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?

Start here:Principles of Synthetic Phonics teaching.
Sue Lloyd (Jolly Phonics) was joint author of this, you can't get more 'expert' than her

maizieD

I'm not really talking about parents tecahing their children to read, I'm talking about parents who are reading to or with their children, but for whom the process organically morphs into 'learning to read' in a totally unstructured or unsystemic way, because the child starts trying to (especially when they've got some sounds and are dead keen to show off), points out and guesses words they think they know because they recognise some sounds (my DS does this all the time using familiar texts and phonics from SaLT), who point to Tesco signs and say 'that word Tesco' or ask 'why my name and my brother's name got 'h' in it?' These are the dilemmas parents face, and they feel that being told 'don't let them try' is rather harsh, and they adopt strategies which seem to encourage kids more. And who can blame them?

Personally I'm tryin to be as careful as I can, sounding out words my DS guesses or says even if he's right, so he can see the GPCs involved and get a sense of how someone might sound and blend works before school (those two letters make x sound)-so that he isn't just absorbing whole words, but stopping short of teaching him to read. But even that is risky, a compromise between what is ideal and dampening his enthusiasm.

Arguing this is irrelevant is useful for attacking bad teaching, but there are real issues because a learner isn't sitting there
thinking 'this is home time, this ain't reading'. If they are, there are other problems.

i think I migth start a new thread called 'queries about reading to my child'. Your expertise on that would be welcome.

I have just read through all the posts on this thread and could comment on for hours, but shall desist. Anyone interested in my views can explore them further in my blogs englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com and www.improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.com

I would just like to explain briefly that the main reason why phonic knowledge in English is often tested with nonsense words is because too many common words are not entirely decodable or ?tricky?, e.g. any, many, friend, said, one? and cannot be used for testing basic phonic knowledge. In languages in which spellings have just one pronunciation decoding ability is never tested with nonsense words.

The phonic unreliability of many English spellings is also why English-speaking children take on average 2 ½ years to learn to read, while other Europeans manage it in less than a year. This is also why there has been so much controversy about the best way to teach reading for the past 6 decades, ever since national tests have made it clear that roughly 1 in 5 11-yr-olds start secondary school still not reading well enough to cope with secondary schooling.

Phonics is a good start for learning to read and write (for about a year), but with an inconsistent and phonically irregular spelling system like the English one, it cannot be more than the start.

Of the 100 most used English words which make up half of every text, only 57 are entirely decodable:
a, and, in, is, it, that,
as, at, but, for, had, him, his, not, on, so, they, with, about, an, back, been, big, came, can, did, first, from, get, go, has, her, here, if, just, like, little, made, make, much, must, no, new, off, or, our, out, over, see, them, then, this, up, well, went, will, old.

The other 43 all contain some tricky letters:
he, I, of, the, to, was,
all, be, are, have, one, said, we, you, by, my, call, before, come, could, do, down, into, look, me, more, now, only, other, right, she, some, their, there, two, when, want, were, what, where, which, who, your.

Nobody becomes a really fluent reader until they can read all common English words (around 7000) instantly, by sight, without hesitation ? as everyone reading this thread can. With phonically regular words, children can get to that stage mostly by dint of their own efforts, by sounding out faster and faster, until they recognise them instantly.

With the tricky words, they need other help. They have to learn them partly by ?working them out? rather than just ?sounding them out? ?from words before or after the one they are struggling with, with help from pictures, or best of all, a patient adult listening to them read and helping them when they get stuck, over and over again.

Children vary enormously in how easily they remember letter sounds, but even more in their ability to learn to read the tricky words. Some cope with remarkable ease, others struggle despite vast amounts of help.

If a parent was reading with a child (from a non scheme book) I would explain it contains a new grapheme they don't know yet but it says /air/ and try to read the word together. At the end I would ask if they could remember
but the most important thing is just to enjoy books together and only making a reading task if the child chooses.

MaizieD/mrz sorry I don't think I've been clear enough. My point is there is no trying to read it together/need to be told - the child has been able to work it out the word stairs for themselves, self-correcting their initial steps error, without explicit instruction of the air grapheme (using phonic knowledge, context, illustrations explicit or not (no picture of going upstairs, but children, say, in bed). The whole word has not been taught, neither has the air grapheme, no need to hold up their reading until that lesson - what has been taught are the skills to build on what they know, to make accelerated progress. My worry is that (from what I have come to understand of it) synthetic phonics reduces reading to a Gradgrind empty vessel activity, where children are limited by the information they have been given, not encouraged to draw on a variety of sources to push their reading forward, and have the message that these strange colour coded books are what they read, and progress can only be made on a lesson by lesson basis.

zebedeee sorry but I am confused

The child can read the word "stairs" so what's the problem?

There is no reason why children who can read words shouldn't do just that. What synthetic phonics (phonics in general) doesn't do is teach children to read words by guessing using picture clues or by learning lists of words as a whole or by looking at the shape of the word.

The colour coded books aren't anything to do with phonics. They are simply a system for teachers to use a variety of sources and easily identify books at the correct level to match the child's ability.
The book band colours are used with all types of books even those story books you might read to/with your child at bedtime too.

Sorry I missed progress ... progress in young children simply doesn't work that way. They can make huge leaps in a day or be seemingly stuck one day and then surprise you the next.
Phonics equips readers with the tool to read words they don't yet know and is an important skill for all learners on the journey to become confident readers and writers.

"Phonics equips readers with the tool to read words they don't". Some words. In the early years, where u teach Mrz, and where the teaching uses mostly just phonically regular words, it works very well indeed.

After that, things get much trickier, and phonics is also of far more use in learning to read English than to write it. Only 1 in 4 English words contain phonically irregular spellings like 'many, pretty, women', but 1 in 2 words contain some unpredictable letters (main lane, bite light), many of which are decodable.

The nastiest claim made by SP evangelists about other teachers is that they encourage children to 'guess' words. They merely encourage them to try and work them out, just as SP teachers do, when they are not entirely decodable.

The reading problems caused by the inconsistencies of English spelling keep making some teachers adopt ludicrously extreme positions and accuse others of doing things they simply don't do. I don't think I've met a single teacher, and I am 66, who does not think that phonics is good for starting to teach reading. But most realise that, in English, it becomes less and less useful with each school year.

Actually Masha I don't work in Early years

and have the message that these strange colour coded books are what they read, and progress can only be made on a lesson by lesson basis.

They're no stranger than the RR 'levelled' books

So telling a child to read a word by looking for clues in the illustrations is the way to teach reading Masha?

Actually I'm pretty sure that the guide lots of primary schools use to level books is published by the IOE and is based on RR.

No.

I said phonics is good for starting to teach reading. But most (teachers) realise that, in English, it becomes less and less useful with each school year.

We find it very useful for spelling in Y6 Masha so at what stage should we expect it to become less useful?

We find it very useful for spelling in Y6

Only because, like all SP evangelists, u call all teaching of reading and writing phonics, including unpredictable spellings like 'scoop soup, move groove'.

Problem with that argument Masha is I'm neither an evangelist or a SP practitioner (or an Early /years teacher as you said in another post) you aren't having a great deal of success are you?

Mrz, U certainly praise SP constantly on here, whatever u are, as a panacea for all literacy problems.

I don't think I have ever praised Synthetic Phonics Masha

Teachers/Tutors who actually pick up the pieces with 6,7+ children are frequently confronted by confused children taught to use multi-strategies - the easiest of which is guessing. The children are then labelled as dyslexic, having feckless parents, brain abnormalities etc. Sometimes it takes only 2-3 hours to demonstrate how the alphabetic code works - via synthetic phonics. However, sometimes it takes a long time to unravel the habits these poor children have acquired - it is all so unnecessary.

Go and have a look at inner city classes teaching good synthetic phonics, Masha, and have a look at the Sound Reading System section on Scholastic's website, for a start.

And your remarks about the work of Debbie Hepplewhite and Ruth Miskin are beyond contempt.

Yes that's what happened to my poor ds. It wasn't until he was 8 and had some excellent tutoring from a Sound Reading System tutor that he learned to read in any meaningful way. He was taught using mixed methods and it was disastrous for him. He hated reading and was convinced he was stupid (he is actually very bright) because expecting a child to guess the words is very unfair as if they have a wide vocabulary there are a lot of potential alternatives so the chances of getting it wrong are fairly high. I agree it is probably easier to learn to read than to write, but expecting children to memorise thousands of words can't really be the way ahead.

Humans are first, visual, by nature. We learn through what we 'see'. Although communication and sounds are second in connecting with other humans, writing (and hence reading) are constructed and become what I like to call, the other drawing. Don't under-estimate the power of pictures for LO's to learn to read. Phonics wasn't a part of the curriculum when I was at school till grade 3, 9 years old. Before that, it was picture based primarily with a bit of syntax.

GotArt Don't under-estimate the power of pictures for LO's to learn to read. no pictures don't help children to learn to read they help them to guess what the words say and when the picture doesn't directly relate to the word the child can't read they really get into a panic.

Humans are visual. So they don't use eyes to read words?