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.

The point that "some states have an admission age of four years" is simply not true, Mrz. Please read my links. No states have 'an admission age' of four years. No states mandate school attendance at 4. None. Many children attend private preschools that their parents choose and pay for, but nowhere is it mandated.

'The education of 4-year-old children in our public schools has gone through many changes.' -- OK it was a quote you posted, but it indicates you believe there has been some effort historically to educate 4 year olds. My reference to the Watertown Kindergarten came from later in the page where I found your quote.

Here's what is being missed (despite links to many studies):
Children need exposure to a wide and varied vocabulary in order to learn to read initially and also in order to continue developing higher level reading skills throughout school. Teaching disadvantaged inner city children decoding at age 4 is not going to change their long term educational outcomes (even the maligned Project Follow through showed this). Spending a few more years exposing them to as wide and rich a vocabulary as possible is going to help in the short term (for phonological and phonemic awareness which are vital to learning to read) and in the long term (for that vocabulary foundation that will help them keep up throughout school).

The point about having some children excluded from an early learning environment (specifically, disadvantaged children) does not relate to teaching them phonics at age 4. The early learning environment is supposed to afford disadvantaged children a chance to catch up with their peers in the ares of language, in terms of their exposure to variety and quantity of vocabulary. The typical preschool curriculum in the US (though there is great variety) tends to be focused on social and emotional development and exposure to vocabulary through stories and rhymes, and early/foundational maths manipulatives like blocks, shapes.

Allchildrenreading I think phonics is a great way to teach reading in English, for most children I am not an advocate of pure osmosis as a learning strategy; but doing it at 4 for all children -- why?

Mrz -- Surely if you give the advantaged children a tool to build on their adequate foundation and thus get even further ahead of the disadvantaged, the gap in achievement will not only remain but will be there from an earlier age. Children who have disabilities such as various forms of dyslexia will still not be helped, as approaches such as phonics do not really help them. If helping the disadvantaged is important, then the approach should be to build a better foundation for them not to drop them in at the deep end with phonics and assume since they may catch on they will be fine down the years.

What 'parental income level' means in the US (in terms of a school achievement test) is exposure to language (see my links on disparity of exposure and the direct link to disparity of educational outcome) and often to participation in activities that promote emotional resilience such as organised team sports for the very young, like T-ball. Generally speaking, youngsters from disadvantaged areas do not participate in this kind of sport whereas middle class children do in droves, wearing uniforms, supported and cheered on by parents, coached by parents...

What 'parental income level' means in the US (in terms of a school achievement test) is exposure to language
that is interesting because in the UK it is recognised that children from high income families can be language deprived because they have spent long hours in a variety of child care situations - au pairs with poor English ... nursery assistants ...nannies. Sadly some children no matter their background are not spoken to enough.

Mrz - yes, language exposure is not dependent on parental income level. I have seen parents from 'lower income status' spend more time engaging with their children than the middle class families who put them in childcare from a very early age. And your lessons sound really interesting! I don't know what goes on at my daughter's school and would like to but the teachers don't see the need. So that's that really. I feel a year and a half has gone by without knowing what she's learnt and whether she's enjoying it. She doesn't run into school or come out full of enthusiasm about her day. I thought that education was about inspiring children and giving them the desire to learn. Not seeing it yet but perhaps it's too early to judge. What do you think?

Mrz - where do you live? Perhaps all us mums on this thread should meet up

I'm in the North East
did you look at the link to my neighbouring school?

I had a sign over my door when I taught reception it said

Beware free range children!
(for as such, they will become the captive lifelong learners we so desire)

"Children who have disabilities such as various forms of dyslexia will still not be helped, as approaches such as phonics do not really help them."

Really, none of them? Dyslexia Action recommend programmes of individual, daily, quality phonics teaching, and I've seen it work many, many times.

Mathaxiety,

You selectively quote from the evidence based research that informs us that synthetic phonics 'first and fast' is the most effective way to teach reading to all children in your attempts to discredit it, yet you provide no evidence that teaching phonics to 4 year olds is harmful.

Why are 4 year olds are harmed by learning phonics, yet 7 year olds are not?

Do their brains break from learning sound/letter correspondences? Where is your evidence?

"Knowledge of letters of the alphabet on entry into kindergarten is a very powerful predictor of reading success at the end of tenth grade. ..."

Children who are failing at reading at the end of the first grade are extremely likely to be failing at reading at the end of fourth grade.

And failure in reading strongly predicts failure in all other academic subjects. So, a child who is not breaking the code well, who has not figured it out, who is falling behind, is a child whose academic life course is at risk and because of that whose life is at risk because the economic opportunities of life.

Dr. Grover Whitehurst
Assistant Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of Education (2002-2008)

Here's what is being missed (despite links to many studies):
Children need exposure to a wide and varied vocabulary in order to learn to read initially and also in order to continue developing higher level reading skills throughout school.

mathanxiety

I seem to have missed the links you gave to theses studies. Can you post them again?

I'm finding this a difficult 'finding' to believe in because, according to Stanovich, research into vocaulary sources shows that it is written media which contains a richer, more varied range of vocabulary,than any other. Vocabulary, in fact, that one is likely to hear spoken only rarely. That it is reading which is the very best way of extending and enriching vocabulary.

While I most definitely agree on the importance of speaking and listening at all stages of education, it seems to me that enabling disadvantaged children to access the richest source of new vocabulary, as soon as they possibly can, can only be a Good Thing. I do not believe that any Nursery or Reception staff can, in the few hours each day that they are in contact with their pupils, compensate sufficiently for the language poverty that the children might experience at home.

Dolfrog,

The problem is that we have a large percentage of children who are struggling to learn to read because they are not being taught effectively.

A small percentage of those children may also have discrete learning difficulties (dyslexia, auditory processing ect). The problem is that there is no object test that can conclusively identify those children who have discrete learning difficulties from those children who are instructional casualties.

If all children received effective instruction, which includes frequent monitoring of progress, then children with discrete LD's will be identfied sooner rather than later.

Even after identifing discrete LD's, these children still need to learn the English Alphabetic Code in order to master reading. Therefore, regardless of their LD's, they still need phonics.

Since children with discrete LD's will take longer and need more practice to learn phonics, it is better to start earlier rather than later.

By starting explicit instruction in synthetic phonics at the earliest possible time, children with discrete LD's will be identified sooner and will have more time to practice.

These children should be given more not less, more phonics, more explicit instruction, more time.

However, from what I understand from your posts, you believe that teaching phonics to young children is somehow harmful.

I think you have the problme by the wrong end and have the wrong solution.

The best solution we currently have is what is referred to in the Rose Review as the '3-tiered' response and what is known in the US as Response to Intervention. Put simply;

1. All children receive evidence based instruction.

1. Monitor progress frequently.

1. Children who do not make adequate progress receive more intensive evidence based instruction.

In general socio-economic status is the divider between low and high vocabulary scores. Of course there are exceptions, but they tend to prove the rule.

Phonics doesn't help a lot of dyslexics. I know Neville Brown (Maple Hayes school) is something of a maverick but his system has attracted attention. It bypasses the phonemic element of reading or at least provides a crutch with which to scale it. Lindsey Peer's work on glue ear and dyslexia highlights the importance of the aural faculty in speed of processing, working memory and concentration. Working memory deficiencies are responsible for slow reading and result in extensive re-reading in order to comprehend what is being read. Phonological core difficulties make learning by phonics difficult for many with dyslexia. The style of the initial part of this link on dyslexia made me go , but the Oxford paper on various issues that can be found underlying dyslexia that is included (print rather small, sorry for the irony) outlines approaches based on tackling or working around the underlying problems whether aural or visual, (and also discusses dietary suggestions which are controversial) instead of bombarding dyslexic children willy-nilly with phonics. The author states that 'concentrating on these children?s weaknesses by bludgeoning them with phonics training does not seem to help them much.' (i.e. children with phonological deficiencies associated with dyslexia).

Correction to my previous post:

There are no objective tests that can identify discrete learning difficulties.

Oh dear Lord. Please spare us all the wacky 'dyslexia' theorists.

You are referring to Ymeyer's posts, right? {mischievous]

Seriously, you think John Stein is a wacky dyslexia theorist?

Phonics doesn't help a lot of dyslexics said mathanxiety.
I'm just wondering what I should call what I do with the dyslexics I teach year in, year out! -children referred to me as dyslexics, with lengthy and expensive reports from educational psychologists, optometrists, audiologists , kinesiologists.

Again, Malaleuca, what is the research showing that universal attempts to teach all 4 year olds phonics/ reading is advisable? Why Reception? (The importance of a wide vocabulary reveals itself later in the educational process when children can perhaps decode, but cannot comprehend what they are decoding owing to vocabulary and other deficits.

You are the one claiming that the use of synthetic phonics for beginning reading instruction with YR is harmful. Perhaps you need to verify your claims. The tenor of your statements throughout this thread is that adult direction is not beneficial to small children in YR. I simply disagree with you, and the many examples provided by mrz of typical early childhood practice have not modified your opinion.
It has been pointed out to you that oral language is a high priority in pre-school education, but that the bulk of vocabulary and language development comes from the material that students read, and for this they need to decode ? it doesn?t ?reveal itself? it is acquired through reading and the educational program children are experiencing.

maizieD - I understand the point you are making about written media versus everyday language (much of which is made up of basic utterances), and the inherent richness of language of much written media.

But children do not need to know how to read themselves in order to access the richer language of written media - adults can read to them (from multiple sources), and they can watch high-quality visual media where language has been reworked.

Phonics doesn't help a lot of dyslexics said mathanxiety.

So all the thousands of children referred to SP tutors/teachers - with Ed Psch reports, IEPs, medical reports, and with a 'dyslexia' diagnosis, should have learned to read by other means? Your evidence?

Mathanxiety

1. Let us into your secret and direct us to schools teaching virtually all dyslexic children how to read in a phonics-free zone. And please could you limit your answer to children from disadvantaged areas and/or backgrounds, and children in the UK.

The dyslexic school with by far the best results is one in Surrey which uses a systematic phonics programme with their children - all their teachers are trained to teach the Alphabetic Code. Carefully structured teaching of decoding and encoding skills form the basis of their success. (However, this is a fee-paying school and I am particularly interested in how to help disadvantaged struggling readers with an orthography as opaque as ours is).

1b. So you think the conclusions of the House of Commons Select Committee, Evidence Check 1 (December 2009) is a load of cobblers?

1. Also perhaps you could tell us how schools in low SES areas enable all their children to read with synthetic phonics teaching.

1. I would be interested in hearing your response to Malaleuca's comments.

$. I would also like you to seriously state why you think that Msz's descriptions of the Reception Year approach in her school is harmful to little children.

Mrz - I am in London but perhaps meet up in the middle somewhere? I looked at the neighbouring school and it looked very well run and the activities seemed very inspired. What I want is some of your lot to come to our school to swap expertise!

Allchildrenreading - basically why are most other children in the world taught reading at 6 or 7 - are we right and everyone else wrong? There is evidence to say that the brain is not ready until 6/7 but I will get access to this and send it to you. The point is the early years shouldn't be about reading texts and writing sentences but focusing on the skills needed to become successful at school.

magdalene - it may take up to two years longer to teach a language with an opaque orthography like English than it does to teach a transparent orthography.
In many languages you learn that 'a' represents one sound only /a/. In English 'a' represents at least 8 different sounds. If you start the process carefully and avoid the muddling (for some) mixed methods, then there are massive advantages of starting young.
It sounds as if you may have hit upon a dull/prescriptive/target-obsessed school or that your daughter has got a teacher lacking in empathy. Perhaps you should think of changing the school? If you're in London, presumably there's a huge choice.
Good luck.

Very hard to change schools as there are very long waiting lists. My DD only talks about her friends and we have no idea what she's learning. She seems happy enough but the enthusiasm is lacking and it feels like some of the teachers are 'set in their ways'. I don't know how target-obsessed it is but as it's an improving school with a fairly new Head, I assume she's trying to do a lot to raise the results (shall I send you them? Don't know how to look at Key Stage 2 results. Other parents say it has a 'mixed intake' as if that's an excuse for low standards!!).
Interesting that in other english speaking countries, they start to read later ie: Canada and Australia. Also google 'Children are not helped by reading too early by Bethan MArshall. She is not an expert but I thought she expressed a good point of view.

I am puzzled by the implication in your suggestion (in your demand for UK sources) that somehow dyslexia is different in the US or other English-speaking countries from the brands found in the UK? I found a reference to this study (shock, horror, it's an American study) on a UK website. Here's a quote:
'Well controlled studies involving random assignment to treatment and control groups consistently show that instruction yields substantial improvement in reading accuracy for many, but not all, children if instruction is more intensive (for instance, 100min per day for 8 weeks), occurs in small groups (1 or 2 students per teacher), and includes explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and decoding strategies (although the proportion of such instruction relative to reading meaningful text can vary widely with similar success). Gains are maintained for at least a year or two by ~50% of children after they return to the school?s standard curriculum. Those children who retain their benefits improve from year to year, but they do not further catch up to typical readers. Such improvements are much more likely to occur in children who are beginning to read (ages 6 to 8) than in older children and are much more difficult to achieve for fluency than for accuracy. Thus, these resource-demanding interventions are effective for many children, but there are still challenges in developing interventions that are effective for all children.'

Fluency remains elusive despite intensive SP instruction. Gains are partial and not to the extent that dyslexic children catch up with and maintain parity with other readers. Which begs the comment -- if dyslexic children are still behind and comprehension and fluency are still lagging, then the teaching of decoding cannot really be judged a complete success even for those who do benefit in terms of accuracy.

and further on:
'Neuroimaging studies have not yet revealed what is different in the brains of children who do or do not respond to an intervention or sustain the benefits of intervention. It would be especially useful if neuroimaging markers were identified that could predict, before a specific intervention is provided, which children would benefit from a treatment, so that a given child could be offered an intervention most likely to help that child.'

Throwing phonics at dyslexic children is done in the hope that some of it will stick, but it seems to be a hit or miss proposition.

I'm also puzzled by the implied insistence throughout the thread that the UK can't learn anything useful from practices in early childhood education in other English-speaking countries. Allchildrenreading -- the idea that it may take more time to teach children English reading is contradicted by the experience of the US, where children mostly learn by direct instruction methods in 1st Grade (age 6-7) and results are about the same as far as general literacy goes and in both cases the difference in progress among those who possess a wide vocabulary and those who do not become painfully obvious at around age 8/9. Maybe it takes longer in the UK (not Wales) because it starts at an age when it shouldn't, when the children are too young? Are you seriously proposing that the UK is right and everyone else is wrong as Magdalene asks? The UK has embarked on an experiment with 4 year olds despite the practices in other countries.

My statement 'Phonics doesn't help a lot of dyslexic children to read' doesn't mean 'Phonics doesn't help any dyslexic children to read', and 'a lot' doesn't mean 'virtually all' either. Please don't put words in my mouth. 'Phonics doesn't help a lot of dyslexic children to read' implies it does help many. I have not claimed it helps no-one, or doesn't help the majority. Dyslexia comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and it can overlap other disabilities such as dyspraxia and ADD. A one size fits all approach with phonics couldn't possibly work equally well with every single child diagnosed with dyslexia in its various manifestations.

'Adult direction' doesn't equal explicit phonics instruction and only explicit phonics instruction of the SP variety. Singing songs, reading stories and rhymes aloud, general development of phonemic awareness and other pre-reading activities can be adult-directed and are perfectly appropriate for 4 year olds. Synthetic phonics -- not necessarily.

'It has been pointed out to you that oral language is a high priority in pre-school education, but that the bulk of vocabulary and language development comes from the material that students read, and for this they need to decode ? it doesn?t ?reveal itself? it is acquired through reading and the educational program children are experiencing.' Malaleuca I completely disagree with you that the bulk of language and vocab development comes from what the children read and that therefore they need to learn to decode. They learn language by hearing it spoken it is how they learned to speak after all. The bulk of language is learned orally, from birth on; we are uniquely wired to learn language by hearing, and to speak. The massive difference between the vocab of advantaged and disadvantaged children is due to what these children have heard, not read, from birth on. Language and vocabulary absolutely do 'reveal' themselves. And they does so orally. Yes, you can learn by reading, but until reading is fluent, the primary method of amassing language and vocab is through hearing.

MaizieD, I will look through my posts for the links on language/ vocabulary. But again as I said above and as Bonsoir pointed out, you can hear language that is read aloud from a book and absorb it. It doesn't have to be included in normal speech. Anecdotal here, but the DCs had a lot of Beatrix Potter read to them and they all figured out what the word 'soporific' meant (and so did I, since I was the reader ) after hearing the sentence "It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific..." many a time. Much repetition of the material is necessary in order for it to sink in. (Hence the soporific element for me, but the DCs hung onto every word and asked for more).

Many of the adults I see in the adult literacy programme I am involved in have successfully faked their way through life just relying on their ability to learn by hearing. A lot are employed, some are parents who have managed to supervise and help with their children's homework for years, and have amassed large vocabularies despite their illiteracy or very poor literacy.

Please reread that H of C Select Committee Evidence Check 1 yourself again, Allchildrenreading. It does not bolster your point (or any point anyone is making about 4 year old phonics instruction) and it admits that there is plenty that is simply not known about later interventions for poor readers (which the report is about) or their effectiveness: "We have already discussed what evidence we were looking for in dealing with this problem: randomised controlled trials that use standardised test scores. We were alarmed to discover that both are lacking in the UK literacy research base." The following comment merited bolding in the report: "We are concerned by the low quality of data collection in UK trials on literacy interventions. Government-funded trials should seek the best data so as to make the results as powerful as possible. Running trials that do not collect the best data is a failure both in terms of the methodological approach, but also value for money." (Or are we reading the same report? www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/44/4402.htm)

Back to the importance of the age when children attend kindergarten in the US as it relates to research -- even researchers in the US (US research is cited in the H of C report) who are enthusiastic about SP do not have figures related to SP and 4 year olds because 4 year olds do not necessarily receive any exposure to any kind of phonics instruction there. I am not sure if the difference in age at initial exposure to systematic phonics instructions is clearly understood by the House of Commons either. And perhaps not by the author of the Rose Report, where a number of US studies were cited as evidence that SP should be taught to 4 year olds.

How many dyslexic children have you taught to read? Serious question

"'Adult direction' doesn't equal explicit phonics instruction and only explicit phonics instruction of the SP variety. Singing songs, reading stories and rhymes aloud, general development of phonemic awareness and other pre-reading activities can be adult-directed and are perfectly appropriate for 4 year olds. Synthetic phonics -- not necessarily."

This is a very annoying statement, mathanxiety. How many times have you been told on this thread that "Singing songs, reading stories and rhymes aloud, general development of phonemic awareness and other pre-reading activities are perfectly appropriate for 4 year olds" are exactly how phonics are bloody taught in Early Years?

Feenie, you can tell me til you're blue in the face, but it is not true. Phonics involves instruction in letter-sound correspondence, which involves showing the letters and making the sounds that correspond. I sang and read and spoke to all my DCs from birth onwards and I suppose in general developed their phonemic awareness, and then pointed out things we saw, named them, named colours, named feelings, named sensations, etc., as they grew and they became more verbal.

Is every single exposure to speech from birth onwards therefore explicit phonics teaching? No, of course it isn't. Explicit phonics instruction involves showing the letters and making the sounds, as you well know. The sort of pre-reading activities I mentioned could equally be followed by some whole language approach to teaching reading. In the case of my DCs they read after 3 - 4.5 years of the phonological diet I fed them without ever being exposed to classroom phonics.

Mrz, I have never taught a dyslexic child to read, though DD3 does exhibit atypical verbal processing; since she learned to read without any systematic efforts on my part I can't claim to have taught her. Some of the adults I have taught to read in the programme I am involved in are highly likely to be dyslexic. (Some are just victims of exceptionally horrible childhoods and disruption of schooling.) If your point is that someone who hasn't ever taught a dyslexic child to read doesn't know what she is talking about, then I suspect a lot of researchers would fall into that category.

"Feenie, you can tell me til you're blue in the face, but it is not true. "

But it is true in my school, mrz's school, and most schools around the country. We teach phonics using games, songs, actions, etc.

I get the impression that most posters can say most things on this thread about teaching children to read - having actually done so for many years - until they are blue in the face, and you still won't listen, because (somehow) you know better.