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British Association of
Teachers of the Deaf
BATOD Magazine (focus Literacy)
September 2006
ISSN 1366-0799
PARENTS ARE IMPORTANT
Alan Davies, Chartered Educational Psychologist
Parents are important but many find it difficult to help with
phonics
The international consensus is that parents play a key role in
developing positive attitudes to literacy but there are concerns
that many parents do not understand fully the sounds and spelling
choices of English - but help is at hand in the form of a new
groundbreaking inexpensive computer programme.
At the launch of the final report of the National Inquiry into the
Teaching of Literacy, 8 December 2005, Dr Brendan Nelson, the
Australian Government Minister for Education, stated, "We need to
start now on a journey of making sure that every Australian
understands that parenthood involves a number of responsibilities.
One of them is actually starting to read to your children in early
life. And, on a day to day basis, let's envisage a future where the
average parent gets up each day and thinks, well, of all the things
I've got to do today, one of them is read to my child".
The final report of the Rose Review into how young children in
England should be taught to read, published on 20 March 2006,
recommends that children should be taught using synthetic phonics,
an approach that makes explicit the sounds and spelling choices of
English (the alphabetic principle). The review, in keeping with the
Australian perspective, also stresses the important role played by
parents in developing 'positive attitudes to literacy' from the
earliest stages by identifying 'well before the age of five, sharing
and enjoying favourite books regularly with trusted adults, be they
parents, carers, practitioners or teachers,' as being 'at the heart
of this activity'.
However, there are concerns that many parents will find it difficult
to help their children on a day to day basis with early reading,
especially with the synthetic phonics, because they themselves do
not understand fully the sounds and spelling choices of English. But
the Phoneme Machine, a small but powerful Adobe Macromedia Flash
application, is now available to make it easier for parents to help
their children with synthetic phonics at home.....
Right Click
on the hyperlink. Select Save Target As. Specify where you
would like to store the file on your hard drive.
DOWNLOAD PDF
39KB
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