Dec 15 2005
Sally Williams,
Western Mail Newspaper, Wales
THE phonics system for teaching children to read and which
is being used in England was pioneered in a Welsh school.
England's Education Minister announced that the phonics
system, which teaches pupils to recognise the sounds of
individual letters, and then blends of letters - such as sh,
th and ee - is to be used in schools there.
In Wales, there is no Assembly Government-led literacy
strategy, meaning schools choose local strategies to follow.
Windsor Clive Infant school, in the heart of one of
Cardiff's most deprived areas, has been using the synthetic
phonics system since 1996 - and has been internationally
recognised for its work.
Education Minister Jane Davidson has visited the school
which has hosted advanced training courses in phonics for
teachers and has attracted international visitors who are also
keen to see how successful it can be in.
Headteacher Vicky Meadows says she is pleased that Government
is advocating the use of the phonics system and believes it
essential all teachers know it thoroughly.
But she is concerned the Government should adopt the best
programme at the outset - which in her opinion is synthetic
phonics, using a natural synthesis approach.
"The Government is on the threshold of this and it
needs to be sure it adopts the right method, to avoid wasting
£8m and 10 years in time, on what could be an educational
catastrophe.
"Starting off using the wrong method could be costly
and could involve a difficult process of 'unlearning'.
"The Government needs a better understanding of
phonics and the training involved to get teachers signing up
to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
"All our teachers are trained to an advanced level,
with funds paid out of our own budget, in the Teaching,
Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills Thrass system.
Mrs Meadows said, "The reason this system is better is
because it teaches children that there are multiple spelling
choices.
"It doesn't teach them that the letter 'c' is for cat.
It teaches them that the letter 'c' can go out on a playing
field and can take up different positions - and it can also
sound like 'ss' as in ice and city.
The sound of letters
So what is the synthetic phonic learning system?
Synthetic phonics teaches letter sounds very rapidly and
children are explicitly shown how to blend the sounds together
to pronounce unfamiliar words.
Children can push magnetic letters together, to help them
understand how letter sounds can be blended together to
pronounce the words and to reinforce blending for reading.
An Estyn Inspection in January, 2002, said, Windsor Clive
Infant school in Ely " adopted methods for teaching
phonological knowledge enable most pupils to tackle unfamiliar
words confidently and to acquire a good range of sight reading
words."
NEWS MESSAGEBOARD
Alan Davies from Chester
09:54:36 15 December 2005
Congratulations to Sally Williams on the article 'Phonics Gets
English Call', relating to the implementation of the THRASS
literacy programme at Windsor Clive Infant School, Cardiff.
Make no mistake, Vicky Meadows, Headteacher, is right that the
Government needs to make sure that ALL new and exisiting
teachers are able to use the International Phonetic Alphabet
(the pronunciation system used in the front of dictionaries).
Windsor Clive Infants has been doing ground-breaking stuff, in
terms of developing and improving teacher subject knowledge
for the 44 sounds of English and the 120 main spelling
choices. Despite my strong recommendation to visit the school,
Jim Rose, head of the Rose Review in England, is yet to visit
any THRASS school in Wales, preferring to concentrate on the
widely-reported findings from Clackmannanshire, Scotland. Time
will prove that he was mistaken to not first visit Wales
before producing his interim report on the teaching of
Synthetic Phonics.
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