Letters And Sounds/synthetic Phonics

[catma]

This may be of interest in the context of this debate.

Cx

Edited December 16, 2010 by catma

[Guest]

I totally agree with you Marion about schools not having the right books to support phonics teaching. Luckily we invested in phonics based reading books for the early stages and they have had such incredible impact. Head teachers need to understand the investment they are making by buying into a phonics scheme.

 

Blending to read using phonics should be the prime approach (except for tricky words) with the view to leading to fluent reading over time. So course missblinx, you are not going to make a child sound out and blend a word to read it if they can read by sight - thats common sense.

 

I think this is the important point often missed when discussing synthetic phonics. We want children to become fluent readers and fluency cannot be achieved by sounding out a word everytime you see it.. But that doesn't mean we teach children to read words by sight, they are taught to blend and over time they will start to recognise them them quickly - that way children have the skills to tackle unknown words using the code. Some children will only have to read the a word a few times to remember the word, many children 50 times and some children even more than that.

[Guest]

But it can work the other way round as well.

 

If I know from blending, and then from sight, that d-a-d comes out as dad, I can then (subconsciously perhaps) extrapolate the rule from that. So when I see 'bad' or 'had' I see that same shape, as well as sounding out that same sound.

 

Perhaps those children who 'get it' quickly are the visual learners?

[catma]

We mustn't forget that the decoding element of the simple view of reading is only one part...obviously there is the comprehension and understanding aspect which supports children with reading and they will use a variety of cues to make sense of what they read. Fluency is gained by a mix of competencies on both skill sets.

 

CX

[Guest]

But it can work the other way round as well.

 

If I know from blending, and then from sight, that d-a-d comes out as dad, I can then (subconsciously perhaps) extrapolate the rule from that. So when I see 'bad' or 'had' I see that same shape, as well as sounding out that same sound.

 

Perhaps those children who 'get it' quickly are the visual learners?

 

Thats true but the theory is that not everyone will be able to work out phonics for themselves. The idea is that phonics and blending works best for largest majority of children is why it is recommended as the primary method. Poor readers will be the ones with poor phonoloigcal awareness who can't extrapolate the rules.

[Guest]

But those who can (as in my daughter, see the original message) need to have the teacher differentiate, to ensure that they are not held back by being force fed synthetic phonics alone. Thankfully, her teacher does exactly that.

 

I always worry when one method in teaching is seen as the 'magic answer' that we have all been waiting for. As you'll know, there is no such thing!

 

English is such an irregular language, in some circumstances learning words by sight will be the simplest and most efficient method. If I try and 'decode' the last sentence I wrote by blending it would both take me forever and result in some very strange sounds!

 

I take your point about the weaker readers, but perhaps it's the phonological awareness that is the key (developed through speaking and listening mostly) rather than the phonics themselves.

[Susan]

Children soon become automatic if they are taught a phonetic code and given materials which they can access with it.

[Guest]

Automatic children sound like fun!

 

Something to think about:

 

When you read, do you 'sound out' the words in your head? Many adults do (having been taught that reading is about sound), even though there is actually no need to do so. This slows down the average adult reader, and it means that many read only a few books a month/year.

 

Learn to speed read (try Tony Buzan's books) and you can double or even triple your reading speed. I get through maybe 3 books a week (and also write for a living).

 

Yes, teach them to decode first but remember that reading is about so much more than sound!

[Marion]

Something to think about:

 

When you read, do you 'sound out' the words in your head? Many adults do (having been taught that reading is about sound), even though there is actually no need to do so. This slows down the average adult reader, and it means that many read only a few books a month/year.

 

Actually I don't know any adults or confident child readers who sound out words in their head unless it is a totally unknown word.

 

Decoding words isn't reading it is a pre reading skill which enables children to become readers

[Susan]

Actually I don't know any adults or confident child readers who sound out words in their head unless it is a totally unknown word.

 

Decoding words isn't reading it is a pre reading skill which enables children to become readers

 

 

Snap!

[Marion]

[q

But those who can (as in my daughter, see the original message) need to have the teacher differentiate, to ensure that they are not held back by being force fed synthetic phonics alone. Thankfully, her teacher does exactly that.

 

Sorry but I disagree totally

 

Of course teachers should differentiate but not by giving out sight words

 

Actually strong readers benefit from being force fed synthetic phonics just as much as those children who are just beginning the reading journey and I'm speaking as the mother of a child who was reading before his second birthday but struggled with spelling because he failed to grasp phonics.

 

English is such an irregular language, in some circumstances learning words by sight will be the simplest and most efficient method. If I try and 'decode' the last sentence I wrote by blending it would both take me forever and result in some very strange sounds!

 

You seem to be confusing language with the English orthographical system which has some irregularities (actually there are only 7 words don't follow any rules) as there are only 150+ phoneme grapheme correspondence to learn as opposed to approx a quarter of a million words to learn. If children are taught correctly they can quite easily decode what they read.

 

I take your point about the weaker readers, but perhaps it's the phonological awareness that is the key (developed through speaking and listening mostly) rather than the phonics themselves.

[Guest]

Actually I don't know any adults or confident child readers who sound out words in their head unless it is a totally unknown word.

 

Decoding words isn't reading it is a pre reading skill which enables children to become readers

 

I don't mean 'sound out' in terms of blending them, what I mean is sound out whole words in your head as you read, rather than skimming across them without 'hearing' them internally. Most people do.

[Marion]

I don't mean 'sound out' in terms of blending them, what I mean is sound out whole words in your head as you read, rather than skimming across them without 'hearing' them internally. Most people do.

 

 

As I said I haven't encountered anyone who claims to do so unless it is with some obscure word they have never met before.

[Guest]

Most people don't even realise they are doing it, or that there is an alternative!

 

http://www.usingmindmaps.com/speed-reading-techniques.html

 

Quoted from the above site:

 

"Reading since childhood

'We have been reading since childhood; so why the need for an article on reading?' you might ask.

 

To answer this question, we have to go back to the way we have been taught to read.Most, if not all of us, have been taught using the phonetic method. We were taught to'sound out' the wordsas we read them.

 

Once we could do this, at about seven or eight years old, we were left to our own devices.The method that you use today, is probably still the one you were taught in Grade 1!

'So what?' you may ask again. 'Does this affect my ability to read and understand the material that I have to read?'

 

Yes, it definitely does! This article will explore some of the methods that could improve your reading speed, your comprehensionand your memory. More importantly, it will show you what's possible.

 

The basic Speed Reading Techniques in this article can be applied immediately, without extensive training or hours of hard work, yet it lays the foundation for advanced Speed Reading Techniquesby highlighting some important principles.

 

The current method

Typically, most people say the words to themselvesas they read. As you were initially taught to 'sound' the wordas you read, when you started to read silently to yourself you continued in the same vein.

 

At the age of about seven, you were assessed and once it was evident that you could recognise the words, you were left on your own to read silentlyto yourself.

 

No further reading skills were taughtto you since then. You are therefore probably still reading the way you did when you were seven years old!

 

 

Faults with current methods

Listen to the people around you speaking. How well do they speak? How well do you speak?

 

And the reason we ask this is...You speak to yourself when you read!'You will therefore read only as fast as, or as well as, you speak!If you are a slow speaker, you will probably read slowly.

 

When last have you read aloud?Speeds possibleNow that you know that your reading speed is linked to your talking speed, you need to learn how to read at speeds that are above your talking speed- or increase your talking speed, if you want to increase your reading speed.

 

The current world speed reading champion reads at 3850 words per minute. To attain such a high reading speed, it's obvious that he cannot be reading at talking speeds.

[Guest]

Actually strong readers benefit from being force fed synthetic phonics just as much as those children who are just beginning the reading journey and I'm speaking as the mother of a child who was reading before his second birthday but struggled with spelling because he failed to grasp phonics.

 

I agree completely with this. The reception teacher didn't force feed phonics enough last year as some children were strong sight readers and this year I've had to take them right back to sounding out every single word because they were reading at a phase 5 level but spelling at a phase 2 level. I had to really argue my case for putting them back to phase 3 but I made sure I got my way!

 

Also back when I was at school phonics wasn't really taught. I have been able to read since I was 2 but my ability to decode unfamiliar words (usually names I'd never come across before since I had an extensive sight vocabulary) was all over the place, plus my spelling has always been terrible. There is definitely an argument for force feeding phonics to a certain extent in my opinion.

[Guest]

I don't think anyone (certainly not me) is saying that we shouldn't teach phonics- I have found L&S to be a very successful method and would recommend it to anyone- but what I and several others are trying to say is that it is not the only method.

 

In my opinion children benefit from having a range of strategies at their disposal, not just in literacy but also in maths and other subjects too. It's up to us to give them as many strategies as possible so that they can choose the ones that are most effective for them. It isn't for us to choose which is our favourite and refuse to teach them any others.

 

Maybe we should all agree to disagree on this one because it's turned into one of those round and round debates where everyone's just saying the same thing over and over again!!

[Marion]

Most people don't even realise they are doing it, or that there is an alternative!

 

http://www.usingmindmaps.com/speed-reading-techniques.html

 

Tony Buzan makes no claim that these techniques are suitable for youung non readers

because they aren't.

Literacy develops in stages much the same way as language and missing out the early stages is detrimental in the long term. There are a few children who are natural readers but they are very much in the minority (often children with ASD seem to have this ability ) but for the majority of children they need to develop each skill.

[Guest]

I agree completely with this. The reception teacher didn't force feed phonics enough last year as some children were strong sight readers and this year I've had to take them right back to sounding out every single word because they were reading at a phase 5 level but spelling at a phase 2 level. I had to really argue my case for putting them back to phase 3 but I made sure I got my way!

 

I agree too. The relationship between phonics and spelling cannot be forgotten. The best reader in my class can read any word you give him by sight but cannot spell any words by sight and is learning Phase 2 CVC words he can sound out.