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?

Write from the Start by the same author is also very good

I agree with what mrz says. Additionally when he wants to write a word say 'sheep', you could try placing a rough piece of paper above his 'neat' work. On it draw an Elkonin sound box - essentially a rectangle that will fit his writing of the word sheep in. Then divide the box into three as you (and he) slowly sound out the word, indicating that sh goes in the first, ee in the second then p in the third. Make a mark to show how many letters in each grapheme. Then ask him to fill in the box, help him as needed. As he gets more familiar with the exercise you can provide less support, and ultimately he will be able to sound out the word slowly himself and write it without the support of the boxes. Also he may come up with ea as possible ee sound. Write out both ways. What would he expect to see in a book/what looks right? This sounds more laboured than it is. Then he can rewrite without the box in his neat copy.

Also check his letter formation - make sure he is writing his letters correctly. Make a game of writing letters and words fast (and neat). Writing (and reading) becomes more of an effort if it lacks pace.

I agree Adela, people are obv. passionate about what works for them. Discussion rather than sniping is a good thing. The ultimate goal is the same.

Interesting re computers and spelling

maizieD sorry to perhaps seeming to go over the same ground, just want to get it clear in my head. Are you saying that children should read what they have only been taught to read? If I was sitting with a child who at first said step, correctly changed it to chair (as I would expect, because they have been taught strategies to do this self-correcting) but knowing they had not yet been taught the air grapheme, when they had finished the story I would go back and remark on it, ask them to sound it out, get them to point to the air grapheme, see if we can come up with any other words - but I would also hope they could make these connections for themselves -a self-extending system as it were. Empowering them to develop their reading, rather than saying they have not been taught it so therefore they can't read it (when clearly they can).

Thanks for the advice re books. I'll check them out. His letter formation is poor and not improving. Thing is though he is 11 now and most of the exercises I've seen are aimed at much much younger children (as they should be) I'm not sure how responsive he'd be to going back to the basics (although I suspect that's what he needs).

I agree that the biggest issue is that his writing is very slow (whereas his mind goes at high speed). The result is that he writes the minimum possible and then is sad about his low grades.

Anyway, sorry for the hijack and thanks for the advice.

but knowing they had not yet been taught the air grapheme, when they had finished the story I would go back and remark on it, ask them to sound it out, get them to point to the air grapheme, see if we can come up with any other words

I would point it out either before we began if it was a reading scheme book or while reading if it was a story ...just something like "oh this is a new one do you know this sound? It says /air/ lets work out the word." Most of the reading schemes list the new phonemes being introduced in each book.

nooka - My OT told us that by Y5 / Y6 it's pretty much too late to correct poor handwriting, and we should concentrate on teaching DS to touch type instead.

If your DSs handwriting is very slow he should be allowed to type in class.

(Although we're having 'one last go' to try and get DS to improve his handwriting before giving up.....)

Speed Up might help at age 11 - but I'd be very surprised if Write from the Start did.

I know it is commonly accepted that poor handwriting can't be changed at this age but we somehow manage with children entering Y5 and we even have a little boy whose OT said would never manage producing beautiful work.

mrz - great to hear that.

DS is going to be starting 'Speed Up' at school as soon as his behaviour settles down......

We have been doing lots and lots of OT with him at home to improve his shoulder strength and core stability ( but not as much as we should to improve his hand grip )

He is half way through a retained reflexes program which has improved all of him dramatically.

We are not actually doing any handwriting practice with him, although school are (to no effect at all)

Do you have any other suggestions for what me or school should be doing with him?

He can actually do neat work in his handwriting book - but he can't or refuses to do it neatly anywhere else.......

zebedee;

Are you saying that children should read what they have only been taught to read?

I suspect that you are putting a completely different interpretation on this, the very wording of your question does not at all reflect what I actually said.

I think you are coming from a 'whole word' angle where children 'learn' each individual word. Whereas Synthetic Phonics does not put any emphasis at all on learning whole words.

SP takes a step further back; it teaches children to identify the 44(ish) phonemes of which English words are comprised, at the same time teaching them how each of these phonemes is represented by a letter or group of letters. As the children learn the letter/sound correspondences they learn how to use their knowledge to deconstruct the witten word into its component 'sounds', then how to blend those sounds together to produce a 'spoken' word (aloud or silently). This entirely does away with any need to 'learn words' as, once the child has learned sufficient letter/sound correspondences (about 160 -180 common ones), they are able to work out what the great majority of words 'say'.

In the initial stages, while the child is accumulating the letter/sound knowledge they are given books to read which contain only the correspondences they have learned. This ensures that they are able to practice independently and with confidence, and, that they do not become completely discouraged by encountering words which they have no chance of being able to work out for themselves.

Thus my comment that, if a child who was stuck on the word 'stair' not only didn't know the 'air' grapheme, but also didn't know what phonemes the 't' and the 's'represented, they should not have been given that book to read in the first place. Not because they didn't 'know' the word, but because they had not been given the tools with which to work out what it 'said'.

To me, and I find it really difficult to understand why it is not blindingly obvious to everyone, the greatest strength of SP is that gives a child independence right from the start. Once the first 6 correspondences are mastered (usually s,a,t,p,i,n)there are over 100 words which a child can work out/read completely independently. The number of words which they can read independently increases spectacularly as they learn more correspondences. (It would be very interesting if some geek were to work out how many words each new correspondence adds )

Whereas with 'look & say' the child's reading vocabulary is restricted to a very few repeated words (someone on another thread recently noted that their dc had brought home a book which only contained the word 'look')in the hope that they will 'learn' them, and they have to be told what the words say before they can start to 'learn' them. When they encounter new words they are dependent for a very long time (if not for ever) on someone telling them what the word 'says'.

(The matter of 'meaning' belongs to a different post!)

Our wonderful Y5 teacher does daily handwriting instruction/exercises and expects to see the same standard in writing books as handwriting books and children just seem to rise to the expectation. Visiting staff from other schools always comment on the quality of the work produced. The child I mentioned has ASD and hypermobility (and lots of other issues)and has struggled with fine motor skills. The school bought him a laptop for personal use and to allow him to produce enough work to mark ... we've tried different writing implements and he's had continuous OT but it all seems to be coming together for him finally. Must add lots of support from home Dad has worked hard with handwriting as parents wanted him to write not type for everything.

I take my hat off to you all as I am lost!

Yes, I think the next step is for school to expect him to do neater work.....

You've given me hope that if we keep on doing everything we're doing we'll crack it too.

DS also has ASD and dyspraxia, and can't really accept any criticism at all, but if school do tell him his work is too messy, and accept the resulting melt downs, maybe they will be able to make a breakthrough.....

We let him do most of his homework on the computer. But it might be time to also get tougher on him at home.....

I think it's perhaps down to judging how much he needs to write and if it's fairly short expect neat handwritten work and if it's a longer piece accept it done on the computer. with a gradual build up of expected amount

Ahhh, that makes more sense.

He won't use a computer at school because he doesn't want 'to be different'. (And consequently he does almost no work at school :( )

So maybe school could say that the first X lines need to be neat, rather than the whole thing.......

maizieD and zebedeee

When you discuss not gioving children books with words they can't decode, can I ask who precisely you think is giving them these books?

I know that sounds (reads?) daft, but it is actually quite critical. i wouldn't dream of issuing any pupils I was teaching to read with a book they couldn't decode. But my school has a mixed catchment area in which 60-70% of kids are read to by parents, go to libraries, choose books (or are encouraged to read stuff they see in the street). And becasue they are so keen to read, they will try to decode them to their parents, and their parents will have to resort to some strategy to cope with this, and that is often mix-and-match picture guessing or just 'telling the child the word'.

And, slthough I find those strategies unhelpful, given the links between this sort of behaviour and a langauge-rish environment, and between choice and motivation to read, I think I'm probably willing to accept them as a pragmatic compromise which probably helps my pupils read (much removing of fence splinters from arse)

That's why I'm not sure whether the insistence on decodable books on a thread for parents, not for teaching method discussions, is helpful and why I think some parents are moderately outraged (why shouldn't we help our kids read what they want?). is this what zebedeee was getting at?

Those books are purely for teaching purposes. I wouldn't expect any parent to teach their child to read. What I would prefer (not expect!) is for the parent to read with the child, so the child can take on the bits they can do, or just listen to their parent. This gives them confidence, but the most important thing it does is engender a love of reading and books.

Personally I can't stand the reading scheme books but they do their job - in school. If I thought the children I teach had many books at home I wouldn't send home any reading scheme books.

Out of school I would hope the child goes to the library, has their own books of varying 'levels' or just browses what's in the house.

maizieD
"I think you are coming from a 'whole word' angle where children 'learn' each individual word. Whereas Synthetic Phonics does not put any emphasis at all on learning whole words"

Maizie - please excuse my ignorance! I've never used synthetic phonics before but my daughter has a couple of Ruth Miskin books and there are words in red called 'tricky words' which they have to learn as whole words. Is this something different?

:)

I've just come across this thread and want to say thanks to all you early years experts for your patience in explaining SP.

As a KS2 teacher I don't know nearly as much as I should about how to teach early reading, and have been wondering about the best way to support my DD when she gets to that stage.

My main concern is similar to AdelaofBlois last post- as a parent who reads to her child a lot, from all sorts of books, I'm a little worried that she will want to start 'reading' her own picture books before she has learned enough letter/sound correspondances to make it in any way realistic. Is it best simply to focus on the enjoyment of reading/ text level discussion and so on, and not introduce any phonics at all until she starts in reception? And then hope that they have a really decent SP home reading scheme so she won't be faced with the 'tricky' words before she is ready?

The school that I work at uses a lot of whole word recognition and a range of different cues. Most of the books for reception seem to include a lot of words that they are expected to read long before they have the phonics knowledge to decode them. The more I read on here the more I am convinced that those methods are not helpful or appropriate.

@Chocciechoc,

If the school is expecting your daughter to learn the 'red words' as 'wholes' then they are not teaching the programme the way Ruth intends it to be taught. The 'red words' should be approached as being 'decodable but with a tricky bit', just the same as the Jolly Phonics 'tricky words'; it's a different name for the same thing. I think that Ruth says the red words contain a 'grotty grapheme'.

No-one who follows SP principles, either programme developers or teachers, would advocate teaching any words as 'wholes'.

There is a misconception among teachers, a hangover from the days of 'look & say' teaching and particularly the teaching of High Frequency Words, that these words are 'not decodable'. This is a completely mistaken belief which can be very strongly held and which the perpetuation of the teaching of these particular words after the guidance changed in 2007 makes it difficult to eradicate.

AdelaofBlois.

I think you've answered your own question! No-one can control for what happens outside the classroom. Some parents may well try to get their children to read books which have words in which they cannot yet decode; these parents may even encourage them with the look & guess strategies.

On the other hand, if the parents have been given an understanding of how the phonics teaching works (or know it themselves, anyway), and how they can support their children's reading at home, they are unlikely to put their child into the position of helplessly staring at a word which they don't have a clue about how to work out what it 'says'!

It is teachers/schools which are still giving children 'look & say' books, such as ORT, to read that I am referring to.

NB. I don't work with initial readers, as you know, but I am told by those who do that ORT is fine in its later stages, once children have learned the correspondences. It's just the early ones that are not good.

Thanks Maisie, I understand what you mean and agree. It does say in the book, however, 'Red words don't sound like they look. Read the word out to your child.'
It's from Sun Hat Fun which is designed for using at home. It's confusing I think - parents would assume they teach the word as a whole word.

Not being awkward by the way! I'm a teacher myself and we don't use SP at the school I'm at. Just curious as to how it works

Do you know, Chocciechoc, I think that every single teacher, from YR to Y13, ought to know how SP works. It is invaluable for supporting poor readers of any age

I'm surprised that the RM books meant for use at home don't explain more clearly how to handle the Red Words.

I will read up on it! We use Jolly Phonics.