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.

'Russian is a very phonetic language' '

I should clarify my remark there -- it has high phoneme/grapheme correspondence but it also has a non-latin alphabet, which can be mastered quickly if you put your mind to it, and reading can thus be accomplished by decoding and learning a few rules about emphasis and cadence. Comprehension will develop much more slowly. The rate will depend on how quickly the learner can acquire vocabulary and become familiar with grammar and syntax.

Mrz, it will be harder and harder for anyone to read for their own pleasure in homes where books are not provided once libraries are closed under this far-sighted government. The phonics policy is a sale of snake oil in the context of cuts that make it harder to get your hands on books.

But even if there were libraries on every corner, what do you do with the ingrained culture of low educational aspiration and non-achievement? Can children really hope to tackle the canon of English lit in secondary with any hope of success when there is little support from home and their immediate culture, just because they can decode? Why didn't that work for the children of the uneducated classes decades ago (1920s, 30s, etc), long before the introduction of whole word methods?
Why do protestant working class boys in Northern Ireland emerge with worse educational attainment than Catholic working class boys from the NI school system?

How can parent and child reading quality books together, books containing vocabulary that a child can neither read nor understand, do anything to improve a child's reading progress?

Finnish children are taught to read in Finnish, not English. Finnish (and Spanish) and some other languages have shallow correspondence of grapheme and phoneme whereas English has deep correspondence. It's a no-brainer to teach Finnish children to read (at 7 and up btw) using phonics. The method is ideal for the Finnish language.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3086421.stm

Finnish class sizes kindergarten and pre-school: average 12.5

Finnish class sizes primary: maximum 20

An autonomous teacher with a smaller class is much more able to accommodate the pace of the children he/she is teaching, rather than some imaginary class that that a government directive imagines he/she is teaching. In Finland they also have plenty of time to ensure that the nuts and bolts skills necessary to learn phonics are present before they start teaching reading.

Perhaps this is why they use phonics successfully? As far as I can tell, phonics has supposedly been the default reading system in the UK for a very long time. If all you need is a phonics system, why isn't it working yet?

As far as I can tell, phonics has supposedly been the default reading system in the UK for a very long time.

Oh no no no no no! Mixed methods have been the default method since about 1997.

"How can parent and child reading quality books together, books containing vocabulary that a child can neither read nor understand, do anything to improve a child's reading progress?"

I have a friend who has been obsessed by reading to her DCs since birth - they have a policy of each parent reading for 30 mins to each child every day, morning and evening. She thought it would teach them to read...

As far as I can tell, phonics has supposedly been the default reading system in the UK for a very long time.

Good heavens! Whatever gave you that idea?

Perhaps you should have a read of this:

www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/fonicsfobia.php

The situation improved marginally from the late 1990s with the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy but, by trying to please all sides (whole Word & Phonics), the Searchlights Strategy , which covered a 'range of strategies' for the teaching of reading, meant that the phonics component was very easily marginalised by teachers who didn't wish to teach phonics. Phonics programmes produced by the Dfe were also verypoor.

There have always been little pockets of phonics teaching, but it has definitely not been the 'default system for a very long time'. In fact, it is a very long time since it was the default system...

Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick - perhaps I have just been reading newspaper articles about the wonders of phonics since the 1990's.

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?

I do think children should have a firm grounding in phonics. However, more than a shiny new set of reading books and a set of standards, I think they need plenty of access to an adult who can identify their reading problems and enable them to learn at their own pace.

If 'mixed methods' includes a phonics element, doesn't that mean that phonics has been the order of the day, with other bits thrown in? If you think it means whole word methods are the default, are you advocating phonics first and only?
If it's a case of phonics first and only, how can untrained parents possibly hope to contribute to their children's reading progress at home through reading books containing unfamiliar vocabulary together?

Phonics has been around since children have attended school en masse. So have 'mixed methods' and whole word methods. So has the vast cohort of under and non-achievers, mostly concentrated in the lowest socio-economic groups. That is actually the only educational phenomenon that has remained stubbornly constant over the centuries.

Finnish children are taught to read in Finnish, not English. Finnish (and Spanish) and some other languages have shallow correspondence of grapheme and phoneme whereas English has deep correspondence.

The opaqueness of English orthography means that it takes longer to learn to read it but it certainly doesn't mean that it cannot be learned with phonics. Unless, of course, you are determined that it won't be learned through phonics, in which case you produce a self fulfilling prophecy.

Thank you for your insight into the language Finnish children learn to read. I would never have managed to work that out on my own....

Now, I can say that some of the reading books sent home with my son were not strictly phonics reading books - they definitely encouraged word recognition by looking at pictures.

However, I thought the point of this was that children got a sense of being able to read, started to enjoy looking at books and began to recognise words like 'the'. It certainly worked for him.

Does phonics mean "teaching the mechanics of reading via a phonics programme, but also allowing access to non-phonics reading books"

or does it mean, "only show children non-phonetic words once they have passed a phonics test?"

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?

No idea . It took me 1 year out of teacher training college 20 years ago and 5 children leaving our school unable to read before I decided I never wanted to be even partly responsible for that happening again.

I think that factor is mostly repsonsible - the lack of any kind of coherent reading instruction at teacher training college. Teaching courses have been traditionally anti-phonics for no good reason for a very long time. I had no idea at all how to teach reading after a 4 year degree.

There seems to be two arguments here. One is that there are issues with phonics in teaching early reading skills. The other is that phonics doesn't lead well (or perhaps actively hinders) the development of reading for pleasure and reading for meaning.

I would like some explanation of the mechanics of how phonics hinders either of those things, as without that explanation I find it an unconvincing argument.

I see some people are defending phonics on the basis that it is purely for learning early decoding before a child goes on to develop in other, unrelated ways in literacy skills. I would speculate that decoding skills are transferable, and help a child to perceive the world and various forms of knowledge as systems, which builds skills in Maths, Science and further knowledge of the English language. I can see that systems thinking may seem counter-intuitive to people who are naturally inclined to emotional content and social expressiveness. But it is still important and can be an important route into knowledge and creativity for people who will struggle to have some kind of emotional response to a story about how a bird feels at finding some buried treasure or some other fantastical and implausible tale. We don't all think in the same way.

We don't all engage with reading for pleasure in the way Michael Rosen seems to be advocating, although perhaps I am misunderstanding. I've watched the youtube video where he talks to Lambeth NUT, and while one of my children would love his approach to literacy, the other would have been cowering in fear at the idea of a group discussion about what a fox feels (very little probably - it is a fox not a person, would be what my child thought). Talking socially, emotional understanding and the mechanics of reading, they're connected but lack of ability in one should not be a reason to hold back progress in the others. Phonics (and perhaps other approaches that focus on the mechanics of reading) allows children to understand how words relate to each other regardless of whether or not they have the ability to invent the feelings of a fox and then convey them to an adult or a peer group.

An untrained parent can read with their child filling in words which the child can't read alone.
The child gets to move through the story,they get to hear unfamiliar words,and if they do in the process learn some words or letter patterns by sight....oh,no maybe I am in favour of mixed methods... but that gives the opportunity for a child who can pick up words like that to do so,while letting the other children aquire the skills they need systematically.

*Does phonics mean "teaching the mechanics of reading via a phonics programme, but also allowing access to non-phonics reading books"

This one - apart from the 'allowing'. Children need to be provided with decodable readers to practise their skills, but should not have their access to any kind of other books restricted at all, ever.

Also, if it is honestly being suggested that most primary teachers and heads wouldn't use the best system available to teach their children how to read, for no other reason than phobia, shouldn't we just save a huge amount of money and get rid of schools all together?

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?

They may not be stupid though I think that some of them are, but they are not always very rational.

However, if you were to talk to teachers who have taught both methods (and many teachers have) I don't think you would find many (if any) who would want to reurn to Whole Word or mixed method teaching.

Most of the anti phonics rhetoric comes from teachers who have never taught it

There is nothing new in the debate except perhaps that there is now a lot of money to be made in the flogging of methods and textbooks.

It's great that there are now so many quality, exciting decodable schemes around now - for a long time there were hardly any. It's a good thing to have a selection at last.

"Mrz, it will be harder and harder for anyone to read for their own pleasure in homes where books are not provided once libraries are closed under this far-sighted government. The phonics policy is a sale of snake oil in the context of cuts that make it harder to get your hands on books."
Math that is why I've spent £100+ of my own money with the Book People so far this this month, on top of what I spend every month ... to buy books so these children will read for enjoyment ... I've just been to Tesco and come home with 4 children's books (OK Beast Quest so not the greatest literature in the world ) but if these 5, 6 & 7 year olds want to sit at break times and read then I'm going to encourage it.

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.

Most of the rhetoric on both sides comes from people who do not know the long history of what they are at, MaizieD.

I fully agree with the conclusions of the article I linked to earlier:
'1. The majority of children will learn to read no matter what the method.

1. The environment, attitudes, and expectations both within and without the school are more important than any method.

1. Any method can be less effective if it is the dull repetition of meaningless letters and phonics, or the rote memory of hundreds of whole words in boring stories. Any method can be made stimulating by a resourceful teacher. Dogmatic adherence to one method may be harmful; adaptability to a child and situation is likely to be more productive.'

There is nothing new in the debate except perhaps that there is now a lot of money to be made in the flogging of methods and textbooks.

Nothing new there, either. Publishing companies have made millions from Whole Word books and resources. Nobody worried much about that. The 'commercial interests' smear is just part of the rhetoric.

Hats off to you, Mrz.
The minister should be completely ashamed that a teacher would have to do this.

'1. The majority of children will learn to read no matter what the method.

They don't - 20% just don't. It's not good enough to just have to hope that your child isn't one of those one in five, that's too much of a risk.

20% is therefore the minority, Feenie.
80% being the majority that learns to read no matter what the method.

There has always been this stubborn minority that does not learn, by whatever method, to read.

I think in all this rhetoric about phonics fanatics (and worse) people lose sight of the fact that we love books and want all children to have the skills to become readers and experience for themselves to joy of a good book