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Child Care Articles,
The Children Webmag,
The internet's child care magazine published by a consortium led by
The Centre for Children and Youth, University of Northampton, UK
Wednesday, 31 May 2006
There is a heated
debate currently with regard to the standard of reading and writing
in schools and the level of illiteracy of school-leavers. Throughout
the years since the inception of compulsory education, a variety of
teaching methods and resources have been put to use in order to
offer a trouble-free, guaranteed-to-work approach to reading and
writing. It is a national concern, especially in higher education,
where many more students are beginning their degree courses with no
real ability to spell or write coherent sentences.
The latest debate has been about a system called synthetic phonics.
Having known other systems in the past, I was intrigued about the
introduction of the 'new' synthetic phonics, and decided to research
it.
What is Synthetic Phonics?
All phonics systems involve teaching letter-sound correspondences.
The adjective synthetic refers to the fact that children are taught
to synthesise (i.e. put together or build up) pronunciations for
unfamiliar written words by translating letters into sounds and
blending the sounds together (blending = synthesising). Analytic
phonics focuses more on the analysis of words after they have been
identified in some other way - for example by being supplied by the
teacher, recognised as sight-words or guessed from pictures or
context.
Synthetic phonics is particularly appropriate at the very beginning
of children's schooling, when virtually all written words are
unfamiliar and the children need a simple and clear introduction to
the underlying principle of alphabetic writing: written symbols
represent individual speech-sounds. It is in the very first term or
so that the differences between synthetic phonics and other
approaches are clearest.
Captain Thrass and the Phonemes
I have just watched a film about Captain Thrass. This is the
brainchild of Alan Davies. It began in a school in Bradford and was
made into a film with space-age characters. The main personality,
Captain Thrass, helps children to speak and spell by making use of
phonemes. This method introduces speech sounds and letters and its
intention is to encourage accurate reading and pronunciation.
The units are the forty-four speech sounds and
one-hundred-and-twenty key graphemes of English. The programme is
not based on the artificial and restrictive letter sounds of old
phonics programmes.
There is a movie, plenty of reading materials, lots of information
for parents and teachers as well as children. I watched and
listened. It has plenty to offer children, once they can understand
the instructions.My initial reaction when I had heard the sounds and
watched one of the movies was one of surprise. It is very similar in
its format and expectations to the long defunct Initial Teaching
Alphabet or ITA, which was a revolutionary reading programme in the
late 1960s and early 70s. This also introduced sounds and additional
letters designed to make reading more fluent and easier.
What that system did, and what I am concerned that Captain Thrass
will do, is offer an easy way into reading which is not based on
accurate spelling and understanding of the importance of
relationships between sounds and letters. I heard some of the
information given to children during the movie and, again, I can see
that the sounds offered to pronounce words worked well with a
Bradford accent, but there would be regional variances and this
complicates the process.
What Works?
Children learn to read within their own accents, using the symbols
representing speech sounds. The complications arise when they are
obliged to conform to the standard alphabet. This proved to be the
downfall of ITA. The reading age and apparent ability of children
who had performed incredibly well suddenly dipped once they were
stuck with the normal alphabet. I will watch with interest.
In 1998, a pilot study was carried out on children over a 16-week
period in Clackmannanshire, Scotland. At the end of that time, the
children who were taught to read using synthetic phonics, were 7
months ahead of their peers. It also evidenced the fact that the
most impoverished school was among those selected and the children
performed as well as others in better-off areas, proving that
poverty should not become a barrier to learning.
The conclusion that practitioners in Scotland came to, was that if
the majority of children were likely to benefit from this method of
teaching, the resources for supporting children with identified
learning difficulties could be used more effectively and therefore
more successfully.
There is No Best System.
I began my teaching career in the early 1970s. I understand the
importance of being able to offer a choice in learning opportunities
to children which appeals more to their style of learning. There is
no one method which will ensure that all children will learn to read
at the right age and in the right way. We are all so different and
that is a joy. Synthetic phonics is a valuable tool for some
children. The look/say method is also a valuable tool for some
children. Whatever method we use, it probably has been used before,
but we find a more creative approach. It is much more important to
employ professionals who have been trained to understand how
children learn, rather than forcing another new magical invention on
the unsuspecting youngsters.
My question is, why have we produced a generation of poor spellers
and incoherent readers? They can't all suffer from being dyslexic.
We have failed our children. Whatever we have to do, we owe it to
them to rectify the mistakes before it is too late.
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