Is phonics the best way to learn to read and spell?

theworriedwell

Maisie don't worry the look say or whole word system carried on working. He finished his A levels last summer and is currently on a gap year.

I find it odd that people can't accept phonics doesn't work for all children. If it was being taught badly wouldn't there be more than two children out of 30 struggling ? Both boys caught up in approximately one year.

I'm prepared to bet that if you gave him a completely unfamiliar word to read he'd work out what it 'says' with a phonics based strategy.

Some children manage to 'intuit' phonics without explicit instruction. That's no reason to assume that a method which has no scientific basis whatsoever is 'successful'.

theworriedwell
One thing I find odd is if a child isn't progressing after two or three years with phonics the schools response was more phonics.
Sorry. Should have said 2 or 3 years, but the implication in your sentence is that the child could have been given more phonics after 2 years or after 3 years.

2 years of phonics-that puts a child in
Year 1.
Yes, with the assessments we do I’d be concerned if they showed a child was making no progress with phonics by the end of Reception, never mind Y1 unless there was an underlying problem, e.g. hearing, vision or speech delay.
By year 2 something would already be being done, not necessarily more phonics.
Maybe that is just a problem at your school.

Musicgirl

I think that it is very easy to say that one method works for all children but this is not the case. I do think, based on my own experience of teaching music, that it is important to be methodical and go through each stage but one size does not fit all and, of course, some children learn more quickly than others. Phonics are vital for learning to decode words but look and say, or the whole word approach, has its merits, too. In other words, a combination of both methods is probably the best approach in my opinion. When taught properly, look and say works through constant repetition of new words on the lines of: "I like the dog, you like the dog, you and l like the dog." Hardly great literature and somewhat tedious for the listening adult but children get a great sense of achievement through this. Phonics comes in with its rules for decoding words. I agree that some children will learn to read however they are taught and I am sure l was one of them. I have been a voracious reader all my life. I can remember reading Peter Pan at seven and loving it as well as also loving Enid Blyton's books. The key to teaching reading is consistency. ITA was a well-meaning but not well thought out system but the worst was the short-lived fad for "real books," whereby the child was supposed to learn to read by osmosis, seemingly.

Yes yes.

Maisie don't worry the look say or whole word system carried on working. He finished his A levels last summer and is currently on a gap year.

I find it odd that people can't accept phonics doesn't work for all children. If it was being taught badly wouldn't there be more than two children out of 30 struggling ? Both boys caught up in approximately one year.

Mollygo

theworriedwell
I’d find it odd too, if it took a school 3 years to discover that a child wasn’t progressing, whatever method was used.

Where did I say it took them three years to realise he wasn't making progress. Maybe comprehension needs teaching as well.

So to clarify the school had been doing extra phonics, children behind taken out, missing other lessons with their teacher, to keep doing phonics. No progress. After two or three years, part way through year two in fact I started doing games with flash cards moving on to reading with look say. School were so pleased all their efforts suddenly started to work! Same thing happened with his friend except he got the extra help from a dyslexia specialist.

I think that it is very easy to say that one method works for all children but this is not the case. I do think, based on my own experience of teaching music, that it is important to be methodical and go through each stage but one size does not fit all and, of course, some children learn more quickly than others. Phonics are vital for learning to decode words but look and say, or the whole word approach, has its merits, too. In other words, a combination of both methods is probably the best approach in my opinion. When taught properly, look and say works through constant repetition of new words on the lines of: "I like the dog, you like the dog, you and l like the dog." Hardly great literature and somewhat tedious for the listening adult but children get a great sense of achievement through this. Phonics comes in with its rules for decoding words. I agree that some children will learn to read however they are taught and I am sure l was one of them. I have been a voracious reader all my life. I can remember reading Peter Pan at seven and loving it as well as also loving Enid Blyton's books. The key to teaching reading is consistency. ITA was a well-meaning but not well thought out system but the worst was the short-lived fad for "real books," whereby the child was supposed to learn to read by osmosis, seemingly.

Mollygo

theworriedwell
I’d find it odd too, if it took a school 3 years to discover that a child wasn’t progressing, whatever method was used.

I'd think it was a school that really wasn't teaching phonics properly, or wasn't alert early on to a child's difficulties.

If it's not teaching the phonics properly more of the same won't help, but then, the only other method is 'whole word learning' which may have initial success when their reading is restricted to books designed to teach a restricted number of words as 'wholes' but fails them when they are older and need to be able to read books containing a far wider vocabulary.

It is estimated that the human brain has a limited capacity to memorise words as wholes, about 3,000 words. There are some 250,000 + words in the English lexicon and although few people need to 'know' all of them 9,000 would be a poor reading vocabulary. so even if they manage to memorise 3,000 words as 'wholes' they'd be stuck when they encounter words they haven't 'learned' because they wouldn't know how to work out what they 'say'. when reading independently as when being taught they are told what a new word says (and there is no guarantee that they would remember it next time they encounter it).

theworriedwell
I’d find it odd too, if it took a school 3 years to discover that a child wasn’t progressing, whatever method was used.

Newatthis

I am an English Language examiner so I was a bit skeptical when I was told that my grandchild was learning to read and write using phonics. My grandchild is now 8 and is reading the classics and read 8 books last year none of which were abridged for her age group.

I think some kids learn by any method. One of mine could read before school. Never had a lesson. One of my GC has dyslexia and got nowhere with phonics but once we tried look say they progressed well. All the others just did phonics at school and we're fine and I feel they'd have been fine with any method but obviously can't prove it.

One thing I find odd is if a child isn't progressing after two or three years with phonics the schools response was more phonics, missing lessons with a qualified teacher to do phonics with a TA. I thought that was poor, knew it was poor when parents agreed to me trying and with games and look say the teacher was amazed at his progress in just a few months.

I am an English Language examiner so I was a bit skeptical when I was told that my grandchild was learning to read and write using phonics. My grandchild is now 8 and is reading the classics and read 8 books last year none of which were abridged for her age group.

Suzieque66

I think kids have to learn twice ? Nonsense ...

That was a reference to ITA

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

Musicgirl

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)

I think it was DD1 ! 😁 Could have been DS.
Was there a Silver book in the series, Mollygo? I know there were colours.

One of them had the Oxford Reading Tree books with Biff, Chip and Kipper. I remember thinking what daft names.

Didn’t Biff, Chip & Kipper have adventures with a magic key or something?

I think I've conveniently forgotten everything I knew about Biff, Chip and Kipper apart from their names and the time they fell in the sea.

The magic key books were Biff, Chip and Kipper stories after the early books. They were really nice, imaginative stories and many children, including my daughter, loved them. I think they were a really good way to get young children to enjoy reading.

They must have worked.
DD teaches English now 🙂

Wellington Square I’ve not come across that.
Older scheme books like Project X are popular with juniors who still need to be on scheme books.

When I first started teaching, any Y2 children who hadn’t become confident readers were given Gay Way books (changed to New Way).
They were mainly phonic books with characters named Pat or Jip or Meg and building up from simple c-v-c words and some high frequency words like walk, the, day.
Now it’s phonics from the start.
Reading or spelling still doesn't come easy to all, but phonics has helped improve things for more children.
IMO One reason that using phonics has been so successful is that the teaching
has continuity and progression built in.
In our school at least, it allows for children to have small group tuition at their own level just for a short time each day.
The learning activities include reading & writing. The children are assessed and the groupings are changed if and when necessary.

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)

I think it was DD1 ! 😁 Could have been DS.
Was there a Silver book in the series, Mollygo? I know there were colours.

One of them had the Oxford Reading Tree books with Biff, Chip and Kipper. I remember thinking what daft names.

Didn’t Biff, Chip & Kipper have adventures with a magic key or something?

I think I've conveniently forgotten everything I knew about Biff, Chip and Kipper apart from their names and the time they fell in the sea.

The magic key books were Biff, Chip and Kipper stories after the early books. They were really nice, imaginative stories and many children, including my daughter, loved them. I think they were a really good way to get young children to enjoy reading.

GrannyGravy13

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)

I think it was DD1 ! 😁 Could have been DS.
Was there a Silver book in the series, Mollygo? I know there were colours.

One of them had the Oxford Reading Tree books with Biff, Chip and Kipper. I remember thinking what daft names.

Didn’t Biff, Chip & Kipper have adventures with a magic key or something?

I think I've conveniently forgotten everything I knew about Biff, Chip and Kipper apart from their names and the time they fell in the sea.

Allira

GrannyGravy13

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)

I think it was DD1 ! 😁 Could have been DS.
Was there a Silver book in the series, Mollygo? I know there were colours.

One of them had the Oxford Reading Tree books with Biff, Chip and Kipper. I remember thinking what daft names.

Didn’t Biff, Chip & Kipper have adventures with a magic key or something?

Maremia

'Wellington Square' for Primary pupils with reading difficulty or delay.

Oh God! Wellington Square is a Whole Word/ Look and Say programme. It's dreadful. (Sorry...)

I doubt very much if it's in use nowadays in English schools.

I stress English because the teaching of reading curriculum is different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Phonics is mandated in England but not in the other three. Though there will be teachers in all of them who use phonics and some will be fighting hard to get it introduced into their national initial teaching of reading curriculum.

I learnt to read with the Ladybird reading scheme - Peter and Jane. There were twelve graded levels - the A books, which introduced new words, the B books, which reinforced the new words and the C books, which were phonics based writing books. In other words, they were a combination of look and say and phonics, which seems the best idea to me. I was an early fluent reader and speller and I think I would have found a completely phonics system frustratingly slow. Of course, Peter and Jane, like their predecessors Janet and John, excellent schemes though both were, are hopelessly dated and modern children would find them hard to relate to. I am the age group where some children were taught ITA but, thankfully, my school was not among them. My children, born in the nineties, were the Oxford Reading Tree, Biff, Chip and Kipper, which were nicknames. They were very good, although I remember the immortal line Dad went to the toilet in one of them. No-one in the Peter and Jane books or Janet and John ever had any need, seemingly. My oldest son went to a special school and they were instrumental in devising the Wellington Square series mentioned by Maremia. It was for the senior children and based on EastEnders to make it more appealing to older children.

'Wellington Square' for Primary pupils with reading difficulty or delay.

I am a volunteer at a local primary school and hear children aged 6 read. They learn mainly though phonics and blending but sometimes have to learn the whole word as some cannot be sounded or blended.
Children who are read to at home plus have help at home with their learning are way ahead of their peers. You can never read too much to children in my view

GrannyGravy13

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)

I think it was DD1 ! 😁 Could have been DS.
Was there a Silver book in the series, Mollygo? I know there were colours.

One of them had the Oxford Reading Tree books with Biff, Chip and Kipper. I remember thinking what daft names.

Indeed - the village with three corners was home to Roger, Billy, and Johnny: I remember them well.
Thank goodness I did not have to tussle with the ITA. It struck me then, and seems to me now, an absolutely terrible idea

Mollygo

Roger Red-Hat, Billy Blue -Hat, Jennifer and Johnny Yellow-Hat and the eternally naughty Percy Green.

👍

Roger Red-Hat, Billy Blue -Hat, Jennifer and Johnny Yellow-Hat and the eternally naughty Percy Green.

Allira

It's a long time since my DD was at primary school but I remember the reading scheme did not involve phonetics or ITA. Her books involved colours, Roger Red Hat etc, as far as remember.

Her friend went to a nearby primary school and her ITA reading books looked as if they were written in a foreign language.

One of mine had those books The Village with three corners, Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat, (cannot remember which child though, shouldn’t have had so many 🤦‍♀️)