Phonics training for teachers

[mrz]

www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/DfE%20Report%20on%20Sounds-Write%20Feb%202013.pdf

thanks allchildrenreading - assume I don't have to be working as a teacher currently to access the training?

DS1 isn't struggling but I'm struggling to move his reading on cos I don't know how to get him past the 'sounding out' stage without just getting him to memorise the word, which thankfully he's very good at but it's not going to help him when he's reading alone!

"It would be very useful if there could be some proper research done on the different SP/LP programmes; it might determine just which aspects of them are most effective and enable programme developers to really fine tune their programmes."
I agree this needs to be the next step to ensure we can teach "every child" possible to read
Like you I haven't attended the training but I have observed lessons where children write the "sound" on their partner's back but I'm not sure if this is part of the programme or something the teachers added.

It would be pretty hard to design a study to compare different schemes. Too many variables you can't control.

And of course, who would pay for the study?

I think the key though is to observe the kids with learning difficulties. Only the best schemes will reach those kids.

(And IME RWI does not reach those kids)

I think the key though is to observe the kids with learning difficulties. Only the best schemes will reach those kids.

Using that criteria Sounds-Write is working for our pupils

It would be pretty hard to design a study to compare different schemes. Too many variables you can't control.

Until such time as it happens all you have to go on is anecdotal experience and results from various schools. Every programme developer I know (and I know more that one or two...) can point you to schools where their programme has excellent results and where no children are left struggling.

Yes, I'm happy to look at anecdotal data.

But a big factor in program effectiveness is how well it works in all schools that adopt it, not just the model schools.

Which is why there are so many uncontrollable variables.

For example I know a school that uses Sounds Write 15 minutes 3 times a week. I don't think that will give them the results they're hoping for....

What I mean is that these schemes are brands. You would expect RWI or SW or whatever to have the same effectiveness in every school. But they don't. For lots of reasons. Only some of which are due to the program.

What I mean is that these schemes are brands. You would expect RWI or SW or whatever to have the same effectiveness in every school.

I think that is rather a novel way of looking at it! Brands...

No, I wouldn't expect them to work in every school because, for a start, teachers aren't always trained to use them. Sounds~Write is the only programme that I know of in schools which you cannot buy 'off the shelf'. The cost of the programme includes their training, you can't get it without training. Even then, it doesn't always get used as it should.

DS1 isn't struggling but I'm struggling to move his reading on cos I don't know how to get him past the 'sounding out' stage without just getting him to memorise the word, which thankfully he's very good at but it's not going to help him when he's reading alone!

Domestic CEO,

There are various suggestions you can make to encourage your child to stop sounding out every word, but he may be doing it because he still needs to sound out the words. Some children 'get it' quite quickly but others take multiple repetitions of sounding out and blending in order to get words into long term memory (sometimes hundreds). If you force him to say the whole word without sounding out you may well end up with a 'guesser' on your hands as he tries very hard to please you by saying a complete word straight off when he still really can't work it out without sounding it out.

You can ask him to sound it out 'in his head' before saying the whole word, or whisper the sounding out bit first, or sound it out very fast so that the word comes first time. Timed accurate reading may help him to break what might have become a habit. But please don't give him the idea that sounding out is undesirable. It's fine for as long as he needs to do it.

Thanks Maizie .

I don't think I explained myself very well. I'm more than happy for him to sound out words like cat and pat, etc, but then he sounds each letter in words like fright and play and of course when he puts the letters together they don't spell the word!

Does that make sense?

He needs to learn 'ay' and 'igh' etc as sounds. it's a big leap from CVC words.

You say (something along the lines of) these 2 letters 'ay' make one sound - ay

2 letters 1 sound.

What C&C says

Has he been taught these graphemes at school yet?

DomesticCEO - no you don't have to be a teacher. I've done two SRS trainings and one before that - the original U.S. training that S~W, SRS,and others on the Reading Reform Foundation Committee attended. The feedback from SRS is phenomenal - but those who have S~W training might well say the say.

MY difficulty is that I've learned a lot from linguistic phonics and also from synthetic phonics programmes but simply love the pared down, pragmatic, economical and long-term researched programme that I now promote. BRI was originally designed so that it worked 'whatever...' Possibly, in 4-5 years time, there won't be the money to spend and it's worth 'digging' into the alphabetic code logic so that its characteristics can be simply applied - by teachers, tutors, volunteers -and needn't cost an arm and a leg. And, more than ever, we need children to get into sustained reading asap.

gi

Thanks for the replies - don't know if he's learnt these sounds yet, he's in YR and I used to teach Y6 so this is all foreign to me!

Thanks allchildren, will def look info this!

DomesticCEO - Maizie is right - some children need hundreds of repetitions before they progress from sounding through the word to reading words smoothly. If you look at a couple of minutes of the 4 year old Reception boy sounding out words it may seem laborious but now 2 years later he's got a reading age of 9.Good foundations and plenty of practice pay huge dividends.

I'm still not making myself clear .

He knows all his individual letters but when he hits a word he doesn't know and sounds out each letter then builds the word back up it doesn't make the word IYSWIM? That's why I think the sound-read system makes more sense because it teaches the combination sounds.

Does he know that a sound can be written with 1, 2 , 3 or 4 letters or is he sounding out each individual letter in the word?

using your example of light does he say l-igh-t or l-i-g-h-t?

Mrz is making a really good point.

IM(limited)E pupils that struggle with reading are saying l-i-g-h-t and then are utterly baffled as to why the word has no g sound in it.

ATM I am picking sounds and emphasising that it is a sound made up of letters. This can be quite a novel concept apparently - and the pupils I am teaching are years 3 - 5.

I think it is difficult to get them to look for patterns/sounds that they know instead of just the letter on its own.

So, when I look at the word 'light' I see l - igh - t because I know that more often than not, the 'igh' makes an 'eye' sound.

The pupils I am teaching see luh i guh huh tuh - there is no way they are goign to make l eye t out of that!

Twilback - How early on the teaching do you introduce the concept that 2 or more letters can represent a single sound? Or do you think that one-to-one correspondence is too embedded for some children to cope with l sound /2-3-4 letters?

allchildrenreading: I think you might have hit a good point there. Around here the nurseries and daycare settings start playing with jolly phonics when the DCs are maybe 2 years old. Most of the children love it and learn the a-a-ants and s-s-nakes with actions etc. But they probably stick mainly with single letters until they get to reception, by which time one letter one sound is pretty entrenched.

I know that in the nursery in our school they do as choccy says. I have no experience of the foundation phase whatsoever, so I am pretty useless in terms of answering your question I'm afraid

Sounds-Write (and I imagine SRS) teach the concepts that sounds can be represented by one, two, three or four letters, that one sound can have different spellings, that one spelling can represent different sounds as well as the knowledge that there are approx 175-180 ways to spell the 44ish sounds of spoken English. I would imagine it is more difficult when children reach KS2 without this understanding.

Mrz, no be only gets the idea of one letter one sound so I need to move in from there.

This thread has been v helpful both personally and professionally!

It might be helpful to start with double letters hiss huff buzz then ...

Thank you . Will try that. He's poorly at the mo or would be doing it now!

Interesting discussion.

All the SP and LP programmes teach that a sound can be represented by more than one letter, but I can see that if the children are 'doing' something like JP very early and not moved on from 'single' letter sounds at the pace set out in the programme they can end up with a mistaken impression of how letters 'work'. Which is a real shame because that is just the sort of thing which SP & LP programmes were written to circumvent.