Systematic synthetic phonics NOT the best way to teach children to read, evidence suggests

[incorrigiblyplural]

See the most recent review of all existing research:

www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/131686/little-evidence-in-favour-of-systematic-synthetic-phonics-research-review-concludes-.thtml

“There is little evidence” in favour of any one approach to the teaching of phonics over another, a major new research study has concluded, in what looks like a direct challenge to recent government policy.
A team of academics from the universities of Durham and Sheffield carried out a “tertiary” review of studies of the teaching of reading. This was a synthesis of all existing research on the subject, with the team evaluating the findings of 12 “systematic reviews” of existing research, which themselves embraced 452 individual studies in total.
The exercise provided what the researchers, Carole Torgerson, Greg Brooks, Louise Gascoine and Steve Higgins, describe as the “most up-to-date overview of the results and quality of the research on phonics,” across a number of countries.

How the OP can conclude that this research supports her position that phonics should be taught less or possible not at all when it states:

Since there is evidence that systematic phonics teaching benefits children’s reading accuracy, it should be part of every literacy teacher’s repertoire and a routine part of literacy teaching, in a judicious balance with other elements.

Teachers who already use systematic phonics in their teaching should continue to do so; teachers who do not should add systematic phonics to their routine practices.

Moreover, there is no RCT evidence for one common objection to the use of phonics:

• There is no justification for withholding phonics from either normally-developing children or those at risk of reading failure as both may benefit and it should be used with both.

The second article’s amusing, but not in the way you would like.

He’s basically asking Ofsted for evidence to back up an assertion they made about the importance of teaching systematic phonics in reception in their recent early years publication. They gave him this journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543071003393 which he attempts to argue that the abstract doesn’t support the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. You’d have to be stretching to to claim it doesn’t support the teaching of phonics though.

He then falls down a really odd Clackmannanshire hole. And not the one that gets most people. Ofsted then pointed him in the direction of a study where 190 ten year olds from the Clack study were compared with a similar number of English ten year olds educated under the NLS and Progression in Phonics. The Clack study kids out performed the English kids in word recognition, spelling and comprehension. At which point he tries to take the methodology apart by claiming we have no idea how the English kids were taught to read (true) and even if they were taught using PiPs, then PiPs is synthetic phonics (not true).

Neither of these studies support the idea that we shouldn’t teach reading through phonics. At best you could possibly support claim that as long as you do it systematically it doesn’t matter whether you use analytic or synthetic.

Reading has two steps really. The first is to translate the written text into sound ('sound it out') the second is to understand the meaning. Reading doesn't itself help you understand meaning, although by seeing words in context multiple times meaning becomes clear. Alternatively dictionaries provide the meaning, but ideally small children have a large enough spoken vocabulary not to need dictionaries too often as once they decode the word they know what it means as it is familiar. Over time we learn other ways to figure out meaning, for example because we understand the roots of parts of words (like poly in polyandrous or polyhedron) or we learn other languages and spot the borrowed terms.

Developing a large and varied vocabulary and learning how words can be used is an important part of literacy but if you can't read you are blocked from much of this (or like my ds your written and spoken language get out of step).

"Since there is evidence that systematic phonics teaching benefits children’s reading accuracy, it should be part of every literacy teacher’s repertoire and a routine part of literacy teaching, in a judicious balance with other elements. "

"That bit in bold is quite a break from the current position." Not at all. going back to 2006 and Rose "phonic work is taught successfully within a language-rich curriculum. All this provides a strong foundation for early phonic work that in no way compromises the broader early years curriculum."
"At best, our settings and schools draw upon these factors and embody the principles of high quality phonic work within a language- rich curriculum that gives rise to high standards of reading and writing." Etc etc etc...

Little evidence on the effect of systematic phonics on reading comprehension? Isn't comprehension the whole point of reading?

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching decoding, not comprehension. You can't comprehend something you can't actually read in the first place. As with all methods of teaching decoding, comprehension must be taught alongside.

This is not news.

I think that’s the previous paper fredfredgeorge

Well that was an embarrassing cock up...

Not at all. It took me a while to try and find the publication date on it.

Miouw, if you’re channelling Marsha, you need a list.

nooka - thanks so much for finding a free link to the paper under discussion.

However, you seriously mischaracterise my OP.

Nowhere do I claim that all phonics teaching is useless, any more than the article or paper claim that. My position is rather, as the article and paper suggest, that it is likely to be a useful tool in the armoury.

BUT not the only tool in the armoury.

The paper says: "The evidence that systematic phonics teaching benefits childrens reading accuracy further implies that learning to use systematic phonics in a judicious balance with other elements should form part of every literacy teachers training. "

Again, I stress the with other elements.

The paper goes out of its way to make it clear that there is no clear evidence that systematic synthetic phonics is the only or best way to teach all children to read, as existing studies have small sample sizes, poor methodologies and only one was conducted in the UK. In addition, it stresses that publication bias is likely to have affected what research is available to be seen.

Again: "Generally the trials were small and few in number, and the quality of reporting of their methods was variable, but all trials only included small sample sizes. In addition, there was huge variation in the amount of phonics teaching, ranging from just a few hours to well over 100. The evidence in this review did not provide any warrant for exclusive teaching of reading using a phonics approach, but rather provided moderate evidence for using a systematic phonics approach within a broad literacy curriculum. "

And as we're discussing anecdotal evidence, Nooka, I have seen numerous children whose passion for reading was slowly destroyed by being forced to read shit literature that was chosen just because every word was a nice phonetically regular word, that obeyed all the rules. By the time they had been deemed able to read books with a range of normal words, any idea that books were anything other than a tedious test of word recognition had been entirely removed.

Nearly all those children struggle with spelling too.

If you are a teacher in the UK and DON'T CARE that there is no evidence base for teaching only systematic synthetic phonics, then you should.

Nooka, I think that’s the same link that Fredfredgeorge linked to earlier.

There are two Torgerson and Brooks papers. The first was published in 2005/2006 and is the one you linked to. The second is a new one and is the one referred to in the article the OP posted.

Whichever paper you look at, what doesn’t help is that we don’t really have a common vocab around this topic. Often people are using the same terms to mean very different things. Partly I think because the terms are quite wishy washy. Other times people have attributed a meaning to a term that wasn’t initially meant.

Balanced literacy, broad literacy, other elements and mixed methods all seem to have this issue IME.

I have to say, I am quite disappointed by this thread. I was expecting a huge game with hundreds of posts, but not to be.

In any case, I am quite confused... What is the paper actually saying? What is a "balanced approach" and, even more importantly, what is an "UNbalanced approach"?

I have seen numerous children whose passion for reading was slowly destroyed by being forced to read shit literature that was chosen just because every word was a nice phonetically regular word, that obeyed all the rules. By the time they had been deemed able to read books with a range of normal words, any idea that books were anything other than a tedious test of word recognition had been entirely removed.

I am glad that this did not happen to my DS. Teaching exclusively with synthetic phonics would have left him a complete non reader until age 6. He was taught synthetic phonics and learnt the sounds but was unable to blend the sounds to sound out words.

The lack of the paper kills it Arkadia so we're stuck in the situation of not knowing if the approach is talking about phonics teaching (which would be new and controversial with the current curriculum advice) or if it's talking about literacy teaching (which would be nothing new at all, that rich literature goes along side.)

It really just demonstrates why open access is so important, we can't even have a bunfight on mumsnet 'cos of the journals. Surprised the broad group doing their follow up paper didn't get the money from the same funding body (which would have open accessed it)

Ah RafaIsTheKingOfClay that would make a lot of sense, although it seems to be the paper that incorrigiblyplural is also referring to (at least in their last post).

Not much point having a discussion if we aren't all looking at the same paper really, and I agree there are a lot of very woolly terms being used. Is the new paper available anywhere?

Does anywhere teach only using synthetics phonics anyway? Threads here on mumsnet suggest there are plenty of schools still expecting children to learn words off by heart and to guess from context still.

incorrigablyplural while a method which leaves some children bored by reading is obviously an issue I would have been much happier with that for my child compared with an approach which left him effectively completely illiterate.

I have seen numerous children whose passion for reading was slowly destroyed by being forced to read shit literature that was chosen just because every word was a nice phonetically regular word, that obeyed all the rules.

No you haven't, that's just bollocks. For a start, you can make 40 different words with just the first six sounds of any phonics scheme. Compare that with the heavy repetition of a sight reading scheme that has to do so to hammer just a few words home.

Perhaps one could write to the authors...

And there are several high quality phonics schemes around to choose from.

Although I wouldn’t mind seeing a study comparing them. Particularly one which looked at what teachers were actually teaching as opposed to what they were supposed to be teaching.

I was taught by look and say 30 years or more ago. Peter and Jane are as our main scheme. My spelling has improved massively since learning phonics with my 8 and 9 year olds. So I think it does work and is best way to start reading for most kids. Look and say is very hit and miss.

If he was taught only synthetic phonics, he would have likely struggled with reading through all of reception and year one. One of the children in my family had this problem. In year 2 everyone was getting very worried about his total lack of progress in reading, he was taken out of class every day for 1 to 1 with a TA which he hated and made no difference. So at the end of year 2 he couldn't read.

That summer we started whole words and by the time he returned to school he was no longer the worst reader in the class. By the end of year 3 he was just about at the expected level. Now in year 6 he is a good reader, reads all the time.

Learning spellings last week he said he wished he had never learned phonics because it made spelling hard as he still tries to apply the rules and they frequently don't work.

I think phonics must work for some children but it doesn't work for them all and if it doesn't work it can be disastrous for some children. I was talking to a SENCO about this, she said it is frustrating as the cure for children when phonics doesn't work is more phonics. What is that saying about doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome being madness? Something like that anyway.