Advice from phonics experts please

[phonicsgovernor]

I am a school governor with a (second) child in reception. Over the past couple of weeks we have had ORT books home that were not fully decodable. They are still in the single letter sound stages of teaching phonics but the books included the words bike, look and dinosaur.

Now, my child is fine - I can access other materials for him. But the school serves quite a deprived area, with higher levels of FSM, SEN, EAL and MENA children. And I'm wondering if there will be children who are not fine.

I spoke to the head of KS1, who is excellent and lovely, and she couldn't see the problem with the odd word not being decodable. So - is it a problem, and if it is, how should I tackle it?

Paper - thanks, yes it is.

I've been thinking some more, and I'm really not sure what to do next. I don't want to make everyone jump through hoops and stop them doing other really good things just to prove a point. The children are being taught phonics well in school. The school is really committed to improving reading. And I don't want to get in the way of that just because one book has "dinosaur" in it...

However, the books used in school don't get sent home because they don't necessarily come back. She believes that 85% of the books sent home will be appropriate, and has binned a lot of the books we were using before. So, some of the books that are sent home are not entirely decodable with children's current knowledge. Partly this is cost related. But she also thought it was fine for "dinosaur" to be in a Stage1+ book for a couple of reasons: some children will be slower to pick up reading, but still want to have books with interesting stories to keep them engaged; and it's important to develop comprehension skills alongside decoding skills (she quoted the Simple View of Reading).

Does the school run any sessions for parents to show them how they can support their children at home? If the information you've given us here had been made explicit to you from the start and you'd been given a 'steer' on how to deal with words like 'dinosaur' when they are beyond a child's phonics knowledge, would you have felt much happier about how your child was being taught?

If this isn't happening perhaps you could suggest that it does? I know that a number of parents don't appear to be interested in their children's education but I always think it's worth helping any interested parents to understand what is going on. Especially as reading is such a very critical skill.

I'm glad it seems to have worked out well for you. It's been an interesting thread.

There haven't been any sessions because it's really hard to get parents to come in for things like that. But I agree with your point about giving interested parents more of a briefing.

Before any parent gets too excited about Synthetic Phonics only reading programmes, they might like to check out:-

"To read or not to read: decoding Synthetic Phonics" - free download from
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2048-416X.2013.12000.x/abstract

And details of the launch of this publication at
community.tes.co.uk/tes_opinion/f/31/t/642283.aspx?pi2132219857=26

Bloody ridiculous - relies on the theory that all phonics advocates think phonics instruction = the teaching of reading comprehension. NOBODY THINKS THIS.

Phonics instruction teaches decoding effectively - but never without the the teaching of comprehension on top, or without the encouragement of enjoyment of reading either.

Pffft.

Jackie's just happy to get an invite for wine with Andrew

readitdaddy.blogspot.co.uk/

What is even more ridiculous is that Davis is trying to tell us that SP can't be taught because it is based on phonemes and phonemes, according to a modern researcher, don't exist.

How he reconciles this with his preference for teaching 'analytic phonics' which is also partly phoneme based, I don't know.

While it is true that the units of sound on which SP is based are only very generalised, as modern recording equipment will show that the same 'phonemes' in two different words are not identical, but that is with technology only developed in the last few decades. Writing was developed thousands of years ago and any good history of writing will tell you that alphabetic writing systems are based on the smallest unit of sound which our forebears could discern in words - what we know as a 'phoneme'.

If Mr Davis could come up with a compelling alternative theory of how our writing system was developed and thus, how his alternative theory might inform the effective teaching of reading, he might be worth listening to. As it is, his pamphlet appears to be a load of specious nonsense.

It's been known since the 1960s that synthetic phonics is superior to analytic phonics -see Prof.Chall. Learning to Read: the great debate.1967.

The NLS included analytic phonics but failed to lift literacy standards:

''£500m was spent on the National Literacy Strategy with almost no impact on reading levels''
Tymms &Merrell (2007) Standards and Quality in English Primary Schools Over Time: the national evidence
image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Education/documents/2007/11/01/overtime.pdf

Recent research has re-enforced the evidence that synthetic phonics is superior to analytic phonics:

www2.hull.ac.uk/science/pdf/johnston_etal.pdf
Long-term effects of synthetic v analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10 yr old boys and girls

www.teachlearnshare.gov.au/Strategy/08ec629c-ba03-4e82-b664-a07e010891d0
Tasmania. Smarter Schools approach to teaching beginning reading and spelling: ''It clearly identified that a synthetic approach to teaching reading and spelling was superior to an analytic approach''

And another thing, Mr. Davis should read up on categorical perception.

Happily for him, Diane McGuinness's book 'Growing a Reader from Birth' (excellent book BTW) has an 'easy read' paragraph or two on on the subject -see p35.

www.amazon.co.uk/Growing-Reader-Birth-Language-Literacy/dp/039333239X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1387468600&sr=8-1

''£500m was spent on the National Literacy Strategy with almost no impact on reading levels''

Yet Labour ministers were consistently claiming that they had 'transformed primary education', just as SP evangelists do now. When the next fad comes along, this one will also be dismissed as a failure, just like all other previous ones, and the rate of functional illiteracy among school leavers and adults will remain around 20%.

When something is exceptionally difficult to learn, a substantial number of pupils fail to flourish, no matter how hard teachers try, or what teaching method they use. They cannot overcome the inconsistencies of English spelling.

I can't really see the point of arriving at the Dept of Ed as a new secretary and pronouncing that all the necessary work has been done.

Yet Labour ministers were consistently claiming that they had 'transformed primary education', just as SP evangelists do now. When the next fad comes along, this one will also be dismissed as a failure, just like all other previous ones, and the rate of functional illiteracy among school leavers and adults will remain around 20%.

And you have the brass neck to claim that you are not 'anti-phonics'.

She can still claim she's not anti-phonics because none of the literacy failings are due to phonics. They're all due to bad teaching.

not according to masha, columngollum

I suppose it is a peer reviewed journal? Does IMPACT have known links one way or the other

No, it's not a peer reviewed journal. It's not a research paper. It's an opinion piece.

Andrew Davis is the assistant editor of the journal

'I suppose it is a peer reviewed journal? Does IMPACT have known links one way or the other?'

To be fair paper mover you hadn't read the report, but it is completely transparent in the paper - p2 and p37.

He makes the extremely relevant point about there being no one SP way - there are a variety of schemes on the market, which brings the research into SP into question; "current research into SP ‘effectiveness’ is not in- formed by a detailed blow by blow description of what actually happens in the classrooms concerned. Hence, it is never really made clear what the research is actually investigating." The RRF (where "We have all been convinced by a wealth of evidence that a method known as synthetic phonics is the most effective for teaching everyone to read.") website shows how there is great disagreement among SP proponents on how to teach SP.

IMPACT is a "spin off" of the Journal of Philosophy of Education. Andrew Davis teaches philiosophy at Durham and hasn't been in a classroom for three decades. Earlier this year I invited him to come and watch a lesson so he would be better informed but he declined.

interestingly his colleague at Durham valued our contribution and invited members of staff to talk to students about teaching phonics
(Feedback from students was 100% positive)

The RRF (where "We have all been convinced by a wealth of evidence that a method known as synthetic phonics is the most effective for teaching everyone to read.") website shows how there is great disagreement among SP proponents on how to teach SP.

I wonder if you could provide a link to this 'great disagreement' on the RRF website?

I would agree that there are a number of different approaches to the teaching of SP but, the essential point is that all the reputable SP programmes conform to the principles of SP teaching. These principles are clearly set out in a document which can be accessed from the RRF Home Page.

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/Final_03__The_Synthetic_Phonics_Teaching_Principles%2011-2-10.pdf

Davis is setting up a straw man when he proposes that SP cannot be researched because of differences in classroom practice. He is either completely ignorant of the fact that SP is a set of principles or he is deliberately pretending that it should be a detailed 'programme' in order to accuse it of being opaque and unquantifiable. Which is nonsense. SP programmes can be easily identified by their conformity to the SP principles.

page 4 of the RRF discussion which links to this one seems to have gone!...