Phonics

[benito]

There was an interesting thread on phonics on here the other day. I then saw this piece on the BBC website and wondered what people thought.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12509477

I absolutely see the importance of phonics but I do have a great deal of sympathy with the view that teaching phonics should not be conflated with the teaching of reading itself.

My 5 year old now attempts to decode every word he sees, even those he knows, and even when he can see from the picture (or would if he lifted his head from pressing his 'magic sounds finger' against every letter/sound) what the word should be.

What are the views of our experts out there?

AdelaofBlois I'm a great believer of "five a day" when it comes to sharing books lots of lovely words to create magic and develop imagination.

evolucy7 I'm not sure what is going on with this child she has only spent 2 days at my school and I have no records from previous schools as I explained earlier. From here behaviour I would guess she has been taught "here" and "saw" as sight words kick was obvious in the illustration (the book is about a football match between ducks and foxes)

evolucy illustrates my point beautifully:

mrz..are you saying that the child read all the other words correctly except 'ducks' and 'ref'? That is quite odd isn't it? To know 'here' and 'kick' for example but not 'duck'. I realise that the words she said didn't even start with the right letter, so obviously she was not really concentrating on the words, and too busy looking at the pictures, but I would have expected a child who could read 'here' to at least say a word that began with 'd'.

Amazing, isn't it, that a child didn't realise that the words didn't start with the right letter. Incomprehensible to all those of you who know how to read, but with mixed methods taught children it happens all the time because they are not rigorously taught to look at the words.

How on earth are they supposed to intuit that the reading process is based on the letters in the words when their lovely teacher is saying 'look at the picture'when they get stuck? I have worked with children whose eyes focus immediately on any pictures in the text, the words are completely secondary in importance. They didn't get like that by accident. They are doing what they have been taught to do. How do I know? I ask them why they are looking at the pictures. They tell me that that is what they have been taught to do when they get stuck. Of course, because they are poor decoders and blenders they get stuck a great deal...

Now and again I will cover up the pictures. The look of panic that crosses some faces is so sad.

Back to mrz and the misreading of ducks for quacks, hippo for ref - clearly the child is not using the first letter of the word and should of corrected herself. She then would of hopefully used her phonic knowledge to sound out the word left to right. That's why I say there is a skill in using illustrations to enhance reading - does it make sense/fit the word? Additionally the illustrations may have enhanced her understanding of what a ref. is.

MazieD - but what happens if they haven't been taught the air phoneme/grapheme should that mean that they shouldn't attempt the word? Personally I haven't seen it too onerous on a child to use what they know to enhance and develop their reading.

'but with mixed methods taught children it happens all the time because they are not rigorously taught to look at the words.' That is incorrect. It is basic.

I know this is a little off topic, but it is relevant because it deals with some of the criticisms of phonics, and relates to MaizieD and mrz's posts.

I agree with MaizieD that the number of readers at all levels who read rubbish is alarmingly high (it is now necessary to teach undergraduates how to read an article rather than just mine it for the bits they think say what they want to say). But one of the problems I'm struggling with is that to me the problem seems conceptual in many ways-there is a simple inability among some readers to understand what has been 'read' doesn't make sense, sometimes grammatically, sometimes contextually.

If MaizieD wants me to start encouraging readers to understand that what they have just said is rubbish, to develop self-checking skills from conceptual understanding-the SVR says they are not reading. SVR, as Rose describes it, allows for no input at all of conceptual understanding on word recognition (this is different from saying it shouldn't be taught-he claims it isn't there except to aid speed), nor any difference in the skills necessary to follow written and unwritten texts except decoding. So there is no point teaching people to try and follow meaning specifically in terms of print-although all their problems seem to be there-or even how books might work (which is irrelevant to reading).

This isn't a phonics problem, indeed the young reader I know who has most problems was not taught using phonics, but it is a real problem with the SVR once when gets beyond very early readers (I'm covering Yr1 at the moment). Basically, we have a model for reading which is supposed to lend coherence, but which seems only to work for those learning to read.

Am baffled, basically.

'The new reading test looks like it will be similar to a Read Write Inc Assessment.'

Ruth Miskin (founder of Read Write Inc.) is on Michael Gove's curriculum committee.

Hi

You are lucky that at least three of our Literacy specialists got into stimulating discussion on your OP!

I think that possibly respondents hadn't commented on the BBC News article as your address for the link hadn't actually translated into a fully-fledged LINK. (I've never even tried LINKs yet, so full marks for effort!)

I used some initiative, opened a second browser, and copied the 'link' into it, and have subsequently read (most) of the article.

The bit about "why doesn't Gove rhyme with Love" might provoke some further discussion.

However, regarding 'made up' words, some books have people's names that are made up, and can be difficult to decode, so perhaps if these tests HAVE to contain such words perhaps they could be disguised as names of People, Aliens, new Planets etc.

+++++++++++

NO! AofB - I don't consider you to be usually wrong!

Ferguson..that's a good idea, non-words as names, would take out the confusion of meaning.

Mr Shahed Ahmed, Elmhurst Primary School, Newham who has bought in the Read Write Inc programme into his school (as quoted on Read Write Inc website) is also on Gove's curriculum committee.

@zebedeee.

So what? Mr Shaheed Ahmed has turned around a failing school in the past, and, with a school with very large intake, does not have children who leave his school unable to read. Here is his submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee in Nov. 2009

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/evchlint/me3602.htm

This guy is doing a fantastic job with a very good programme. I think that the insinuations being made are ridiculous.

Ruth Miskin knows how to teach children to read and has proved it over and over again, not only with her own teaching record, but also with the programme she devised. Is that not an excellent qualification for advising the Minister for Education?

It is a matter of fact that Ruth was consulted by the Labour Govt when they were attempting to improve the teaching of reading in the late 1990s with the 'Literacy Hour'. At that point, they could have had Ruth's programme, or something similar, absolutely free...

Likewise, when Sue Lloyd was getting fantastic results with her phonics programme way back in the late 80s, early 90s, her Local Authority, to whom it was offered, didn't want to know because it went against the prevailing orthodoxy. Jolly Phonics could have been free to schools 20+ years ago...

It was the 'Establishment' which ignored Sue & Ruth's excellent programmes. Nobody made a fuss about the 'mixed methods' advocates having such huge influence then...don't let's have any cr*p about Ruth's influence now...

My ds was 'taught' to read using mixed methods and it was an utter disaster. Oh he'd do his best to guess from whatever clues were available but to him reading was an incomprehensible trial and very painful.

On the other hand he very much enjoyed being read to and looking at the pictures in the lovely collection of picture books that we acquired (not school books because I've yet to met a reading scheme book that was a)interesting and b)well illustrated) and talking about what we saw in the pictures, what we imagined the characters were thinking etc.

When we took him to a synthetic phonics tutor and she explained how reading actually worked and that it was just a matter of learning the rules it was totally transformative.

Learning to read didn't stop him from enjoying the pictures or using his imagination.

Personally I am appalled that synthetic phonics isn't compulsory. ds had three years of confusion and struggle and I had really hoped that if he was learning to read now he wouldn't have to go throguh any of that.

zebedeee I don't know if the child has been taught phonics she had been in my school for a few hours when she "read" the page (it was actually on the computer screen) I mentioned. I don't know how or if she has been taught to read in any of her previous schools. I only know that she looked at the illustration and misread the words. I didn't go into details of my part in the session but since you are interested I asked her to look carefully at the word and not guess, then I helped her sound out the word and we read it together.

That's why I say there is a skill in using illustrations to enhance reading sorry but there is no skill involved in encouraging children to make guesses when we should be showing them how to read words.

Surely decoding is an important skill as it enables children to learn to encode ie spell words they have never yet encountered?

Only saying this as my DD is a whizz speller (out loud) and I can see how she goes about it!

decoding and encoding are important aspects of good phonics teaching children are taught to blend words to read and segment to spell.

On the illustration issue: my DD has been taught to read using phonics in English and in French, in parallel. The French book her school uses is cheap (22 EUR cover the first six months of teaching) and very good, and has complex vocabulary (French doesn't do short words...) and hardly any illustrations. The English books have plenty of lovely coloured illustrations.

I don't think that the illustrations have any impact on her learning to read whatsoever. They had a nasty impact on my bank balance, however.

My own feeling is that illustrations add to the pleasure young children can gain from books but that they aren't really essential in books designed to teach.

One of the early learning goals in EYFS is to know that words carry meaning and yet there are still teachers telling children to use pictures to work out meaning ...strange!

The first books that DD was given to learn to read with had horrible illustrations and as a result she never wanted to look at the books at all! The poor quality of illustrations in many books is a real bugbear of mine.

'we should be showing them how to read words'- totally agree. But in my example re. steps/stairs being both contextually plausible, then the child has to make a decision as to what the word is. They have been taught how to read, how to look at words, that words must match what they are saying, that they are read from left to right etc. But they have not yet been taught the air phoneme/grapheme. Do they go with steps which without the e-p they can see is not right or with stairs which fits the s-t fuzzy bit -s and makes sense. Then they might make a connection with a label they have seen - for classroom chairs or hairdresser shopsign. Or do they stop reading and say they can't read the book because they have not been taught it? That's the bit of sythnthetic phonics that I don't understand, where it is assumed children can't read something because they have not been taught it. As my reception age child has just been poring over his Star Wars book I wrote Darth Vader on a piece of paper and asked him what it said. He answered correctly. I can only assume he made the connection between his, at the mo. limited phonetic knowledge, and the illustrations and also I believe importantly he hadn't been told he couldn't read the book because he hadn't yet been taught how to.

I also agree decoding is also an important skill for encoding. The learning of reading and writing together support and accelerate each other.

MaizieD, sorry, I wasn't insinuating anything, I was just pointing out a connection between the proposed reading test and a couple of members of the committee.

zebedeee,

In the case of a child encountering a grapheme which it has not yet been taught there is still no need to go for a 'guess', informed or otherwise. All that needs to be done is to tell them the 'sound' that the grapheme represents. The child can then blend it in with the graphemes it does know (and if it doesn't 'know' 's' & 't' it has no business to be reading text which contains words which are totally beyond its phonic knowledge). I really fail to understand how people can make such heavy weather of such a simple concept.

If you don't focus consistently on the fact that letters represent sounds, and introduce 'other strategies', children get very muddled about how they are meant to go about the process of reading.

I know this is a ridiculous please, but does anyone else feel that debating the /f/-word here is essentially counter-productive, given the very mixed concerns of those of us writing?

In an earlier post (and message-sorry for not replying) on a similar thread Ferguson made the very valid point that an enormous amount of reading is being done out-of-school, or in school by volunteers or older reading mentors. How that reading is done is of great concern to me-it is obvious that it is being done using 'mix-and-match', picture guessing or even just straightforward 'look-and-learn' telling, despite the now compulsory use of SP in school. It is also apparent to me that it really matters-that those pupils who read frequently seem to do better than those who read infrequently. The evidence-base for this approach is non-existent because the point of weighing methods is to make other things equal-there can be no meaningful study of 'lots of mix-and-match' vs 'less phonics' reading. But for many teachers in schools with reading and engaged parents that is the essential worry and compromise.

In addition there are all the myths floating around and objections-that SP readers should never encounter a non-decodable book, that phonics is all about technicalities (which isn't true-but is also at some level being communicated to kids?) Perhaps it might be better if we adopted the tone of the last exchange between zebedeee and MaizieD and actually thought about the difficulties in this-what might the approach to an unknown word be, how might pictures be used, how much emphasis might be placed on understanding the story arc, and more precisely defining what phonics says about the issue. Whether any MNS will follow what is said I don't know-but it seems such a shame not to use this forum to explain and allow them to choose, rather than simply to bicker amongst ourselves.

Perhaps then this forum could be less a rancorous exchange between (I hope heartfelt rather than trolling) views, and a more a meaningful way of explaining to people how SP works and what would be done in school in a similar situation.

I was trying to do this earlier-to show the OP how pictures might be used but not to guess-but then got lost in SVR. Apologies both for that and for the pompous nature of this post.

As there are a few experts here can I ask a question please? The tutoring that ds got for reading made a huge difference, and he has gone from hating reading to loving it. But he still struggles to write. Partly because his fine motor co-ordination isn't great, but I was wondering from what someone said earlier if he has learned about decoding but not perhaps encoding? We are being encouraged to move him to typing but are there things we can do to help him to think through how to 'write words right' (I don't really mean spelling because it feels a bit broader than that and he is fine for memorising and taking tests, just not free form writing). He's 11 now so I doubt these skills are taught at school any more.

decoding and encoding should be taught together use magnetic letters get him to read the word then separate the sounds to show the spelling working his way through the word.

He would probably benefit from some exercises to improve his fine motor skills and strengthen his muscles for writing. Silly as it sounds he needs strong shoulder muscles as well as wrist and finger strength. Monkey bars wheelbarrow walking are good, Check if he can make windmills with his arms outstretched (forwards and backwards)

A lot of spelling is 'remembered' through kinaesthetic memory; the unique 'feel' of the word when written. This must be more difficult to establish with a key board. I think there are pros and cons.

mrz suggests some exercises. I suggest a book called 'Speed Up' by Lois Addy (I'm sure you'll find it on Amazon) - it is a series of tasks/exercises designed to strengthen the writing muscles and improve handwriting. It is very often recommended by SENCos. Even if it doesn't have an earth shattering effect, the exercises are fun!