a phonics based program. For example, tonight, when I asked her to read the words for her spelling which consisted of 'blue' and 'glue', she read glue as "girl", therefore demonstrating that all her phonics knowledge was overridden by her instinct to see the whole word and not automatically sound it out - even though she hasn't been taught a whole word approach. When pointed out that the word wasn't girl she knew the correct phonic sounds and successfully decoded it.

The most recent books I have read on the subject are 'Understanding Phonics and the Teaching of Reading' by Goouch (phonic that one!) and Lambirth (quite critical of synthetic phonicsa)

Goouch and Lambourn really do not have a clue about Synthetic Phonics or how it is taught. Their book is a mish-mash of myth and misconceptions from start to finish. (Yes, I have read it, I own a copy and can only marvel that people can take that sort of thing seriously). I would strongly recommend that you read some Diane McGuinness to restore a bit of balance to your thinking.

You are now taking the argument out of the realms of reality and into arcane debate about constructivism v. behaviourism. You also seem to be coming down very strongly on the 'constructivism = good, behaviourism = bad' side of the debate.

I would point out that the 'behaviourism' involved in the teaching and learning of phonics is concerned with teaching methodology, not the actual body of knowledge which is required to be taught. But of course, the two are deliberately confounded so as to ramp up the synthetic rage and indignation against the dreadful (but very successful) 'Phonics'.

I am sure you take yourself and your theory very seriously but when the debate reaches these 'exalted' levels it just makes me laugh to think that the simple process of teaching children to read can generate so much useless hot air.

It doesn't matter a nick to the children (or most of their parents) how they are taught; what is most important to them is that they learn. If the despised behaviourist classroom does the job, so be it.

I didn't say I took it seriously, just that it is critical of synthetic phonics and that I had read it recently. And I don't despise behaviourism either, just wanted to point out that that it's the theory that lies under what you do every day, since you thought it was something else.

You can't separate out the methodology from the body of knowledge that is to be taught -- phonics is not just about language and is not linguistically based. It's a method of teaching that is arguably appropriate to the way children 'learn', in sections, with skills broken down, with steps.

Phonics teaching is based on behaviourism. 'Whole language' is based on constructivism. Both are concerned with imparting the same body of knowledge. Each approaches is based on a different theory of how children learn.

It matters greatly how the children are taught and what theory of learning is most appropriate to any given group of children. That's the whole point of the huge debate over pedagogy -- when should reading be taught, how should reading be taught are the biggest questions in education. It's not some arcane debate. What you do every day and what the children in your classroom do every day are directly influenced by these theories.

I am very surprised that someone who works in teaching every day does not apparently know much of the theory of learning that underlies her daily work. How children learn is central to what a teacher does.

am very surprised that someone who works in teaching every day does not apparently know much of the theory of learning that underlies her daily work. How children learn is central to what a teacher does

I am amazed that I have the temerity to go into work each day and teach struggling readers how to improve their reading. I am pretty successful at it too, despite being apparently ignorant of the theory which lies beneath. I must have picked it up somehow; perhaps it was by that osmotic immersion process so beloved of constructivist Whole Word teachers.

All teaching methods are based on a theory of how children learn, not on the subject matter itself. How the children learn what they learn allows you to tweak the method for each individual -- the debate is definitely not all hot air, and the result of dismissing another approach might be that individual children develop more slowly than they might otherwise, or not learn to read at all, because mixed methods might have worked, or another entirely might have worked.

The insistence on teaching reading at an age or at a stage when many students may not be ready is an aspect of that debate on how children learn. The British insistence on starting early seems to have nothing at all to do with accepted theories of learning but instead seems to be a cultural quirk of British society.

-- If you are going to poopooh whole language with such forthright derision, you should at least understand where it comes from and what it has to offer given its perspective on how learning is accomplished.