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?

I'm a parent who's a bit baffled by this thread, my DS is 5 and just starting to read well to himself and for pleasure, he started on Jolly Phonics in reception and is now in year 1 on ORT books. I like the fact that the pictures in books are there to provide interest but instinctively have always told him not to guess the words, I wanted him to sound them out or at least look at the word "structure" so he would remember it for next time, so I suppose I like the use of the phonic system to get the children going.

HOWEVER, please help me to understand this as I don't see how blending or decoding a word is of use if the child doesn't know the meaning or the context of the word? To take the point of the poster above whose DC did not know the word "gong"; a picture is not going to help if the child does not know what a gong is but the child sounding it out correctly and reading "gong" is not helpful at all if they can now read a word they do not know. If they sound out and see from the picture what a gong is then they have actually learned the word properly for next time.

Am I causing diabolical confusion for my DS if I want him to encounter as many words as possible? It sounds very much like some teachers think I am which is bizarre. We read lots of words in books and on tv, in shops etc. and in my humble opinion this is much more useful than waiting for the next ORT instalment. Even if my DS "reads" a word perfectly but it is a word that I don't think he understands I will ask him if he knows it. It happened today with grisly and muttered (not an ORT, a Julia Donaldson with lots of nonsense words in it!) which he read as if he knew them but didn't know the meaning and now he knows them for next time.

Nonsense words in books and poems are wonderful in any case (to answer the OP), so why not have them in a test. If a child can't be allowed to enjoy "In the ning-nang-nong, where the cows go bong" then teaching them to read is a waste of time! It is however quite a good phonics poem

I'm not sure any of you can change my behaviour regarding reading with my DS but I am interested to hear the consensus for getting children to read unknown words with full understanding.

I don't quite understand. If the child does not know the meaning of the word 'gong', how would a picture help? The child wouldn't know what the picture was meant to be.

I do understand if a person to whom the child came to ask the meaning of the word gave the child a verbal definition of a 'gong' and used a picture to show them what a gong might look like.

It is quite strange to believe that reading a word leads to instant knowledge of its meaning, but to read some of the pronouncements of the 'reading is meaning' adherents one gets the impression that that is what they do seem to believe. Would they also expect someone to 'intuit' the mean of an unknown word that they hear spoken?

How on earth do you get 'understanding' of unknown words? I look them up in a dictionary or ask someone. I would expect a child to do the latter (and the former if they have been introduced to dictionaries..)

Pictures are there to enhance the story. It is only in the past few decades that they have been ridiculously elevated to the status of an aid to word recognition. And they were only so elevated because phonics teaching was marginalised and there was a desperate hunt for alternative strategies for recognising words.

'How on earth do you get 'understanding' of unknown words?'

For chiaroscuro, Cubist simultaneity and pointallism I looked in a picture book.

jalapeno "If they sound out and see from the picture what a gong is then they have actually learned the word properly for next time." Exactly!!!

maizeD The child may have previously come in contact with the 'gong' somewhere else. Parental/teacher explanation is also needed in defining words for children to learn to read (like you said in about using a dictionary or asking) and is another element on learning to read. And with the internet, you could cross reference gongs and show all sorts of them to the reader which demonstrates how interesting research can be. But I digress.

Pictures and verbal communication use to be the means of conveying ideas because the masses were illiterate. We shouldn't just pass them off as a means for guessing how to read.

zebedeee Yes, good one. You can look that word up in the dictionary and it still won't make complete sense until you see it in a painting.

Pictures (that is good pictures) totally enhance life and when my children were small I only bought picture books with great illustrations. But my child was taught to try and figure out the words he was reading from the pictures (and given that these were mostly reading scheme books the pictures were in no way an enhancement to the frankly extremely uninteresting stories in any case) the meaning of the words was rarely a problem to him as he had a very large vocabulary just figuring out what they were.

Most of the time I think the words were pretty much undecipherable squiggles to be quite honest, although he earned his alphabet no problem. It was the rules for putting them together that he couldn't grasp. Once he learned the code he got the hang of reading very quickly.

I read lots of books to mu children, always at above the age they could cope with otherwise (and we had lots of talking tapes too). I don't think that discourages reading at all, but maybe that's because I always insisted on picking the books, so if they wanted to read to their own taste they had to do it themselves.

Jalapeno,
U are doing great. Please carry on as u are.
Children have to learn vocabulary as well as learn to read. Until having grandchildren I had forgotten how long they take to learn irregular verbs ('bought, caught' instead of 'buyed, catched').

I've just posted on the thread re MN being obsessed with reading. It seems relevant to this discussion too.

In English-speaking countries, there is plenty of evidence that early readers tend to do better academically than those who learn later. So ideally children should start to learn to read as soon as they are able to, but, unfortunately, quite a few still need to be helped to become reading-ready when they start school.

The Rose review concluded, "...for most children, it is highly worthwhile and appropriate to begin a systematic programme of phonic work by the age of five, if not before for some children, the way having been paved by related activities..."

(and couple of pages later) ...an appropriate introduction to phonic work by the age of five enables our children to cover ground that many of their counterparts in other countries whose language is much less complex phonetically do not have to cover.

Like most people, he confuses language with spelling. (The English language is one of the simplest in the world but its spelling is one of the most irregular.) But his overall reasoning re starting age seems quite sensible. Given the lousiness of English spelling, it's good to start children reading as early as possible, but they are not all able to make equally good progress from the same age.

One big advantage of starting early, for children who are able do so, is that they imprint many of the phonically irregular spellings (man/many, woman/women, lost/most) on their memory before logical thinking kicks in. It's probably easier to memorise such words without noticing the stupidity of their spellings.

In other words: help children to become reading-ready as early as possible, and as soon as they show signs of being able to cope, help them learn as much as u can.

And Rose also said, "the use of decodable books should certainly not deny children access to favourite books and stories at any stage and particularly at the point when they need to read avidly to hone their skills, as the focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn."

We would not be having this discussion if learning to read English wasn't so difficult. Nor would there be any debate about how best to teach it. When it comes to learning a difficult skill,and especially one that involves lots of memorisation, learners cope in more varied ways and the teaching is less fool-proof.

"the use of decodable books should certainly not deny children access to favourite books and stories at any stage and particularly at the point when they need to read avidly to hone their skills, as the focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn."
which is why if you visit any school you will find children enjoying lovely high quality books they can freely access from those continually available in every class.

Just for the record DS1 does know full well what a gong is, he was just being a lazy b**r :)

jalapeno phonics is one skill in becoming a reader - it helps the reader to read the words and it should be part of a language rich experience...some children will get these experience at home as well as in school others unfortunately will not.

I earlier wrote this for Bonsoir

However that is not what happens in English schools Bonsoir and not what you would see in any reception classroom. Children have access to hundreds of high quality story books to look at and share with staff and friends. They will take home lovely stories for parents to read to/with them and are encouraged to develop an interest in all kinds of sources of literature whether it is a story book, magazine or non fiction book. In my school we believe in all children having five a day stories that is and books are an important part of the continuous provision ... magazines in the home corner ... information books outdoors ... books about buildings in the block play ... recipe books in the cafe area ... books about art in the creative area and a huge collection of books in the quiet area with couches and floor cushions for children to just sit and read.
All children receive a book from the staff as a gift at Christmas and at the end of the school year because we want to instil a love of books and reading.

Phonics is a tool to open up the world of reading which once unlocked has no limits.

jalapeno thanks for reminding me about On the Ning Nang Nong, I'm going to use that the next time I teach the ng sound. :)

Apolgies to skiphopskidaddle, but to go back to the example of reading 'Rabbit ran and ran' rather than 'Peter ran and ran' and 'drum' rather than 'gong' and that this was because pictures were...'helping him to guess, and teaching him that it's ok to look at the first letter or two and then wing it for the rest.' In the examples you give he didn't look at the first letter or two, notice the mis-match of what he said and the text - or if he did he didn't seem to have a go at correcting himself, although I realise you say he was being 'a lazy b**r'. But, from what I understand of synthetic phonics, children should only be given texts they can decode so perhaps he would not even have attempted to have a go reading because this notion would have thwarted his natural curiousity to have a go, to be ambitious and make connections between text and the world around him.

You teach the sounds really quickly. So it's not long till they're all known. So even if you restricted books till they knew the sounds it won't be long.

But, from what I understand of synthetic phonics, children should only be given texts they can decode zebedeee not quite true ...children should have access to lots of texts but should only be expected to read (as in reading instruction) those they have the knowledge to do so.

For chiaroscuro, Cubist simultaneity and pointallism I looked in a picture book.

You can only give me this example because you already know the meaning of the words. If you didn't know what the words meant you wouldn't have a clue where to look for 'meaning' except in a dictionary or to ask some-one.

Try another example. What picture is going to give you the meaning of 'existentialism'or 'propylparaben'?

@GotArt

Pictures and verbal communication use to be the means of conveying ideas because the masses were illiterate. We shouldn't just pass them off as a means for guessing how to read.

It is rapidly reaching a stage where pictures are, once again, becoming the means of conveying ideas to the illiterate! I find it mind boggling that anyone should think that they are in any way an aid for learning to read.

Pictures enhance the text. I love pictures, always have done, but I don't read them. I read the words. I even, from time to time disagree with the pictures because they don't depict what I see in my mind's eye when I am reading the words.

Actually, I think being visually literate is a key skill that is insufficiently developed in schools.

My sister, who is an art historian, can take a child to a museum and show him/her how to read the story of, say, George and the Dragon, from a work of art. No written words involved at all!

If we were all as good at that we wouldn't get hoodwinked by advertising to the extent we do.

Actually Bonsoir Visual Literacy is taught in schools in the UK mainly linked to writing.

and of course speaking and listening

It's taught in schools in other countries, too - but insufficiently, IMO. We live in a world where images have become as cheap and accessible as print (eg my 6 year old got a Flip camera for Christmas and can exchange films of her exploits across the globe, keeps her photos on a iPod nano, has a huge library of films and books) which is really recent. For generations, education was delivered primarily by teachers using the written word. I don't think that modern adults are sufficiently visually literate themselves to educate children.

Which is why my DD has done extra-curricular art with a proper art teacher since she was 4, and will carry on right through school.

Thank you Bonsoir

maize Its not rapidly reaching the point, but did a very long time ago. You can read the words all you want but if you aren't visually literate, you are taken in by it. In advertising, words and pictures are rarely linked by words alone. Have a look at Jenny Holtzer's work. We could get into a discussion of why semiotics should be taught at school as well, but most adults don't understand it.

I remember many years ago asking in the university library for a book on semiotics (sorry can't recall the title) and the librarian asking if it was about Jews

LOL, mrz. A very dear Jewish friend introduced to Barthes with Fragments d'un discours amoureux when I was head over heels in love with (Jewish) DP. That's the closest relationship between semiotics and Judaism that I've come across!

introduced me

maize Its not rapidly reaching the point, but did a very long time ago. You can read the words all you want but if you aren't visually literate, you are taken in by it.

Eh?

I was refering to the fact that illiteracy is growing (that is, straighforward 'cannot read words' illiteracy) and that a significant number of people can only 'read' pictures.

I was not, however, refering to the rather more sophisticated 'visual literacy' which you clearly have in mind.

Can I enquire what you are 'taken in by' if you can read the words but not the picture?