WHAT IS GALLING IS THAT THE SCIENCE OF READING ADVOCATES:

 -  Accuse past classroom teachers of not teaching phonics, phonemic awareness.

 -  Are well-funded by the Australian Government for an uninformative

    compulsory,  phonics screening check.

 

I have had wide experience as a teacher, author of literacy books, literacy consultancy and know that phonics/phonemic awareness has been taught by teachers in the past. How can they escape not doing so? It happens as soon as children begin school. The mishap is that teachers did not explicitly state they were teaching phonics. They were teaching the alphabet sounds within chants, rhymes, stories and explicitly through shared reading and shared writing, followed by activities to reinforce the learning. Children learnt phonics, hearing, looking and vocalizing sounds and understanding word meanings within the context of continuous print, Shared Reading and Shared Writing (including hand-writing). 

 

Shared Reading and Interactive Deconstruction of texts begins when students are new at school and continues into higher level classes.

 

With younger children stories are shared and a teaching point is highlighted. Big books were the ideal resource. For older readers, selected texts are chosen by the teacher to model a particular literacy learning focus. Always Read Aloud is part of the literacy environment (I have become aware that the Science of Reading people are now recommending Read Aloud - was there something missing in their drive for phonics learning?)

 

Shared Writing / joint construction of texts happens in front of the children, the teacher plans the focus of learning and holds the pen most of the time with children verbally making suggestions. Children learn to look into words to see patterns, to make connections with prior learning, Phonics learning is embedded in this rich literacy environment.

 

Recent learning is reinforced during enjoyable, varied activities (as the publishers of literacy games created in the past and are creating anew).

 

The Science of Reading favour teaching phonics in a systematic way, thus  differentiated learning does not happen.  The vision I have is that these people have parachuted in, thinking that systematic learning of phonics is explicit teaching. There is far more to explicit teaching than that.

 

Science of Reading advocates argue that systematic teaching of phonics is the only way to teach reading. I am of the opinion that teaching has to be flexible and differential as some children come to school with knowledge and skills relating to reading and writing, whilst other children, for example ESL / EAL / deprived, may be at the first stages of English learning. And there are children with a learning obstacle, a learning disability.

 

Evidence does not justify the use of a heavy and near-exclusive focus on phonics instruction, either in regular classrooms, or for children experiencing difficulty learning to read (including those classified as dyslexic). Peter Johnston and Donna Scanlon. 2021. An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction. 

 

Robyn Ewing (emeritus professor, Sydney University) in her introduction to ‘Beyond the Reading Wars’ (2006) has gathered various educator’s writings about this disconcerting topic. One such writer is Brian Cambourne (Associate Professor, University of Wollongong). Robyn records, ‘His enlightening contribution about how phonics does not directly advance Reading’ is below:

 

'He [Brian] demonstrates that phonics is an important aspect of literacy learning because it supports learning how to write alphabetic scripts, not learning how to read them'. Brian supports his argument, ‘alphabetic system gives the illusion that reading consists mainly of translating visual signs to their phonetic equivalents, there is strong archaeological and evolutionary evidence, that ‘the human brain has evolved to go directly to meaning without first going through sound; included in his arguments is the phenomenon of homographs, spelled the same but have different meanings:

 

The bandage was wound around the wound.

 

The farm was used to produce produce.

 

Another truth about learning phonics is that a child needs to develop more than one system-a multi sensory approach-for identifying and distinguishing letters and words. Analysing words, creating hypotheses, forming analogies, seeing relationships, perceiving and being flexible enough to deal with differences and the unusual. 

Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, (1996) ask about reading, “Is the text consistently so easy that children have no opportunity to build their problem-solving strategies?” The same could be asked of writing tasks given to children: do they extend a child’s thinking, knowledge about language, extend their vocabulary, ideas and ability to write varied types of genres?

Competent literacy learners listen to and dissect words and make phonetic, visual, syntactic, semantic and etymological connections.

*

The second issue is that an uninformative, compulsory  phonics screening check has been included.

The Australian Government is investing $A10.8 million for the development of a free, phonics health(?) check for Year 1 students. 

 

This silly, uninformative  national test has been instigated by politicians and professionals on the periphery of the school/classroom (e.g. dyslexic, speech therapists).

 

Explaining the Phonics Screening Check:

 

The test  originated from England. Towards the end of year 1, children are checked on the ‘sounding out’ or blending of 40 phonemic words.  20 are pseudo (nonsense) words, for example, ’f-e-p’ these words are placed first on the check, followed by 20 genuine English words, for example, c-a-t,

f-l-i-p. 

 

Note: pseudo words are part of the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test used by ‘periphery’ professionals who assess children with language disorders.

 

This check is given to all year 1 children towards the end of the school year, regardless of the length of time at school. It does not test reading competence.

 

UK phonics screening check was trialed in 56 public schools across South Australia in 2017. It is a numerical recording, only. Furthermore, there is no suggestion of alternative interventions other than the continuance of Synthetic Phones.  

 

This check cannot happen unless the teaching of Synthetic Phonics happens. This is a relief!

 If teachers want to check on children’s progress after a full year at school, I would suggest that they administer the diagnostic assessment that Marie Clay devised (1993), ‘An Observation Survey of early literacy achievement’. Teachers learn to assess individual progress and that information guides their teaching / intervention. There are five aspects of the assessment that covers all the early functions of a child learning to read independently. I shall name two - Letter identification, where children recognize all letters both the lower-case and uppercase

 

    and      

     

Running Records, which are taken as a child reads. Further, children are asked questions to check their comprehension.

 

The Observation Survey is an informative assessment, with no confusing elements such as the inclusion of pseudo words. Teachers can be trained to analyse each part of the assessment and are trained to use appropriate intervention strategies. This would have more relevance than the simplistic Phonics Screening Check training.

 

 

GENERAL COMMENT

It is an insult to the professionalism of the education community that teachers have implanted on them the teaching of phonics in a restricted way and furthermore, the implantation of a Mickey Mouse assessment.

There is so much more to ‘why’ some children are unhappy, failed readers. I have in my mind a child on ABC who is dressed shabbily, hair uncombed with classmates ignoring her.