Is phonics the best way to teach kids to read? Nick Gibb and Michael Rosen debate

[ElenMumsnetBloggers]

Last month all year one children in England had to take a phonics screening check, and phonics is being rolled out across the country as the way to teach children to read. But is this too prescriptive? We asked children's author Michael Rosen and Education Minister Nick Gibb to debate phonics. Read their debate about phonics as a tool for children to learn to read here and have your say. Do you agree with Nick Gibb or Michael Rosen? Is phonics the most effective way to teach children to read? Should we use several ways of teaching reading, or concentrate on phonics? Join the debate.

I love teaching reading

It's the most rewarding thing I do.

Feenie, et al, the plural of anecdote is not data.

So what? I have taught endless kids to read - all while you have sat there pontificating and boring the arse off people with that tired phrase. It doesn't mean anything, math - teaching children to read successfully does.

Re Merrymouse's question earlier:

"However, teachers aren't stupid. If they could teach all children to read perfectly just by using a phonics programme, why would they make their jobs harder by not doing it?"

There's an excellent book by psychologist Carol Tavris called "Mistakes were made (but not by me)". She write about the tendency professional people like doctors and psychotherapists (and teachers) have to overestimate their own personal shrewdness in making diagnoses and evaluating treatments, when in fact more objective measures are much more accurate. Various cognitive biases are involved in this, whereby people only notice evidence that confirms their prior beliefs, and also attribute successful outcomes to their own efforts but unsuccessful ones to external factors (e.g. child is too young/dyslexic/will learn when he is ready).

There is also a comfort factor - people like what they are familiar with. And also, it can be very difficult to admit that all those children who didn't learn to read over the years you have been teaching them might in fact have learned, had you been using a different method. Nobody likes to think they've let down people who trusted them, even inadvertently. And finally, in the case of teachers, there is the fact that they have endured a welter of government bureaucracy and paperwork over the years, so it is hardly surprising if some of them are cynical and skeptical.

It is very obvious to me that very few people have much knowledge of the long history of reading instruction and that there would be less blind faith in any one method if people knew that they were treading ground that has already been trodden many times before, with practically no effect on the numbers of children emerging from school literate on the one hand and illiterate on the other.

I'd be interested to see a reference for this assertion.

The frightening fact is many teachers don't have a clue how to teach phonics many parents are better informed.

Kesstrel, either you have swallowed the sales pitch of some purveyor of a modern phonics programme whole, or you are in the business of selling such a programme...

Wrong. I am an interested parent who has read a great deal of the research. I am still waiting for you to explain to me why you think that a) modern sp is no different from earlier versions; b) how numerous chools with low socio-economic intake using modern sp are getting the kind of results talked about above, in the teeth of your assertions; c) why you think that sp was "dreamed up" in an armchair when in fact it was developed by teachers and researchers who were familiar with the the newly developed psychological research in this area, and who tested their programmes as they developed them.

Sorry, ignore my last post. I forgot to press 'copy' on the relevant quote.

Try again:

children have been emerging from schools, where the pendulum has swung between whole word methods and phonics, for several centuries, equipped and not equipped in almost constant proportion, to face a world that demands they be literate.

I would be interested to see a reference for this assertion.

I think, kesstrel, that mathanxiety is getting carried away by her own rhetoric.

The frightening fact is many teachers don't have a clue how to teach phonics shock many parents are better informed.

Mrz, that's my impression too...I think a lot of parents now know someone who has given their child a phonic intervention at home, like Toe by Toe, when the school's methods didn't work. The exasperating thing of course is that the school then credits such children as successful products of their methods!

c) why you think that sp was "dreamed up" in an armchair when in fact it was developed by teachers and researchers who were familiar with the the newly developed psychological research in this area, and who tested their programmes as they developed them.

Jolly Phonics - Sue Lloyd and Sarah Wernham - practising teachers
Read Write Inc -Ruth Miskin - practising teacher
Phonics International - Debbie Hepplewhite - practising teacher
Sound - Discovery - Marlynne Grant, EP (so a former teacher as EPs used to have to have been teaching before training) + a practising teacher (I forget her name for the moment)
Sounds~Write - 3 EPs

Anecdotes may not equal data, math, but unevidenced assertions aren't fact.

I'm still not convinced that a well-informed parent/teacher giving a child plenty of one to one reading help would stick with a look and say method that wasn't working, particularly given all the posts on this thread saying that dyslexia specialists use a phonics approach.

What happens to a child being taught phonics who is ill for a fortnight and misses the lessons where they do 'th'?. Unless somebody can help them catch up they are lost.

My conclusion is still that phonics does work, but it will never improve reading rates until teachers are able to teach individuals, not an amorphous class, moving at a government defined pace.

There are people on this thread and those on TES who are happily reporting ... I know the child doesn't read accurately but they are using context and making good enough guesses so I guess they are happy to stick with a method that isn't working

MaizieD, most of your posts reveal you are unaware of history or historical data related to the teaching of reading or literacy levels.

Kesstrel, I said phonics in one shape or another has been around for centuries, not that SP is no better than the phonics that has been around for centuries. One difference between SP and previous incarnations of phonics is that SP has been aggressively marketed for a few years now with profit the motive (and I think that accounts for a lot of the blind devotion to its cause).

I have taken issue with your assertion that solid research forms the basis of the current policy on the grounds that the research was done using children who are older than the children who are to be exposed to phonics in the UK system; SP in its current UK incarnation is based on research done on older children. I feel it is worth repeating this.

You are going to have to provide the data indicating that numerous schools using SP with low socio economic strata intake are achieving good results, and it would be nice to see if those results carried through to secondary and beyond. Some stats here on literacy -- 'The Skills for Life survey was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, and fieldwork was conducted between June 2002 and May 2003. Interviews were conducted with 8,730 randomly selected adults aged 16-65 in England.

Around one in six respondents (16 per cent, or 5.2 million 16-65 year olds) were classified as having lower level literacy skills - Entry level 3 or below in the literacy test. Lower level literacy skills were associated with socio-economic deprivation. Adults in more deprived areas, such as the North East, tended to perform less well in these tests than those in less deprived areas such as the South East.'

You want to know 'why you think that sp was "dreamed up" in an armchair when in fact it was developed by teachers and researchers who were familiar with the the newly developed psychological research in this area, and who tested their programmes as they developed them.'
I didn't say SP was dreamed up by armchair theorists. I said that all reading instruction methods, including phonics, were initially conjured up by people who were basically amateurs working on hunches, as early as the 1500s.

'The exasperating thing of course is that the school then credits such children as successful products of their methods!'
Almost everyone who credits SP with teaching children to read overlooks the vital role of parents providing a word and book rich environment.

MaizieD, All of those programmes have made a fortune for their founders and for their heirs in some cases. They all now have a huge financial stake in the results of their programmes, and of course future research and stats will have to be read bearing this in mind.

(I actually didn't make any assertions about SP programmes beyond the fact that they are huge money spinners, so I don't know what your comment about my unevidenced assertions might be about.)

MaizieD, most of your posts reveal you are unaware of history or historical data related to the teaching of reading or literacy levels.

I'm certainly not aware of your sources. Which is why I have asked for references.

Do you know how literacy levels have been determined by historians?

My reception aged daughter is being sent home "nonsense" phonics spelling words (like "wot") to secure the phonics AND expected to learn the 100, 200 etc most common words list.
The pretend words they have to stress the phonics stuff (like "wot") make children think that all English words are pronounced according to the same rules, when in fact, they're aren't. My older daughter didn't have the pretend words and was, at this stage, a more accomplished reader. It's a small sample size (only 2 girls), but I worry these pretend words are confusing the youngest. She confuses "what" and "wot".

I really like phonics, but with real words only please.

Oh and FYI - I'm in the north, where "u" is pronounced" "oo"

MaizieD, All of those programmes have made a fortune for their founders and for their heirs in some cases. They all now have a huge financial stake in the results of their programmes, and of course future research and stats will have to be read bearing this in mind.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that you are completely round the twist.

I know most of them and I can tell you that a) None of them are dead and b) none of them has made a 'fortune' from their programmes.

Why on earth should I believe your 'history' when you tell such blatant and unsubstantiated porkies?

Since you won't accept action research carried out by schools and programme writers and the UK government hasn't funded research beyond the Clackmannanshire project and a review of the literature I'm afraid most research does come from countries where children begin reading later it seems you will reject everything that disagrees with your views.

I supect some of those criticising whole word methods are attacking a straw man - I learnt with Janet and John which I believe is whole word method BUT that wasn't the very first thing I did (don't see how it could be). I first learnt the alphabet and the main sounds the letters made (not all of them and not combining them but approx one sound per letter (2 for c, and 2 for all vowels when combined with a 'magic e'). That was the extent of my phonics teaching, but was quite enough rules for a 3 or 4 year old to be picking up and starting with. I'd v v surprised if everyone ever learning to read didn't learn some concept of letter-sound correspondence when learning the alphabet (and surely every reading method learns the alphabet prior to reading words).

In my case, when I encountered words using different or more complicated letters to make sounds eg ph making a f or ch making a ch or oo making oo etc, my mother (who taught me to read) showed me what sound that combination made in that word. Then next time I saw a ph or ch or oo, I'd remember and recognise them or she could remind me, oh it's like in such-and-such a word. I don't see what's to be gained by learning all the rules first separately - seems v dull - and not just learning the sounds and hence rules in practice as one encounters them in texts aimed at that age group.

I do know that despite or because of this being the extent of my phonics teaching, I can spell everything after seeing it once and am an incredibly quick reader. I'd put it down to recognising the shape of the whole word being quicker than scanning left-right on each word but could be wrong here.

I'm definitely with Rosen. In my experience, all those taught to read through phonics are awful at spelling - decoding doesn't work backwards - it can give you options to work out what the word should be when reading and you can use your knowledge of what real words sound like and context to work out what it is eg don't bow when you are holding your bow and arrow under that bough - but bugger knows how you can do that in reverse - context won't give you any clues. Phonics on its own will just tell you well, it must be said oh or ow but could be written oh or o-e or ough etc etc. (And that's without bringing in cough and through and thought etc etc.) I don't think you can possibly spell well without developing a good visual memory - which is not something you are just born with or not, it's something you develop through practice.

With whole word/whole language you wouldn't "learn" the sounds (or more accurately you wouldn't be taught them)

Sorry, breadandbutterfly, but you lose all credibility by claiming that in your experience, ALL those taught to read through phonics are awful at spelling. Either you are lying or you have very limited experience.

I don't just read by recognising whole words. For example, I read the word antidisestablishmentarianism by breaking it up into bits - and not bits that make whole words, as disestablish is too long and unusual to recognise in the middle of all the other letters. I do break that word down into its constituent sounds and then rebuild it to make sense of it.

I think there is a limit to the number of letters going together that one can immediately recognise as a whole word. I'm sure experienced readers don't break words up into the individual SP sounds, but I'm sure that they do break words up to read them and spell them.

I haven't read the whole thread very carefully - though there are some very interesting and informative posts on here.

Imo children learn in lots of different ways and you can't use the same method for everyone. There are so many different approaches available, why stick to one?

Luckily, most teachers will still use the method that works best with each individual child, whatever the govt tells them to do.

The govt are right to focus on trying to raise levels of literacy but as always they are going about it in the wrong way by trying to persuade us that one size fits all.

Luckily, most teachers will still use the method that works best with each individual child, whatever the govt tells them to do.

You would think, wouldn't you? But still 20% leave primary school unable to read. So that's that theory down the pan.

rabbitstew - you are right and 'all' was too inclusive. However, of those whose spelling I am very familar with (a rather more limited group than everyone, I agree!), it is really noticeable that those who learnt to read with phonics can't spell.

mrz - "With whole word/whole language you wouldn't "learn" the sounds (or more accurately you wouldn't be taught them) " - surely everyone learns the alphabet and a sound for the letters? Hae you ever met anyone who ever learnt by reading whole words who did this? That would just be impossible. If that was the case, then whole word reading schemes would blatantly be nonsense. But I don't think that ever was the case = my point.