INTERVIEW TOPIC: PHONICS

INTERVIEW TOPIC: PHONICS

PIP and POL

Pip: I am going to begin the interview by asking whether you have taught first-year littlies at school and whether you taught phonics?

Pol: The answer to both those questions is “Yes” and “Yes”. Teachers have always taught phonemes (sounds) and matching graphemes (to read and write). Some educators recommend phonological awareness where sounds and structures of words are divided into smaller parts as happens in onset and rhyme – b un, s un and syllables – but ter. Pip, I refer to this as the strategy ‘hearing sounds in words’ and children are taught to use it when reading (from Reading Recovery).

Pip: O.K. Why is it, at this time, that there are different opinions between periphery-professionals, politicians, and educationalists about teaching reading?

Pol: There is the argument that children will not successfully read unless they have a grounding in phonics and phonological awareness. They advocate that evidence shows this. The Rose Report, UK (2006), states various points to note: (1) phonics teaching does not teach other aspects of reading and writing (2) advocates of phonic learning downplay the complexity of reading and writing (3) no evidence that systematic phonics learning is better than other methods. No evidence that reading improved.

Considering (3), I do a combination of Literacy-based learning – stories (not whole language, where children learn to read through osmosis!) and explicit teaching of phonemes and structures such as digraphs, (two letters representing one sound).

The first reading of big print (stories, poems, rhymes information), the children think and problem solve, for example, the theme, the characters and their actions. In Information texts they learn about main points, the significance of headings, labels and so on.

Literacy-based learning, involves reading the same big-print text for a week; the first reading focuses on meaning. The following days I plan a focus of learning for the week e.g. text structures, sentence structures (how grammar functions, punctuation, capitalization), how words can cause a particular mood. I highlight varied examples of the focus in the book.

Pip: Is that all?

Pol: No! Pip, this is not enough for letter and word learning. I put in place each day, explicit instruction which involves directing students’ attention towards the learnng of letters.

As children progress phonological awareness is brought to children’s attention through the modelling of problem solving questions children ask themselves as they independently read and write, “What does the word begin, end with, what do you see / hear in the middle”.

This generally happens during small targeted group instruction, where reading of small, story books / non-fiction happens; the children mostly read successfully, with only 1-2 teaching / learning points.

Pip: I would think more is needed.

Pol: It is. And that is why writing in front of the children is essential. It always seems to me that phonological knowledge attunes more to spelling and writing and the emphasis should be directed here.

During shared writing experiences, children verbally interact and share ideas; they are shown spelling structures; how words they want to use when writing, work. This of course, reinforces reading competency. They see how stories must make sense.

Also, I value the 1-1 conversations I have with children - during reading for pleasure and during independent writing. We converse about, for example, their discoveries in the book they are reading: and how they tackled their written piece. I keep notes of our interactions.

Pip: What is the problem then. Is it the assertion that children’s reading competence declines as they proceed into the higher grades?

Pol: I am sure that children moving into the higher grades lose reading competency because they are now reading more informational texts than the more familiar literature. Informational texts are lexicon dense with unfamiliar nouns, making them more abstract, not like spoken language. Writing also, is more involved. Children use the topic terminology and they write, more impersonal pieces.

Pip: Yes, I found when I reached Year 3, I found reading hard. There was print and on-screen reading and I had to read and research for a project I was involved in.

Pol, are you saying that ‘experts’ outside the classroom and school close their eyes to other ways of teaching reading and that, as Rose states, reading and writing is more complex?

Pol: Hmmm! I am moving into controversial territory here. But I wonder why some politicians and education departments support phonic advocates as the only way for reading success. Educationists question this. They have written in journals that it is a limited way of learning to read and they believe meaning-based learning develops comprehension, far better.

By concentrating on one way of learning to read, phonics is an easy target for enterprises to market videos, games etc. For example, there have been phonics material such as Letterland in the past, now the flavour is Jolly Phonics (JP) in the early years. JP is based on synthetic phonics (not synthetic as I first thought it meant but the process of synthesising or blending letters to create words). Initially children learn certain sound letters to blend into easily decodable words, ‘m-a-t’, ‘c-a-t’. Yet, if you consider, the first words children read and write are, for example, ‘I’, ‘the’, ‘like’, ‘to’. Viewing Jolly Phonics in action, I feel it is rather contrived, a bit rote-learnish.

In a real situation, as children read, they have to THINK and PROBLEM SOLVE; they predict words (nouns) initially from pictures and later, not guessing, but being informed by the topic and the immediate phrase or sentence.

But JP could be suitable for a para-teacher working with slower progressing students. I say this because it involves on-screen presentation of the letter and pre-determined letter songs to sing. Many letter books and games are extras.

Pip: What assessments do you put in place?

Pol: For phonic knowledge, I test as I did when children began school, phoneme - sound - grapheme match. For writing, at the end of a learning period, I create an outcomes profile with learnings listed and analyse each child’s piece. Reading, I give Running Records and Miscue Analysis assessments on each child (e.g. 1-2 times a term or more often for delayed learners). I keep an on-line spreadsheet so I can easily see which children are not progressing. For those children I ask myself, “Do I need to give a complete assessment, An Observation Survey (Marie Clay)?”.

Pip: Let me get this clear, are you saying that because programmes like JP seem ‘designed’ a classroom teacher is wasted implementing such a programme. Should other teaching practices be considered?

Pol: Let me remind you that teachers have beginning-school children, who have letter and sound knowledge and book experience. In my classroom of 25 children, most move quickly from what I call, ‘the beginning school known’ to new learning and it is mostly done through examining features of literary and information texts. Another aspect is, I like to connect literacy learning, to, say, literacy in maths, sciences and physical education. This allows children to transpose ‘the learnt’ into another situation, which broadens children’s reading knowledge.

For more information go to lizsimonliteracy consultant blogspot.com, 2017 Nov (2)

Should SYNTHETIC PHONICS BE CONTROVERSIAL?

SHOULD A LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY BE SPENT ON AN

UNINFORMATIVE TEST AS THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK?