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.

(that was a Nick Gibb quote, not a quote from forum)

Well math we get good reading results with children who come from homes without books so what would be your explanation?

Nooka
It's also possible that your son had those years of pain and anxiety and self hatred because u tried to get him to learn to read before he was ready. When he was ready, and away from the settings which had become associated with emotional stress, he was able to learn. (In Finland children don't start formal schooling until age 7.)

Nobody learns to read English words like on, only, once, other, won, woman, women by phonics alone. The much-quoted Rose review made the point that phonics is a time-limited activity which before long has to be replaced by learning to read for meaning.

Phonics is a good start. But some children need very little of it. Others don't become good readers even with loads of it. This is because the irregularities of English spelling affect children in different ways.

Nologo - IME, Dyslexia Action recommend a daily programme of high quality phonics practice - what did they recommend for your dc?

Isn't phonics kind of like learning to drive - first you learn to pass your driving test, then you learn to drive.

With phonics, first you learn how to decode the words then you learn to read (for pleasure).

"phonics is a time-limited activity which before long has to be replaced by learning to read for meaning"

You do realise that refers to the expectation that phonics is taught quickly and competently, so reading by decoding is automatic in a very short space of time. That means that, once children are fluent readers, teaching can move on to other aspects of literacy.

It's not either/or phonics/meaning. The whole point of phonics is to relate squiggles on page to meaningful language, which is naturally a sound system in which meaning lies.

Yes, my Dyslexia Action advice was for a phonics programme too so also interested in Feenie's question to nologo.

Bigbuttons: "English is a nightmare as far as sounds are concerned anyway, think of the ough group, so many different ways to say it. With phonics reception are taught say OW is pronounced as in cow, they learn to say ow as in I've hurt myself, yet ow can be a simple o as in sow, low and mow. I say phonics is a decent started but shouldn't be the only weapon in their armoury"

They will, if competently taught, be taught that correspondences are not 1-1, and learning to select from the phonically possible options is one of the skills that will be included in a good classroom.

To take an example from earlier up the thread "a" can be pronounced /o/ isn't that rare a thing ("wash" "what" "wand" "wander" etc), and when encountering, say "wassail", the rule can be applied.

add following think squat and squash and squad and quality and quantity and quarry

Most children will learn whatever the method - it is the ones who don't who need the structured approach. With dyslexic DS we had to use phonics.
Since you don't know who will have difficulty it is best to start with phonics - those who pick it up easily will sail away and those who don't will have the building blocks.

As I read with my youngest dc's now I do think about the strange pronunciation we have. Wasn't there a great vowel shift in middle English? I am guessing words like put, was, once, he, she, would have been pronounced differently a few hundred years ago? Is there a link to the development of our received, rather than regional, pronounciation?
I always think that children in the middle/ north of the country might have an easier time learning to read as their pronunciations are often more like the written word, like castle, path, bath as opposed to castle, parth and barth.
Put, now there's an interesting one, how did it get that oo sound?

It's a rather tiresome argument, anyway, unless anyone is actually suggesting that phonics shouldn't be taught at all. It's not as if learning phonics somehow makes children incapable of learning words by sight if they see them often enough. It's not even as if anyone has told schools they are no longer allowed to send high frequency words home for children to learn to read by sight. And reading scheme books will always exist in schools so as to ensure a nauseatingly large selection of books of graded levels of difficulty, and NONE of them are as interesting as The Giant Jam Sandwich, or Room on the Broom. So what is everyone getting their knickers in a twist about, anyway?

My DC learnt phonics and thru Biff And Chip. I found the children I helped with these books enjoyed them.

Reading starts very young with picture books. Problem is some deprived children come to school who have not been read books everyday or shared books from mother's/carer's knee.

My son was inspired to read more when his Yr 2 teacher read "Charlie and the chocolate factory" to them all. Joy of stories, lots and lots of pictures, some phonics and maybe word recognition all work.

Balance, measured approach.

Mr Gibb, children who do not read have SN or have not been nurtured with books - specialist teaching for dyslexia in schools and more nurture with books will support reading advancement.

urgh having worked in a primary school i can tell you categorically that IMHO the literacy hour has killed the enjoyment of reading. Books are dissected. pages read at a time, rather than the whole books read so little sense is gained of the how the book flows overall and certainly no much enjoyment there. And this was from a class teacher (not me i was a TA at the time) who managed to wring out great SATS results from her classes (at what cost??). It continues and gets worse when children go to secondary school, books don't have to be read in their entirety any more for the english curriculum neither did my daughter have to always read the whole of a shakespeare play. How dreadful to look back as an adult and instead of saying as i do "oh we did macbeth for o' level" a generation will be saying "oh we did bits of that for GCSE". Again in a school that got very good exam results from their pupils. I think the problem in secondary is lack of time and to be honest primaries often have so much to cram in too.

daffodilly,a balanced measured approach is fine - if it actually works for the children who need it.
My DCs come from a home full of books with two reading parents,and had been read to since they were babies.They both had difficulty learning to read - DD hasn't read at all for pleasure until very recently (she is 18) because what she might have been interested in reading very quickly left behind what she actually could read.

With DS the minute I saw he was having problems I tried to work out how to help him,which for us meant lots of reading at home(did that with DD as well...),a phonics programme via Dyslexia Action,and Toe by Toe - which worked very well.I also tried really hard to find books that were interesting that he could read,or mostly read,fast enough to keep him going - which wasn't always easy.He can read pretty well now,and he does read for pleasure - yay!.If he hadn't had support at home I'm not sure what his reading would be like.
So what about all the children who only have school to teach them? Don't they deserve to be taught effectively in a way that works?

No one yet has explained how phonics may not work for some children,or if they have I've missed it.The main argument here seems to be that for many children other methods work just as well,which isn't quite the same thing.

Literacy hour is not a synonym or shorthand for using a phonics based approach. If the literacy hour is poorly delivered, then one has to look to the individual school and teacher, establish if their poor approach to teaching is also present in other areas and then deal with the teacher (retraining? other support?)

Dear Pride,
I have two nephews who hate reading. One is reluctant, one is bright but dyslexic. Their parents afford a reading tutor.

My argument if you look is that specialist teachers should be there to intervene when reading is a challenge. Phonics is not a cure all. Some children need a diff erent approach to untangle their difficulties.

No one yet has explained how phonics may not work for some children

I think it's not so much that it doesn't work, it's more that children can be ready for phonics at very different times. There isn't much point starting a phonics programme until you can break down a word into phonemes and identify the order in which you are hearing those phonemes. Some children are ready to do this when they are 3, many children are closer to 7 or 8.

A teacher/parent can remediate this with the right knowledge and time. However, pushing a child through a phonics programme at a set pace and then giving them a test at the end of year 1 won't solve these problems. I think all teachers and parents know this. I'm not convinced that all government ministers do.

The human brain is designed to recognise patterns and develop rules subconsciously very very effectively.For example a 3 yo can discern acat from a dog better than any computer program that has ever been written.My fear is that introducing all these phonics rules into a child's consiousness can interfere with this process

Hmm. Well I have several university degrees and postgraduate diplomas and I still can't do phonics. I'm only stating my educational successes to indicate that I am academically able.

I absolutely hate reading with very small children (don't panic I'm not a teacher) as I find it almost impossible to help them as I can't really work phonics out. I have lots of nieces/ nephews that I'm involved with and I 've been along to a 'help your child to read' night and read the parent information stuff and it is still as clear as mud.

I think that phonics just doesn't work for some people. I think I learnt to read and continue to do so by whole word recognition.

I find this interesting as DD loathed phonics at school, found it slow and boring and sight read very quickly. She also hated ORT where she guessed the sentences from the pictures, not very good at all. In the end her teacher let her sit out of phonics lessons and do her own thing and DD was a free reader by the end of reception.

However, she swapped schools and started to learn French - which has regular pronunciation for the letters and vowels. She picked it up very quickly, using phonics and sounding out and can now read many French words correctly with fabulous pronunciation although she has no actual idea what the words mean nor can she understand the story...

So for me the crux is, what is the point of decoding text and begin able to pronounce words if you cannot understand what they mean and have no relevance to you? This is what kills reading, as you might as well be reading out the telephone directory for all the engagement and excitement you will get out of it.

I think that is what Michael Rosen is saying - you can have the code but if it means nothing to you, then what is the point? This is an issue about communication using text and the use you put it to, if you cannot comprehend the words then there is no communication or understanding, although there could be reading.

But at the point that you can decode the word and pronounce it,at that point you have to also be taught/encouraged to look for the meaning. If DS reads a word and I don't think he understands it,I ask him - I don't just think "ok,he can read that word,fine."

But if you can't decode the meaning is not going to be available to you,no matter what.
Having actually read the debate now I would really like Michael Rosen to explain how children are supposed to read for meaning and enjoy books when they can't tell what the words actually are...fine in reception,and for looking at picture books at any age,but later on to extract meaning or pleasure from a book you do need to be able to look at text and work out what the words say.He seems to believe that if you expose children to books and enthuse them with a love of stories they will become readers as a natural progression from that.

If that was the case I'd have two confident,enthusiastic readers,and I don't.And I am really quite cross about that because I think that different teaching early on would have avoided this.

"When you read, this pleasure principle is teaching you about spelling, punctuation and grammar; it's teaching you vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph and chapter structure; it's teaching you about plot, argument, debate. " Yes it is,and yes it does. And my DD never got to benefit from all of that because she couldn't decode what she was seeing . Gah.

Obviously I am biased . But I think an education system has to adopt a teaching method that will give the greatest number of children the best chance of achieving the best possible for them,and I think a properly structured phonics programme is that - with enough flexibility to let children who are learning satisfactorily by sight reading to get on with it!

Another thought is that the vast majority of people will successfully learn to read by whatever method they are taught.Therefore by the 'best' method do we mean the one which sweeps up the most stragglers and is this necessarily the best method for all the rest?
Personally i think people have been taught to read for centuries.If one method was clearly far superior we wouldn't still be having this debate!

I don't think this debate is about whether phonics is a good, or even the best, way to learn how to read. I think the point is that a lot of the 'hardcore' phonics advocates say it is THE ONLY way to learn how to read. And that until you have really 'sussed' phonics you shouldn't be getting into stories with pictures (in case there's a clue in the picture).

I don't think this debate is about whether phonics is a good, or even the best, way to learn how to read. I think the point is that a lot of the 'hardcore' phonics advocates say it is THE ONLY way to learn how to read. And that until you have really 'sussed' phonics you shouldn't be doing anything else. I disagree .

I have never seen anyone argue for picture free books, and agree that would be odd and unnecessarily restrictive. The 1940s Gay Way readers (in common use until 1960s) were illustrated: they are still around today and still illustrated (though now called New Way).

If you want schools to use the system which gives best results to most, then that is synthetic phonics (95% or more of children), rather than mixed methods (only 80% or so).