Any good phonics research articles out there?

[Jurassicmumof2]

DS's school are totally pro mixed methods in terms of teaching children to read. They see decoding as a good backup for when a child either does not know the word or cannot guess it from the pictures (this is printed in the reading record). They teach some phonics but only the basic letter sounds, digraphs are taught 1 per week in year1, none in reception. As I say, they believe they are unnecessary as words should be learnt or guessed using basic letter sound knowledge and picture clues. Unfortunately for DS, whole word learning doesn't seem to really work for him but he makes good progress with phonics when we dedicate time to it at home. We did this over the summer but his progress is being eroded again with the start of the school term. The teachers look at me blankly when I try to explain that you can decode words such as look, come, night etc given the right tools. Anyone know of any research I can show to them that illustrates the benefits of phonics? Or any other ideas? Thanks in advance.

but, as I said at the start, the op is worrying too much, almost all children learn to read, it is virtually impossible to prevent it, and the "scheme" followed doesn't make one whit of difference.

But all children don't learn to read ... That's the problem! If they did there would be no illiterate adults.

I can assure you, charis3, having worked with them at KS3 for a number of years, that all children most certainly don't learn to read with reasonable degree of competence.

I've known probably 30-40, maybe, who's literacy skills deteriorated once the started smoking cannabis

Been smoking anything, by any chance, charis?

"but by far the biggest group of "illiterate" adults that I personally know are the ones who use it as an excuse not to work, and hide their literacy..

I don't know anyone who is illiterate. So by the logic, the issue doesn't exist.

The cannabis argument is a new one. Although I'm now trying to resist the temptation to design a small study. Ethics approval could be tricky.

The rest of it you've argued before and it was ridiculous then too. The problem is that the definition of a reading disability ends up becoming 'children who don't learn to read through exposure to text'. You have no way of nullifying your argument.

The fact that there are hundreds of school up and down the country who have improved their reading results by changing the way they teach it does undermine your argument slightly.