Learning to read

The other fad that annoyed me was the ‘emergent writing’ phase that student teachers came into school keen to do with children.
It’s great when children begin to write for themselves, just a few squiggles or a collection of letters they’ve learnt, and no need to cover their work with red or Green pen.
But children who are keen writers are not helped by making the same spelling mistake again and again until it is ingrained into their mind (and hand).
Teaching phonics and introducing/practising high frequency words helped and still helps a lot with that, but prior to the push on consistent phonics teaching, there was often limited continuity of method-not a problem for the more able children, but confusing for the slower learners.

Having worked innursery classes since the 1980’s phonics is by far the best way to learn to read. Most children are starting to read by the time they start year 1. Spelling comes later when the children are more developed with reading. They also have spellings to learn each week according to their ability. In the 1980’s children were doing well if they knew their alphabet

My MiL had to teach ita, she hated it, and made the points others here make, the children had to learn one 'language' and then learn another.

At the time many of her reception class children came from a rundown area, where few had books in the house and using ita meant they could not connect what they learnt at school with what they saw around them. Everything from car number plates, to adverts. She always said ita came between children and reading. She was so relieved when her school changed headmistress and its was thrown out.

When my daughter was learning to read her teacher was using ITA (As another mother said "if you want them to read English why start by teaching them Bulgarian?" She's now 50, with a PhD and still has problems with spelling. Her brother was just taught normal English spelling and has never had any problems at all.

Thisismyname1953

@cossy . I learnt to read using good old Janet and John but my younger brother (born 1960) was taught some strange method, possibly the one you have mentioned. I thought it was daft at the time as he would, after learning one method would then have to relearn the correct method .

ITA or initial teaching alphabet always seemed crazy to me. If learning to read was already a challenge, why add another one?
Hearing endless repetitions of Ladybird pages means that
Peter Jane. Here is Peter. Here is Jane. Here is Peter and here is Jane. Here is Pat the dog. Here is the ball. Here is the tree. The ball is in the tree. Peter is in the tree and Jane is in the tree. (Pat the dog can’t climb) are ingrained in my mind.

Children who struggled to learn with that whole word method were moved onto New Way which were early phonics readers with titles like Fat Pig, or Jip the cat that children were encouraged to sound out.
The problem with children saying cuh a tuh spells cat or muh a kuh e spells make brought the next wave of so called synthetic phonics schemes like Read Write Inc. which also includes practice of high frequency words like they and she which aren’t instantly decodable in the early stages.

Children who struggle even with that get coached using schemes like Toe by Toe which we began by using for children who were dyslexic.
But in the end, unless children read regularly and by choice, whether it’s books, comics, or comic books, it’s another use it or lose it situation.

@lathyrus3 , your explanation of learning to read and write , probably explains to me why when I write a fairly long shopping list out, but leave it on the table at home , I can then go on to buy everything on that list in the supermarket.

@cossy . I learnt to read using good old Janet and John but my younger brother (born 1960) was taught some strange method, possibly the one you have mentioned. I thought it was daft at the time as he would, after learning one method would then have to relearn the correct method .

MOnica re your last para that’s exactly what I meant. Nobody’s ‘teaching’, but reading follows. And it used to be the norm. I learned to read long before school that way and so did my own children.
You remind me that nursery rhymes are valuable because rhyming helps learning and old fashioned nursery rhymes have wide vocabularies.

Hate phonics as they have to leatn to spell correctly soeasier tolearn it correctly in first place. I was a teacher and my children started doing same but sorry I mafe them spell correctly. Both in 30's now, through uni etc both excellent spellers. Just my opinion

I was in a long queue last week and a family were playing a game on a mobile phone where the app calls up a word and members of the family had to describe what it was for one of them to guess.

The phone is placed on the forehead of the guesser for the others to see. Amazingly the youngest of the family could read most of the words ( food themed -ice-cream, jelly, potatoes, pizza) He was probably around three years old.

I knew he could read them because he kept spoiling the game by shouting out the word as soon as it appeared.

A modern version of mothers knee perhaps?

winterwhite

If phonics is the answer the wonder must be that learning to read was so common before it was invented😂.

If there are people around them with the time, children can learn the alphabet and start picking out words from a very young age.

As for cough and rough etc isn’t this part of speech acquisition?Children know these words before they learn to read.

I think in the past, children did learn by phonics, not in the sophisticated we do now, but the child at their mothers knee was usually first taught the letters and how they sounded and then taught how to combine them, writing them on a slate, saying them, and wiping it and doing it again.

Children did learn by look and say, but not formally. Both DH and I were reading well before we started school, because both our mothers read to us regularly and, since in wartime, we only had half a dozen books at most, these were read to us again and again and we began to connect words and sound, but in neither case were our mothers setting out to teach us to read, just sitting on their laps, having a cuddle and reading and reciting nursery rhymes, or short stories.

If phonics is the answer the wonder must be that learning to read was so common before it was invented😂.

If there are people around them with the time, children can learn the alphabet and start picking out words from a very young age.

As for cough and rough etc isn’t this part of speech acquisition?Children know these words before they learn to read.

Lathyrus3
Teaching doesn’t guarantee learning.

I had a parent helper, years ago who was really good.
She stopped coming after about 18 months, because she said,
“I can spend ages supporting or doing activities with the children, but they still don’t get it! It’s so disheartening.”

I agree broadly with what has been said on here, but the crux of the matter is that once children are outside school, they do not read at home or ever visit a library. Of the fourteen children I see during the week, only three have said they read, either with a parent or by themselves, at home in their own time and can tell me what they have read. There are any number of reasons as to why this doesn’t happen but the main one seems to be, and the one which our head teacher told me concerns him the most, is that there is no culture for it. Parents don’t read, so they don’t encourage their children to read. It’s a spiral of decline.

People educating children for a world they've never seen and know nothing about.

Phonics here, too. Reading by two. Excellent speller until after my recent stroke.

Spelling has nothing to do with intelligence and some people never get it. Reading is something to enjoy but some prefer doing, instead.

Yes a large number of children will learn to read very quickly and competently with phonics. It’s the best way to teach some children and should be taught in every school.

Some children will struggle more with that method and will need extra support.

And some children will find it extremely difficult to learn by that method and will fail, unless an alternative method is used.

The same is true for any other method of teaching reading because people’s brains work differently when processing new learning.

The tragedy is the current, almost exclusive emphasis on phonics and the entrenched refusal to offer any alternative to those who struggle to learn in this way.

The figures speak for themselves. The current phonics programme has been in place since 2012 - thirteen years.
Last years results show that 1 in 4. - a quarter of 11 year olds - did not reach the expected level in reading.

This isn’t to say phonics should be dropped. What it says is that for around 25% it isn’t the best method. That’s about what you’d expect for any method of teaching reading, based on past evidence and experience. No teaching reading method introduced in the last 100 years has worked for everyone.

I simply don’t understand a mentality that adheres rigidly to a method in the face of both evidence and experience. Why would anyone rather see children fail to learn to read than accept that their particular preferred method just doesn’t work for some.

Teaching doesn’t guarantee learning.

sorry, mistype: "they'd"

Yes, my grandchildren learnt quickly using phonics but also moved on to regular spelling tests fairly quickly after they's mastered the basics of reading.
I was very slow learning to read, I didn't like the books but quickly caught up when they put me on a different series of books.
My youngest daughter, much the brightest of my children, was the slowest to learn because the know-all headteacher dismantled the previously excellent phonics reading scheme that had been in use for my other three children.
Phonics is now recognised to be the way to go, and I can understand why they don't attempt to introduct "proper spelling" at the same time as it would be very confusing.

My eldest child was taught phonics, my middle child was taught by whole words in a tin they brought home, my youngest was taught phonics and all DGC now learn phonics.
My middle child couldn't read anything until they were almost 7. A mother volunteer sat with them at school using the phonics method and 6 weeks later they could read almost anything. They were an advanced reader by the end of that school year, as were my other children who learned phonics.
The recognise and remember the whole word method was discontinued because many children didn't progress with it.
AFAIK phonics is now taught to all reception children, certainly where my DD works.
DGD brings home spelling to learn every week and is tested every Monday.

Whether you’re a phonics fan or a whole word fan or a combination of the two or any other strategy, a good way to retain spellings is to write them out.
That way your visual memory is supported by the actions of your hand as you write.
Just like learning to play an instrument, where eventually your hands automatically press the keys or the strings when they see or hear a note.
It’s different if you only type the letters and the brain has to establish a different way to support recall, but practice still helps.

Why have you put “research” in inverted commas. Surely you’re not implying it wasn’t real?

Or maybe you just can’t accept there might be anything that doesn’t fit your own views and invested interest and need to resort to trying to discredit.

That’s not unusual. Particularly in today’s educational climate.

Other posters can judge fir themselves what sounds genuine to them.

Lathyrus3

Phonics are only one useful tool in the box of learning to read snd are a lesser tool when it comes to spelling.

Someone who has been taught the “rules’ might be able to decipher play, sleigh, sail, dale, veil, prey, even gaol🤔

But you will need a visual memory of a word and an understanding of its contextual meaning in order to know which alternative you need to spell a sound that makes up part of a word in a language like English that is only partially sound/letter compliant.

When there is a heavy emphasis on one approach, whichever it is, a proportion of learners will have difficulties. Given that there are different approaches to learning to read surely it makes sense to seek an approach that does work, rather than more of what clearly isn’t working.

I don’t think that the ‘research’ you’ve been involved with has been particularly good, Lathyrus if that's the conclusion you’ve come to.

Phonics are only one useful tool in the box of learning to read snd are a lesser tool when it comes to spelling.

Someone who has been taught the “rules’ might be able to decipher play, sleigh, sail, dale, veil, prey, even gaol🤔

But you will need a visual memory of a word and an understanding of its contextual meaning in order to know which alternative you need to spell a sound that makes up part of a word in a language like English that is only partially sound/letter compliant.

When there is a heavy emphasis on one approach, whichever it is, a proportion of learners will have difficulties. Given that there are different approaches to learning to read surely it makes sense to seek an approach that does work, rather than more of what clearly isn’t working.

Sight words and phonics are both necessary. Once the basics are learned, the teacher will move on to the double vowel sounds ie oo, ee, ea, then the other doubles ie sh, th, wh, ph etc, with lots of practice in words with these sounds. It takes time. Eventually, the anomalies will be covered!

I help yr5 reading. I have to go back to basics with some children who are competent readers but not great at identifying sounds of new words. This is often because they really did not absorb phonics but learned (like many dyslexics) the shape of any number of words, and have the intelligence to work out by context, as a way of coping.

Do take any help she can get because some of that help will be useful even if she is not dyslexic, but if she is, then additional funding and support will be there, including extra time with exams

(My own DD has A level in English and a degree, but was only id'd as a mild dyslexic at 16).