Synthetic Phonics

[Patrica1929]

I am very concerned about the teaching of reading using Synthetic Phonics in primary schools. (This is now part of the National Curriculum.) Yes, teachers may be becoming more successful at drilling children to pass the spelling tests of words and non words learnt by the blending together of 44 sounds, but at what expense. This method excludes and positively prohibits the use of word recognition, reading for meaning, the use of pictures for clues and the learning of key words. It is a mechanical process which can hold up children who are ready to learn to read for meaning and enjoyment and which could actually put them off reading. See the report by the 'United Kingdom Literary Association' entitled 'Children need more than Synthetic Phonics' and if you are concerned complain to schools and to the government.

"but at what expense"

??

Synthetic phonics "works" for about 95% of children.

The best any other method, or mix of method, manages is about 80%

It's a damned good thing that the children are taught by the centuries-old, well-evidenced system, rather than being stuck in twentieth century fads that simply do not work as well.

I would be very concerned about any school NOT teaching using phonics!

I'd hate my DC to have learned by word recognition. It's just barking at print, like Chinese classrooms (where it has to be done by rote because of the characteristics of the language).

Code-breaking is much more appealing than the repetitive rote learning of word recognition.

Synthetic phonics does work for the majority of children. Personally I'd like the freedom to teach word recognition too for children for whom phonics doesn't work as well (we do but just not when our inspector friends are around)

I'm very concerned that you think guessing using picture clues is reading! How many whole classes of children have you successes taught to guess read, Patricia?

Well, you will have to use other, specialised approaches with those who struggle.

But presumably it's better all round if the teacher is typically doing this for 1 or 2 children per class, rather than the 6 or so who would struggle if it were not phonics first?

Successfully. My decoding skills spotted my kindle's autocorrect.

This method excludes and positively prohibits the use of word recognition, reading for meaning

Utter rubbish! SSP aims for children to reach "automaticity" the point they can read the word automatically without sounding out and surely the purpose of being able to accurately decode words is in order to accuratelyextract meaning no guessing needed.

but at what expense.

What do you think the expense is? I haven't seen any but I'm sure you can enlighten us all.

The UKLA is not really a reliable source of information. They are surprisingly ill-informed given the importance they seem to have given themselves.

The only expense I can see is that the English language isnt 100% logical. Dd automatically decodes which is good but then comes across the word 'sew' in a book this week how was she meant to know it doesn't rhyme with 'mew', 'blew' and 'threw'? So we have to have the 'yeah, correct sounding out but the word doesn't do that' conversation.

That said I still think out of all the options it is the best way as it works most of the time.

We don't know anything about new words until we meet them it's how we build vocabulary and knowledge.

I dont understand what you mean, she knew the word in speech. It is correctable by thinking back or looking at the picture but not from phonics.

How would you know it using whole word memorisations, Picture clues, Meaning, until you meet it?

Can you sew? Doesn't provide any clues what the word means or how it's pronounced ??

Yes you could give it in a list of words to memorise ... Or you could simply explain that ew is the spelling for /oe/ in sew

She just hasn't learnt that particular grapheme for /oe/ - agree with mrz, just teach her!

But learnt phoneme or not you can't possibly know which one it is from reading the word the first time

I think one issue is that parents aren't experts in phonics but we are playing a massive part in teaching children to read. Particularly those who are considered 'good readers'. I find it annoys dd when she sounds out words and gets it wrong. It makes her more likely to give up when faced with multi syllable ones.

But nothing is perfect, obviously.

'But learnt phoneme or not you can't possibly know which one it is from reading the word the first time'

That's correct. Phonics is not a one-to-one set of correspondences in either direction, and it is wrong to suggest it is (or to criticise it for not being something it never has been).

Learning to recall and apply the possible sounds until one 'sounds right' is part of learning how to decode. It's also the bit that is, sometimes consciously, used by adults when they meet a new word.

If you depend on word recognition, it's not a case of trying a few (usually vowel) sounds, but just guessing the word. Much less secure, and generally slower as you're comparing whole vocab or looking at things other than the test, rather than a small set of possibles.

I think you are right Toby. We have an issue with training, in that many of the local trainers were the same people who had previously been training teachers whole language methods. A lot of whom probably didn't know much more than the teachers they were training.

As a result 'phonics' teaching is a total mess. With a lot of sub-optimal phonics teaching (through no fault of the teachers) because there's a huge misunderstanding about what it is, what it isn't and how it fits into the teaching of reading and writing as a whole.

And since parents are probably doing most of the reading with their child, they are having to fill in the gaps that are left.

I've had 4 kids go through different reading systems. There are a few problems with the phonics that I've encountered, possibly not as a result of phonics itself but because of implementation.

I've posted on this before, but the Y1 phonics test is crazy imo. It's illogical, because as others have said on here, the English language is not always predictable, so you can't always know which of the possibilities it is. In the made up words section, any 'plausible' reading is ok. In the 'real words' section, you have to get the 'right' pronunciation.

So using the word 'sew' - if you pronounced it 'soo' you would not get it right. If however in the made up word bit you had the word 'trew', a pronunciation of 'troo' would be ok. They say it's not a reading test, but phonics 'screening' but then the marking is illogical.

I also think ds3 has struggled through using phonics. He has a very visual memory, but he really finds it hard to turn the 'decoded' word into a word he understands - so he will use the phonics to sound out the word, and will usually get it right, but doesn't then make the connection with the word. Whereas words he's learned, he remembers very quickly.

So typically, reading a book with him, he will say something like 'The car has a ...... w-h WH e-e- EE l WH EEEEEE L WH EEEEEE L WH EEEEE L WHEEL' - what is that?'

It takes a long time to get from him saying the word correctly to getting what it is iyswim. Once he's read it, he's memorised it, so he then reads it easily with understanding.

With my other kids, the eldest went through pre-phonics, and that really suited him - they did a bit of phonics at school but he didn't really get the idea of blending. Dd was just on the cusp of phonics, but she basically taught herself to read before school, Ds2 did phonics with a bit of other thrown in, but he seemed to go from no reading to fluent reading overnight, we didn't have much of a progression! (Literally - the teacher heard him read one day and put him up 6 reading levels!!!).

I'm never sure what people mean when they say English is unpredictable
The letter X never represents the sound at the beginning of apple and the spelling never represents the sound /oe/ so it's quite predictable if complex.
In 1955 Flesch concluded that English is 98% phonetic.

Ok, what I mean is that you can't know which of the possible pronunciations it is if you're unfamiliar with the word. Welsh is a totally phonetic language, but English is not predictable in the same way.

Even though English us complex there is still a high level of predictability (and a certain amount of flexibility to account for different accents).

But the phonics test is still illogical, the idea that there can be several plausible pronunciations, which is ok in the 'made up words' but not in the 'real words' section.

And as I posted before, decoding does not seem to help ds3 to read - he can decode really well, so his mouth is saying the correct sounds, but he really finds it hard to get from that point to understanding what word he is saying. (he doesn't have any speech/language issues - I just think he finds phonics unhelpful!).

The phonics screening check is perfectly logical which is why similar checks have been successfully used by Educational Psychologists and SENCOs for decades to identify reading/spelling difficulties.

It is illogical, it should have been 40 non-words, but they are unlikely to change it.

If he can decode the word accurately (say the whole word) and doesn't understand the word it seems to indicate a gap in his understanding which would be there even if he read the word as a whole. If you can read a word and its in your vocabulary why wouldn't you know it's meaning? If the word isn't in a child's vocabulary then someone needs to explain the meaning regardless of how the word is arrived at.