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.

Good (natural) readers do not need to learn by decoding as they can easily recall new words by sight.

Except we know from brain research using MRI that good natural readers don't read words by sight.

My greatest frustration though is that children who are taught phonetically habitually sound out even the high frequency words that they should be able to read on sight eg w-a-s (which isn't decodeable anyway!).

was is fully decodable if you know the code

Seeing that HF words make up a large proportion of the English language

There are 300 HFW and approx 1 million words in the English language not a large proportion at all ...

Good (natural) readers do not need to learn by decoding as they can easily recall new words by sight.

How can you learn every single word by sight? There has to be a limit, even for someone with an excellent memory.

Of course 'was' is decodable. The 'a' makes an 'o' after most words beginning with 'w' - want, wash, wad, wallaby, wasp, etc, etc.

I love the fact that people have an opinion about how phonics don't work, and then demonstrate how they know absolutely diddly squat about it. HF words are decodable - you just need to arm children with the code. It isn't difficult.

In our school, my son who is now in yr4, was the first to be taught phonics, I don't know what they did before that but apparently his year group were 6 months ahead reading wise than the year before.

It has been so successful that they are now teaching phonics songs "a a ants on my arm" in nursery to the 3-4 year olds.

The primary school in question is outstanding on Ofsted. They seem to use both phonics books and definitely non-phonic books.

Ds1 reads for pleasure, takes his owns books into school, Ds2 is 6 and enjoys his school books, we get 3 a week, and does read for pleasure but not as prolifically as his brother yet.

I think all children can be encouraged to read if there is a book on something they find interesting.

cocokypants thanks. The school still uses the ort but is now mixing it with these silly books.
Having 6dc's I have experienced a variety of learners with reading. 2 of my dd's only had to be told a word once if it was complicated and they'd simply remember it, it was astonishing to witness. My youngest dd at year one is still only on level 4 of the ort and is STILL phonetically sounding out some cvc words. She has poor pattern recognition I suspect she is dyslexic.
The jolly phonics scheme has worked well for getting them off to a good start but I find the school is so inflexible. They have to work they way through these books and reading become a chore. To get children to enjoy reading they must ne exited by the books. Schemes have their place, as does phonic work but it must be used with common sense.

I'm quite confused about the whole thing. I can't remember how I was taught to read but can only presume it was 'look and say'. Generally my spelling is excellent and I can spell unusual words or names that I have only seen once. I also have a fairly large vocabulary.

Maybe I learn differently to other people, but if I'm reading something and come to an unfamiliar word, it doesn't matter how it sounds. It matters how to spell it and what it means. I don't understand why I would need to be able to pronounce it.

I understand that this is different for younger readers who are reading out loud, but presumably children already have a vocabulary of words that they know and understand and when learning to read initially they will mainly be reading words that they have heard before. Are they, therefore, using phonics to come up with a probable pronunciation then linking this to a word that they have heard before in order to work out the meaning? And using 'whole word' methods for the 'difficult words'. Which is actually just learning large, very specific an uncommon, phonemes (or whatever they're called)?

And I can't see how teaching phonics would help with spelling. But again, this is possibly because of how I think. It seems strange to me to spell words phonetically unless they are 'difficult words'. I spell all words the way they are in the dictionary, not the way the sounds break down. In phonics learning is a child expected to write down a word by breaking it down into sounds or do they learn spelling on a whole word basis?

learnandsay,yes dyslexia is a different topic and I could have left it out of my post.My anecdotal personal experience is that DS actually got on quite well with phonics,but was unable to use the skills he was gaining because his reading books were full of words he didn't have the skills to decode.

Would the children in his class who found reading easier have been held back by working through a phonics programme with a decent reading scheme allowing for decoding at each level?I am prepared to hear from parents whose DCs this has happened to,but my instinctive feeling is that a child who finds learning whole words easy will be able to adopt that as a strategy as they read regardless.Children who find it hard need to be taught to decode words.

There is a limit to words you can learn by sight, isn't there?Can't remember what ,but I've read it somewhere.

Yes, there is.

PrideofChanur, the decodable texts one was a problem for schools who did not keep up with research developments, and lots of schools were stuck with look and say schemes. This year the government has made match funding available for phonics materials, so anything up to £3000 they will match. So, no excuses from now on!

Hooray,Feenie! Bit late for us,but we managed.

"I also think the idea of testing children on made-up words rather than real words is utterly insane" - why is this a problem? If you want to test the ability to decode rather than recognise whole words,nonsense words work perfectly well,and if you can decode any nonsense word you can read any real word,surely? Then at that point,lucky you,you can read any book you want for pleasure...

MerryMarigold. I am at my spelling mistake.

we all make 'em.

if I'm reading something and come to an unfamiliar word, it doesn't matter how it sounds. It matters how to spell it and what it means. I don't understand why I would need to be able to pronounce it.

Surely you might want to use it again and out loud, maybe while talking to someone?

I learnt with look and say and DH learnt with that weirdy phonetically spelt thing with the upside down letters. He cannot spell at all and I can spell pretty much anything. Same thing for both of us with reading out loud. He is capable of mispronouncing words that DD aged five can read accurately. I can only assume that probably he'd have been like that however he'd learnt and I'd have been like I am. I do think he'd probably have been helped by learning the phonics that DD has been shown though. I suppose I must have worked it out myself or something.

JollyHockeyStick - do you never want to use new words that you have read when you talk (which would require you to have some idea of how to pronounce them)? And do you not have any form of internal voice when you are reading to yourself? Does the text just stay as letters on a page for you? I was never taught phonics, but the idea that someone reads like that seems bizarre to me. I wonder - is there any link between people who are considered musical and people who find the idea of phonics a perfectly natural way to learn to read? I couldn't imagine separating the words from their sounds.

You don't often want to use unfamiliar words while communicating do you? Surely the whole point of communication is to both understand and be understood.

You must read very boring books indeed, learnandsay, and have very dull conversations if you always limit yourself to words you are certain absolutely anyone you are talking to will understand.

You must have been particularly dull when talking to your baby, who couldn't understand anything you said.

There's a difference between reading books with vocabulary in them that I'm not familiar with and me trying to use words that I don't understand in communication. I can look new words up in a dictionary if I'm reading. I can't do that if I'm speaking.

You can look words up in a dictionary if you are reading and then, once you know them, you can use them in your speech. I would expect my children to do that.... I would also expect anyone listening to me to use their intelligence and gather from the context what the word I was using meant... just as you claim a good reader should be able to do, once they have decoded the word so that they can pronounce it...

I regularly use words I have read, understood, but have absolutely no idea how to pronounce. I tend to try them put on DH first - he laughs his head off. I was caught out with my pronunciation of "taupe" at the weekend. Very embarrassing

taught
laugh

au has more than one sound, so knowing how a letter combination sounds is not the same as knowing how an unfamiliar word is pronounced.

As a matter of interest, given that we hear a lot from whole word recognition proponants about "non decodeable words", are there any words which are not decodeable?

In the sense that a grapheme is pronounced in a unique way which means there's no rule to apply, it just has to be learnt by heart?

I was thinking of machete.....

I have a little map in my mind of groups of words that make those particular sounds and therefore a good idea of which sounds are the most common and with any new word, would test out each sound I knew that letter combination makes, starting with the most likely, until I came across the pronunciation which "felt" right, on the basis of general experience of spoken language or from realising that I had actually heard the word spoken before. I would not just look at the word in a stupid daze and not have a clue how to pronounce it - because I have made the connection between those letters and those possible sounds. There are a finite number of sounds each letter combination makes, after all.....

Rabbitstew, It is pretty rare for me to come across a word in text that I haven't seen before. If I do it usually isn't something I'd use in conversation. I am currently reading a book with quite a few archaic words in it, but they are mainly related to middle-ages weaponry so not terribly relevant to my life!

No, I do not appear to have an internal voice. I am also thoroughly unmusical. Pretty much tone deaf in fact. I think the words stay in my head as words - with their associated meanings. The sentences certainly don't have a sound.

This certainly explains why I'm struggling with the idea of phonics!

That's fascinating! Do you have a very visual imagination? Or is it possible to experience thought without internal sound or vision? I know some people can imagine smells, but I think that is pretty unusual...

I guess, if you are born blind and deaf, there must be some other way to think than through internal dialogue and pictures.

Actually, I don't have a particularly visual imagination either. But there's next to no sound in there. I find it very difficult to remember what sound something made. The gruffalo has a different voice every time I attempt it!

I wasn't really aware that people thought in sounds. I knew people thought more visually than I do though.

I think it's pretty much just thought. I get hacked off at books that have too much physical descriptions because that doesn't seem all that relevant to me - I just want to.know what happens next.

This is all very strange!