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.

Rabbitstew

Not sure what you mean?

Oops, crossed post.

I was referring to comments CecilyP made and trying to work out what they really meant.

Oh. Well, I can't say anything about that, but as far as spelling goes, I think that with the advent of spell-checkers, highly accurate spelling is less important than it used to be. But you still have to be reasonably close to the correct spelling to be able to use a spell-checker, or the correct option won't come up.

Also, employers really dislike illiterate-looking spelling, and there are still plenty of situations at work where hand-written notes, signs etc are used.

And then, of course, there are a fair number of teachers misspelling handwritten comments and corrections, and instructions to children. If we weeded out all the adults with weak spelling from joining the teaching profession, we'd be significantly reducing the pool of available talent. Better perhaps to teach all children to spell in the first place?

You do get it from small children - very few small children read with any expression, either. And nobody ever sneered, from my memory, since the majority read badly out loud.

No, you have completely misunderstood what I meant. I meant that you could be nervous reading to a class of 30, but be much more confident and expressive reading to your own children.

(I am assuming you were part of the minority!)

It is highly unlikely that a 16 year old will have been taught any phonics, or only the most rudimentary. A child that age will almost certainly have been taught by the whole word method. "parashoot" shows evidence of possible part-word combining; the child will have memorised the word "shoot" as a "sight" word, but will never have been taught that ch is a variant spelling of the sh sound.

Sorry, but that is pure speculation. Alternatively he might have sounded out the letters and thought that parashoot was a perfectly viable option. He might have well have known that ch is a variant spelling of the sh sound (norham will have to check him with champagne) but not realised he needed to use it in this case.

There is very strong evidence that synthetic phonics produces much better results for spelling than any other method. However, it has only very recently begun to be taught in all schools, and in around 75% it is still not being taught effectively.

Can you produce any. I know this could be difficult. All that I have seen is children successful in spelling test using published tests. How can you show success in spelling in the children's own writing?

Actually my 16 yr old was taught synthetic phonics in private then state primary. Something I am eternally grateful for ad he has sld and despite that learnt to read well, unlike his father who had the same problems and was taught by look and say and couldn't read until he was 10 and wad finally taught phonics.
Neither can spell though.

Yes, I agree you could be more expressive reading to your own children. I've overheard one or two very clever people reading bedtime stories to their children as though the stories were instruction manuals, though! Let's just say that some people have a better sense of rhythm and more variety in their tone of voice than others....

What is the difference between lacking something and having something extra? Is the difference whether a majority can do something versus a minority; or is it that something is considered an unimportant bonus if it is "something extra?"

It is really hard to explain, but I used to think that being a good speller represented some kind of virtue on my part. But now I no longer do. I have no idea whether good spellers are a majority or a minority. Taking basic phonic knowledge as a given, I think good spellers just pick up correct spelling from their reading. They also know if they have made a mistake because a word just looks wrong. It would seem like a bonus, but perhaps the majority do have this ability, in which case, it would be a deficit in those that don't.

CecilyP
I don't so much think that the young man in question is lacking anything - it is more that we, the good spellers, have something extra that helps us to spell correctly without too much effort on our part.

Spot on. During 20 years of teaching secondary English, my husband and me, with my own children and grandchildren I have found that the good spellers have always been the ones who don't need to work at it. The ones that do, can become middling spellers, but never really good. A good visual memory (for what looks right) is the key.

Good spellers are definitely a minority, but because most people pitching in on here are pretty good, they have no idea how hard the average person finds learning to spell English 'correctly'.

I was an atrocious speller at school despite being an excellent "natural" reader.

What I found both myself and with my younger daughter (now 13), was that an awareness of the main regular phonic spelling patterns makes it a lot easier to learn individual words. This is because you don't have to remember a whole string of apparently random letters; you just have to remember that this word has a "tricky bit" in the second syllable or wherever. She and I both use the further trick of learning a "silly" phonetic pronunciation (like Wed-nes-day as 3 syllables) to help remember the spelling. But of course, to do this, you have to understand regular phonetic patterns in the first place.

My mother could never understand how as an avid reader I could be a poor speller. It was simply that I never see the words-it is like going to the cinema to me.

'Kesstrel, you changed the original meaning considerably. "

I disagree. As would anyone who looks at what you originally wrote.'

I rather think I am a better judge of what I wrote and what I meant to convey than someone who doesn't know what the term 'in general' or the related 'generalisation' means.

If you think the graphs from the All Party Committee were produced from the arses of the committee members, I think you will find you are wrong. I am sure you can contact the committee and ask to review the statistics, figures, standard deviation, etc., etc., that were used by them when they were coming up with their distilled, easy to read format.

Rabbitstew -- 'Sorry to disappoint you, mathanxiety, but my experience of initiatives being brought out nationwide is that the level of training and commitment does not remain the same, so they always fail to meet their promise. Possibly because they cost so much and the political will isn't there to do it properly. You certainly won't get it done properly by the current government, which is intent on spending as little as possible on the bottom 20%. What you generally get with projects like the ones you propose is an awful lot of expense, but still not enough money and commitment to do it properly - because at the end of the day, the taxpayer is too self-centred and short sighted to agree to the massive commitments involved, so guarantees their failure.'

-- Still doesn't mean the need is not there or that the money should be spent.
I agree that doing things on the cheap is a specialty of government.
However, if amateurishness is all that can be expected and there is no point in doing anything to change matters because all efforts are doomed to failure, why not just admit defeat and close schools.

I don't have as much interest in the reading skills of the 81% who scored a level 4 or over as I have in the 19% whose score was 20 percentage points lower. I am a bit puzzled as to why I should.

The focus of my interest in the 81% is whether they were taught using SP or mixed methods or whether this information can be teased out of the figures somehow.

Well, you may not have as much interest in the 81%, mathanxiety, but it is obviously a concern to this and previous governments, as all we seem to hear these days is that our schools are not producing enough people at the top level to compete with those at the top level of other countries and that it is the inadequacy of the 81% that is resulting in our failure to pull out of recession. I am quite certain that Michael Gove's one-man mission to bring back O-levels and have everyone know their times tables off by heart by the age of 9 is nothing to do with the bottom 19% whatsoever, but about telling the 81% that they aren't up to much, either. And I find it a somewhat bizarre notion that you think all schools are currently run amateurishly, or that anyone else is suggesting that they are, and that therefore we might as well admit defeat and close schools... That's taking a lack of interest in the 81% to a whole new level and suggesting that if their needs are being reasonably met, we should still close the school system if the remaining 19% are not having their needs reasonably well met.

Maths anxiety said: ?I rather think I am a better judge of what I wrote and what I meant to convey than someone who doesn't know what the term 'in general' or the related 'generalisation' means.?

As I said before, point me to where you used the term ?in general?. Also, someone who uses the fallacy of "the exception that proves the rule" is not in a strong position to claim that it is 'obvious' that all of your sweeping statements are meant to be taken as qualified "generalisations". How are we to know when you admit exceptions, and when you think "the exception proves the rule"?

"If you think the graphs from the All Party Committee were produced from the arses of the committee members, I think you will find you are wrong."

False dilemma fallacy. We are not confronting an either/or choice between ?The figures are perfect and prove what Mathanxiety claims they do? and ?The figures were crap.? What I said, and what I still say, is that in the form they were presented in that report, those figures do not prove what you claim they do. They do not show that the 20% of families at the lowest socioeconomic level are all suffering from the sort of domestic problems that would interfere with their children to learning to read. They do not show how far that same 20% of children overlap with the 20% who struggle with reading. They do not show that spending money on family interventions will do anything to significantly improve the reading abilities of those children . They do not show that other types of intervention might not work better, and be more worth spending the money on.

If schools are staffed by people who know what they doing (i.e. not amateurs, or in other words, people who are unworthy of the term 'professional') then why would the performance of the top 81% be a matter of concern?

My suggestion that schools be closed was flippant..

Kesstrel:

I really thought the pictures and graphs would simplify things, aid understanding, etc. Boy was I wrong.

Take a look at the graphs showing correlation of socio-economic class with hyperactivity in the All Party Report, and if you want a more detailed discussion of the very different figures for disproportionate disgnosis of certain special needs that appear to be situational and not related to biological factors among children from the bottom 20% of the socio economic stratum, you can peruse the 116 page report of Deprivation and Education that I linked to earlier.

False dilemma fallacy fallacy: that is not the either /or that I posted.
wrt the All Party Report:
' They do not show that the 20% of families at the lowest socioeconomic level are all suffering from the sort of domestic problems that would interfere with their children to learning to read. They do not show how far that same 20% of children overlap with the 20% who struggle with reading. They do not show that spending money on family interventions will do anything to significantly improve the reading abilities of those children . They do not show that other types of intervention might not work better, and be more worth spending the money on.'
Well no -- I don't know how you could possibly think a report in that format would yield that sort of information.

I have posted several other links, however, all of which strongly suggest that 20% of families experience issues to do with deprivation ranging from children not having a quiet place at home to study/ no books in the home to children sleeping on filthy mattresses on corridors, eating only sporadically, and suffering physical or even sexual abuse, and how much the group suffering the most from that range of problems, associated with poverty, overlaps with the group that doesn't learn to read well. The links, especially the Deprivation/Education paper, show that family intervention as part of a well thought out multi-faceted approach is well worth the money and the SPOKES study in particular, having a family literacy component, had a beneficial impact on reading and the place of reading in the family.

mathanxiety - the performance of the top 81% IS a matter of concern to the current government. So why is it not a concern to you - do you have data to show that the government is wrong to focus any concern here?

I agree the performance of the top is not considered good enough. I have read statements by the head of ofsted and others to that effect.

But I think they are more concerned or equally concerned (certainly not less concerned) about the underachievement of the bottom fifth. That underperformance means unemployment and other drains on the Treasury well into the future.

Just to add a further point to my previous post.

Re "generalisation":

You cannot legitimately take facts that have only been demonstrated to apply to two percent of the population, inflate them by a factor of 10 to arbitrarily claim that they actually apply to twenty percent, and then defend that claim as legitimate "generalisation".

they are more concerned or equally concerned (certainly not less concerned) about the underachievement of the bottom fifth.
Because their underachievement is very costly to the public purse. They difficulty finding work and managing their lives.

I happen to think that this is one of the many costs of the irregularities of English spelling. They:
make learning to read and write harder and slower,
cause more literacy failure,
exacerbate the difficulties faced by weak students,
worsen the problems of dyslexics,
impede the rehabilitation of offenders,
necessitate an earlier start to formal schooling,
make young children?s lives more stressful,

put parents under more pressure to help with reading,
give teachers a much heavier marking load,
make it difficult to find and agree on the most effective teaching methods.

I know that the majority of educated speakers of English are very attached to the likes of 'any, many, friend, said, bread' and the thousands of other words which contain one or more tricky letters, and would vehemently oppose having them made more sensible, but they have costs.

I have no illusions about the chances of spelling reform, but intend to keep making people more aware of the costs which a very irregular spelling system entails, although I know that lots of people will claim that they cannot see how respelling 'any, many, friend, said, bread' as 'enny, menny, frend, sed, hed' (cf. penny, send, bed) could make learning to read and write any easier.

Sorry about the missing 'have' in 'They have difficulty finding work... '

Mathsanxiety said:

False dilemma fallacy fallacy: that is not the either /or that I posted.

Not true. You responded to my criticism of your deductions from the graph (I did not criticise the report itself) with: ?If you think the graphs from the All Party Committee were produced from the arses of the committee members, I think you will find you are wrong.?. In other words, if I didn?t accept your interpretation as correct, then I must believe the entire report was rubbish. That is a false dichotomy (as well as a misrepresentation of my comment),

Mathsanxiety also said:

Well no -- I don't know how you could possibly think a report in that format would yield that sort of information. I have posted several other links, however, all of which strongly suggest that 20% of families experience issues to do with deprivation ranging from children not having a quiet place at home to study/ no books in the home to children sleeping on filthy mattresses on corridors, eating only sporadically, and suffering physical or even sexual abuse, and how much the group suffering the most from that range of problems, associated with poverty, overlaps with the group that doesn't learn to read well. (emphaisis mine)

My response to that is that you are back-pedalling again.

You now say that the disadvantaged 20% ?overlaps with? the group that doesn't learn to read well. In previous comments, you have claimed the two groups were identical, not that they ?overlap?. When Feenie said ?The 20% of children who fail to learn to read are not confined to deprived areas?, you responded: ?You couldn?t be more mistaken. Statistics do not lie.?, with specific reference to the All Party report.

Furthermore, you cannot group together children who don?t have books in the home and children sleeping on mattresses in filthy corridors, etc with the vague words ?ranging from? in order to claim that their needs for family intervention are identical. You are still trying to confound the two percent with the twenty percent, in terms of socioeconomic class (something you previously wrongly used the All party report to try to support).