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.

Very good point tobysmum. Both about the proportion of reading instruction that happens at home, and some parents not understanding. You have to know you don't know something before you can find it out. Though there's also a none of this modern rubbish mixed methods worked fine for me school of thought, a la OP. (Apparently the latter goes for some schools too...)

Catkind - Several Ofsted reports over the past few years have said that nearly all primary schools now teach phonics well. They may not do it as well as mrz, but pretty well.

The worst thing that phonics evangelists do for parents is leaving them needlessly worried that their way of helping children might be doing them harm. - Especially that teaching them to read a few words as wholes might make them incapable of learning phonics. This is pure nonsense.

I have probably said this before, but with English spelling being what it is, progress with learning to read and write English depends mainly on the amount of teaching a child needs and receives, and much less on any particular teaching method. Some children learn to read with minimal teaching. Their innate abilities enable them to learn to read, and even to spell, words like ‘thought, through’ and ‘though’ with surprising ease. Others can do so only after meeting and writing them very many times, as I experienced with my own two children. This is the case with phonics as with all other approaches.

I have learnt a lot about phonics from having two children. Certainly my knowledge of the extended code is better than seven years ago when my son was learning phonics.

There is lots of information on the web and also a lot a shite like certain posters who campaign for spelling reform. I think it is hard for non experienced parents without teaching qualifications to discern the shite from knowledge.

Most of us only have experience of one or two schools. It's easy to think what is happening in our children's school is a nation a problem rather than a local problem. I am relieved that the majority of schools do not conduct the phonics check like my daughter's school did.

Mrz - The fact that your son was an excellent reader, although he hadn't a clue when it came to phonics proves that it is perfectly possible to learn to read without receiving any phonics teaching whatsoever.

He was clearly a bit unusual, since he could read the FT at around age 2.5, as u have often claimed. U imagine that phonics would somehow have made a big difference to him, but it is difficult to see how.

His reading was excellent. For learning to spell the 4,000 words with tricky bits in them (friend, head, said... speak, seek, shriek ... blue, shoe, flew) phonics is of limited help.

Children who are extremely good at phonics often find learning to spell harder than others. It's all very well knowing all the different ways an English sound can be spelt. It does not help with knowing which one applies to a particular word. That comes with lots of practice.

Some children become good spellers simply by reading a lot. Others only with lots and lots of writing practice, quite irrespective of the method they are taught with.

Reallytired
There is lots of information on the web and also a lot a shite.
I agree, although u probably include me among the latter, because i have often pointed out that if English spelling was modernised, Anglophone countries would not have the high rates of literacy failure which they all share, which is really a complete no-brainer.

I don't campaign for spelling reform. I have taken the trouble to establish exactly how regular and irregular English spelling is and have been trying to make people more aware of this. Most still think that English spelling is much like other writing systems and have never given any thought to the costs which its irregularities incur. But that's irrelevant to this discussion and does not pre-occupy me much any longer, although it did a bit more a decade or so ago.

I have been explaining what English spelling is like, in comparison with other alphabetic writing systems, and how it affects learning, because i think that knowing what makes something difficult to learn helps with teaching it, and also to have sensible discussions about it.

The worst thing that phonics evangelists do for parents is leaving them needlessly worried that their way of helping children might be doing them harm. - Especially that teaching them to read a few words as wholes might make them incapable of learning phonics. This is pure nonsense.

Hi, this is how I feel having read this and similar threads on phonics.

DD has just started reception. Prior to starting school she has somehow amassed quite a large sight vocabulary - I would say easily in excess of 100 words now. We haven't actively taught her any - she's just picked them up from here, there and everywhere. How do you stop an observant, inquisitive child with a good memory from learning whole words?

We didn't go near phonics with her, felt it was best to leave that to school. After coming home with a wordless book at first, I noted in her reading diary that she could read all the words on the cover. Since then she's been bringing home ORT yellow band books which she gets through quite well.

What I have noticed though is that she is quite quick to guess a word she doesn't know and assign something that just starts or looks similar. For example she guessed "sad" as "sainsburys" - now obviously she doesn't have the skills to blend (I don't think they've started phonics in earnest yet) but she could know through context that isn't likely to be right. "Jan" in last night's book was consistently read as "Jayden" (I'm guessing there's a Jayden in her class!)

So - basically I'm concerned that once she has been taught to blend, that she's going to be lazy and just guess them to be words she does know instead. I know it's early days and there might be no problems whatsoever. But if there are, how could we have prevented her from learning whole words?

lashawn, as long as you are consistent encouraging decoding for unknown words, she will be fine. Both my DC were taught pure phonics as far as I can discern and still had guessing phases. No you can't stop them learning stuff!

A friend's son, like mrz's, had learn to the reading chapter books stage as a preschooler but couldn't decode. His teacher put him somewhere towards the top of the reading scheme, below what he could actually read but high enough to keep him interested. His sight words actually helped him to bootstrap his phonics, no problem at all.

It's a very different thing from school or parents encouraging guessing from the pictures or from the first letter as a strategy - in that case the guessing habit gets reinforced not phased out.

Masha, the problem is parents who don't realise it's a problem - they're not worried. And the ones who do have oodles of resources to find out how phonics is taught, so no worries there either.

Several Ofsted reports over the past few years have said that nearly all primary schools now teach phonics well.

No, they haven't.

I don't campaign for spelling reform.

Really? Is this another Masha Bell then?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6250184.stm

They've been campaigning for a century to make the spelling of the English language easier and recently picketed a spelling bee in the US to make their point. Welcome to the Simplified Spelling Society.

Masha Bell, a member of the society and author of Understanding English Spelling, believes that reform of the spelling of the English language could help children learn to read and make life easier for some adults too

Masha Bell | LinkedIn
uk.linkedin.com/pub/masha-bell/18/660/406
Bournemouth, United Kingdom - ?Independent literacy researcher and writer
View Masha Bell's (United Kingdom) professional profile on LinkedIn. ... All those things are part of my campaign to make more people aware of the problematic ...

Masha you can obviously provide links to Ofsted's praise of phonic teaching standards in England

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/464286/Ready_to_read_-_How_a_sample_of_primary_schools_in_Stoke-on-Trent_teach_people_to_read.pdf

Or are you making things up again?

THOUSANDS of children are falling behind with their reading because too little time is devoted to this essential skill in schools and the quality of teaching is patchy.

These are the findings of a major new Ofsted report , which has tracked the experiences of 12 primary schools in Stoke-on-Trent.

Inspectors discovered one school where some pupils only read to a member of staff once a fortnight.

And others were failing to properly teach the building blocks of reading – known as phonics – because their staff had not been trained in these techniques.

Read more: www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Ofsted-finds-thousands-pupils-Stoke-Trent-falling/story-21297733-detail/story.html#ixzz3no2xWwSF
Follow us: @SentinelStaffs on Twitter | sentinelstaffs on Facebook

Tobysmum you don't need to know the words digraph, trigraph, graphemes or phonemes to help your child you just need to be able to read.

As a parent Look at the word Say the word night (aloud if you want) how many sounds can you hear? What's the first sound? Which letter is representing the sound in the word ? What's the next sound ? What combination of letters are representing that sound in that word? What's the final sound? How is it spelt in the word?

I've gone right off phonics. It's the usual one-size-fits-all nonsense. Now it seems to be undermining my DD's ability to spell properly, and I think she might be one of those kids who does better with whole word recognition linked to pictures. It also seems to have got linked to putting a lot more emphasis on decoding and rather less on comprehension. Those two things ought to have their own weightings but proper comprehension seems to be losing out.

How many whole words will your DD be able to memorise?

The memorising thing is always brought up, and I think it must vary hugely from person to person. I always compare with music, but some musicians can memorise vast amounts of music, others find it hard to memorise at all.

Similarly, dh has chronically bad spelling, because he just can't remember what spelling some words have, and just writes them as they sound,I guess using phonics. I have a very good memory for words, and I reckon I use very little phonic strategy for spelling because I just know them (and likewise in reading).

I would buy the argument that phonics is the best overall system, and leaves the fewest children behind. I don't really buy into the more evangelical idea that it is the ONLY method for ALL children, even if it is the best system for the education system as a whole to use.

Are her spellings being corrected? Do you tell her "well done that is a way to spell that sound but in this word that sound is spelt this way?" That's phonics for spelling ... Or are her spellings being left to become entrenched? That's poor teaching ...nothing to do with phonics!

Well put LilyB, esp on the last point, but this is in a context where schools are working with one approach. SP might well be the choice that leaves fewest behind if there is to be one choice, but I am now pretty convinced that it is not doing my kinds any favours, and my DD is doing French entirely on Vocal building by whole words, which she loves!

Now it seems to be undermining my DD's ability to spell properly

And this is where we end up having a problem trying to figure out what is phonics and what is badly taught phonics. Well taught phonics doesn't undermine children's ability to spell, it improves it.

Dn1 is practically the poster child for 'children that learn better with whole words recognition'. Going to schools that teach synthetic/linguistic phonics well has had no negative effects on her spelling at all.

More specifically, this is a letters and sounds problem, IMO.

Seriously knowing phonics and the rules can only help spelling.
I learned in school with look & say (guess). Yes I can tell if my spelling "looks" wrong but juggling letters doesn't always get me an answer that looks right.
I remember trying to write either "be" or "by" when i was about 10, i had the "b" on the page and no clue what came next. Nor was it an easy word to rephrase the sentence to avoid using. "Certain" was a word that threw me for years well beyond school, if you can't get the first letter you have no hope of finding it in a dictionary (I hope teachers don't still tell kids to look for spelling in the dictionary) It was a tutor who taught me the soft sound for "c" and the vowels (e,i,) which follow.

Just to correct you catkind my son wasn't reading chapter books in preschool or in primary school or secondary for that matter. They just didn't interest him.

(I hope teachers don't still tell kids to look for spelling in the dictionary)

That was all they did for one of my dc who was a very poor speller.

She was supposed to just look up words in lessons to avoid spelling mistakes in work - then they complained writing with her took to long and was still full of mistakes - mostly as she didn't know the words were wrong.

They didn't correct spelling either - so she got wrong spelling reinforced all the time.

It was one of those schools that said they did phonics but actually did mixed teaching. I ended up teaching phonics at home with all of them then getting that undermined by the school.

Had DC either side of introduction of phonics test and did notice an improvement in that they did phonics for longer but as soon as they were past the test it was all mixed methods again.

Luckily we've changed schools now and the new school takes spelling seriously.

Feenie
I am no longer a member of the English Spelling Society
but I am still absolutely certain that
reform of the spelling of the English language could help children learn to read and make life easier for some adults too. I just can't see reform happening any time soon and am therefore no longer campaigning for it.

The main reason why I became interested in taking a closer look at English spelling 20 years ago was because my background of learning several languages made me think that blaming poor literacy standards in ALL Anglophone countries just on poor teaching was ridiculous. In the UK poor literacy standards were blamed entirely on poor teaching back then.

My main aim has consistently been to make people more aware of the problematic nature of ES and how it handicaps progress in learning to read and write. I do think that knowing what makes something difficult to learn helps with teaching it, and also to have sensible discussions about it.

The rabid promotion of SP as a cure-all for literacy problems makes it more essential than ever IMO.

I could be totally wrong, but I'm not sure that awareness of the problematic nature of ES and why it makes learning to read and write in English difficult has ever been a contentious issue. It's the one thing that everybody on both sides of the debate agrees on.

The issue is whether we
a) decide it's problematic and find a totally different way to teach it.
b) teach some of the Alphabetic Code, but not all of it, using completely different methods to teach the rest, while telling the children there is no pattern to it .
c) Teach a complete or almost complete alphabetic code alongside the principles of what makes ES difficult, morphology, some etymology and grammar.

spellingsociety.org/uploaded_views/pv13bell-personal-view.pdf

You're named as vice chairman of the society inthis piece from earlier this year masha ... When did they bar you?