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.

If you are encountering a word you have never read before and do not already know the meaning of then context will not help at all (except to perhaps help you guess the meaning of the word), you will need to rely solely on phonics to decode and pronounce the word (although you may not decode it correctly as obviously there are different pronunciations for the same variation of letters).

You cannot read without phonics!

^Ooh, I was trying to remember the opening lines of some Austen novels ...

... I was trying out the one about all happy families being the same, but every unhappy family being unhappy in it's own way.

Is that by Jane Austen ?^

Your confusing Jane Austen with Leo Tolstoy - easily done! Anna Karenina.

You're; what was I thinking?

^How do you account for the disproportionate failure rate of boys?

Boys don't fail with SP. See the Clackmannanshire study.^

But are boys any worse at reading than girls; I mean as opposed to writing and actually producing some work? If not, they will score just as well on a reading test that involves no writing, while scoring less well on a test where they have to produce written answers.

Oh yes - Anna Karenina - thanks Cecily. Still, another cracking and famous opening sentence ?

Maths Anxiety, as far as I can make out, you seem to be arguing that all of the 20%+ of children who can?t read are so disadvantaged by their lack of vocabulary knowledge that only 1) a social revolution can help them and 2) in the meantime we should teach them to use whole language predictive strategies because that will help them guess the meaning.

But, firstly, that 20%+ includes a wide range of children, from plenty of articulate kids who have been mis-labelled dyslexic (but who miraculously recover when given tuition that emphasises phonics & decreases their guessing habits), through kids with varying degrees of vocabulary knowledge and understanding, until you reach the most deprived groups. Why should all of this group be denied effective teaching ?until the revolution comes??

And secondly, you haven?t given any evidence to show that predictive strategies actually are of any use in helping children with their understanding of what words mean. The whole language movement has dominated schools of education for 30 years, and yet they still haven?t been able to come up with this evidence. And what about the consensus in scientific psychology research that the people who developed the idea of ?predictive strategies? 40 years ago were using a model of how reading works that has now been completely disproven?

What we do know, is that many children who are taught these strategies, even when they are also taught some phonics, end up still guessing and unable to read properly later on, while in schools that don?t teach these strategies, these problems don?t arise. Is this mere coincidence?

^'In terms of using context, I wasn't really thinking of very young children just beginning their reading journey, but more for intermediate readers, reading books that don't have such carefully controlled vocabulary.'

I'm really very confused by this. Firstly I'm not sure what you mean by intermediate readers and I'm also confused by the idea that schools control the vocabulary in books for children, who are readers, read. Sorry perhaps you can explain??^

Sorry, mrz, I will try to explain how I see it.

Beginner readers - on the beginnings of a reading scheme that is very likely to be tailored to what is being taught in the classroom. These will be reading to a teacher, assistant or parent who can help them with anything they are not sure of, with opportunities for incidental teaching as outlined by maizie.

Intermediate readers - either on the advanced books in a reading scheme (with less controlled vocabulary) or chapter books appropriate to age and interest. They will still be reading many new words for the first time - words that will be in their spoken vocabulary but that they haven't read before. Far less likely to be reading to someone else.

Experienced readers - us. Rarely come across an unfamiliar word and if we do it is unlikely to be in our vocabulary anyway.

We see a slight difference between boys and girls in reception but as they progress through school the difference disappears in both reading and writing. My last class were the exception, with boys outperforming girls right from the start in both reading and writing.

Intermediate readers - either on the advanced books in a reading scheme (with less controlled vocabulary) or chapter books appropriate to age and interest.

I can only speak for the school where I teach and say that when we select books for children to read at this level (as a teaching tool) it is usually with a focus on higher order skills... deduces, infers or interprets information; uses inferential and deductive comprehension skills -comments on the structure of text; uses evaluative comprehension skills - explains and comments on writers? use of language; uses evaluative comprehension skills. - identifies and comments on writers? purposes and viewpoints; uses evaluative comprehension skills - relates texts to their (the texts?) social, cultural and historical traditions; uses evaluative comprehension skills

In terms of boys and girls, it is my own DS that I was thinking about. He found reading really easy but rarely produced more than 3 consecutive sentences till he went secondary. In his primary school, the children were put into ability groups very early in P1; the writing group based on drawing and observational abilities. The top writing group contained only girls, plus the oldest boy and the bottom writing group contained only boys plus the youngest girl - the reading groups were much more mixed.

All our children read (aloud) around the class everyday usually from the class novel they are studying. It provides opportunities to develop vocabulary and as you say lots of incidental learning.

We don't group children by ability for reading or writing most is done whole class.

Fair enough mrz; it seemed really early to do it in that school, but it did give me the chance to make the observation above.

We don't do it in any year group

In terms of using context, I wasn't really thinking of very young children just beginning their reading journey, but more for intermediate readers, reading books that don't have such carefully controlled vocabulary.

Perhaps we need to define terms before discussing any point!

This is what I was responding to:

But say I was new to reading, I wouldn't read, once upon a time there were three bears' as 'once upon a time there were three beers' even if I had only been taught 'ear' as the 'eer' sound and hadn't yet covered 'ear 'pronounced 'air'.

I'm not sure what you mean by an 'intermediate reader' but I would class a child who didn't know the alternative sounds for 'ear' as one who was 'new to reading' .

Whilst I am all for people listening to children read and using opportunities for incidental teaching, there will come a time when they will be on their own.

I think that you are overthinking this. Would you be expecting a child to be reading on its own before it has learned the common correspondences? (By 'common correspondences' I mean the 160 -180 ish correspondences most commonly encountered in words). In which case I think that it would be a bit unkind to leave a child reading unsupported, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure that there are loads of people around who think it is just fine to throw their children in at the deep end.

If it were a case of a child insisting on reading a book, which is beyond its known phonic capabilities, on its own then I would suggest that it is reminded that someone is available to help with any words it finds difficult. In the example you gave the text was so ludicrously easy (and the story, told orally, likely to be very familiar to the child) that suppying the word 'bear' would be almost a no brainer. However, if the child encounters a word that not only contains an unknown correspondence but is also not in their oral vocabulary no amount of context is going to help them. I would see this as possibly being the start of losing confidence and switching off from reading.

There are, though, so many variations on this scenario that I can't even begin to second guess what you are going to propose next.

CecilyP,

You might find this interesting WRT your question about boys

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/Matched%20Funding%20Article-august%2011a%20_MG_.pdf

I think that you are overthinking this. Would you be expecting a child to be reading on its own before it has learned the common correspondences? (By 'common correspondences' I mean the 160 -180 ish correspondences most commonly encountered in words). In which case I think that it would be a bit unkind to leave a child reading unsupported, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure that there are loads of people around who think it is just fine to throw their children in at the deep end.

Not so much overthinking as thinking back to my own schooldays when I was left entirely to my own devices with reading after the 4th Janet and John book, while the teacher devoted more of her time to the slower pupils. I don't know how anyone could call the lovely Miss Purbrook unkind, but needs must when you have a class of 40 and no assistance. Though I agree that, while it didn't do me any harm, I really would not recommend this as good practice.

However, I think it is possible to go from one extreme to the other and have the developing reader be too dependent on the person supporting.

However, I think it is possible to go from one extreme to the other and have the developing reader be too dependent on the person supporting.

I cannot agree with you more. That is where good teachers and well informed parents work together to to ensure the right level of support. There's not much that is difficult to read once the common correspondences have been learned.

And as the phonics taught child is accustomed to handling unusual correspondences, via some of the 'tricky words', they are not going to be uduly bothered when they encounter a rare one.

Someone who thinks that being able to read "Once upon a time there were three little pigs" when it is written out as a lot of xxx is a sign of being a good reader who understands what they read from the context is mistaken. What they actually are is an old cynic who thinks they've seen it all before and is therefore potentially lacking in imagination and creativity!

I think that you have missed the point of the xxxs entirely rabbitstew!

I don't believe I have said what I think the point of the xxxxxs is, exoticfruits! I hope you aren't inaccurately reading into what I have said, things which are neither expressed nor implied....

Scanning very quickly for what you expect to see does not a good reader make and is not a technique advisable for anyone at any point in their life, surely?

That is what fluent readers do without ever thinking about it when they read, Rabbitstew. Fluent readers automatically choose the right meaning from homophones they encounter. They will also choose the right sense of the word and right pronunciation when tackling heteronyms.

Fluent readers are not reading when they assume the entire beginning of the story of the three little pigs - if they read like that, they would always get caught by the small print, would get less out of reading stories from entirely different cultures, and basically would not be reading, they would be assuming. A good reader does not assume they already know what is going to be said. A sloppy reader does that, and gets caught out as a result. People who think they are excellent readers get lazy...

xxxx, xxxx'x xx xxxx.