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

I volunteer with struggling readers in a local junior school two afternoons a week. I have no teaching experience and don’t involve myself with the phonics system. Rather, if they are struggling with an unfamiliar word, I will ask if they would like me to write it out and I split it up into its syllables so that we can go through it until it makes sense as a whole word. It saves them the embarrassment of sitting there struggling. If there are anomalies such as “ghost” letters (g, k, w) or “ch” as in school, chemistry, orchestra, and choir we pay special attention to those. There are too many instances to list.

I keep lists of “th/gh” words, and words with “ed” on the end where the e is not sounded, which seem to cause particular problems, so that we can run through them at the start of a session and hopefully they will take root somewhere. As someone has said, the only way with these words is to become familiar with them and commit them to memory.

I have no doubt that there are those on here with teaching experience who would throw up their hands in horror, but I’ve been doing this for three years and have yet to be told by the school that it’s not acceptable. Anything that works, works.

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.

ITA was an ill thought out though interesting (from an observer's point of view) exercise. What wasn't thought through was how children were going transition from ITA to 'normal' text. some children managed to do it, some were baffled by it.

However, Sue Lloyd, co-author of Jolly Phonics, who was an SEN teacher at the time and who taught it, said that it gave her an understanding of the relationship between the sounds in words and the way they were represented by the letters of the alphabet and enabled her and her co-author (another teacher she worked with) the inspiration for developing their teaching programme using the conventional alphabet. Not all bad, then)

Sue also said that in her many years experience of phonics teaching she only taught one child who just couldn't learn to read at all.

Janet and John did the trick for me. I've been an avid bookworm ever since.

When DD1 started school she was a few months younger than her friends so she had to go to a different school. At her friends school they used ITA 60 yr olds may remember it. The school she went to used traditional English. The headmistress said ITA only claims 75% success , that is not good enough for this school We have 95% success rate. They did.

phonics is one of the bases - include in that digraphs (pairs of letters making a sound, like ee,ea,ei). There are any number of additional techniques that follow through the years.
- I taught "magic e" , an old fashioned idea, that was then adopted by the school.
- also by lots of reading - there are many books that repeat words alternating between the same sounds with different spellings "Pete would greet Nita and they would eat together"
- the removal of "ing", "ed" from words to see what they look like
-looking at roots of words e.g encouragement has courage in the middle
- looking a combined words e.g wordplay is word and play - this helps with shape recognition as well as sounding
- sadly the only way to teach thou, though, through, thorough, thought is by repetition - it helps to explain to the strugglers just what we have been saying, that English is not consistent.

However, if she is really struggling three things I would offer
- get her vision checked - I have seen readers who do enjoy books, because they have learned to see the overall shape of many words without seeing them clearly, and the clever ones simply work it in context. Many children "see" words better with a coloured overlay - varies from yellow to blue, especially if she is colour blind (rare but often more severe in girls, but worth a check with those bubble pictures)
- get a dyslexia assessment - my own DD was only diagnosed at age 16 when she attended a college course. Being able to read words as whole shapes rather than the letters within is a symptom - she may get extra time for SATs
- ask your school's SENco for help - it is in the school's interest to get better results - she may know if it is just your GD or the whole class that is struggling

And while working on this, do remember that SATs English includes reading and comprehension as much as spelling
You can "bump" her scores by reading past exam papers too. www.satspapersguide.co.uk/ks2-year-6-sats/ks2-year-6-sats-papers/ so she is familiar with the type of language used

Both practice in recognition of high frequency words , and the ability to use phonics in order to tackle new words are necessary. Children need to learn the sounds of letters, and the combination of sounds. Of course they’ll come across anomalies. I taught infants for many years, and also worked in adult literacy. Using a ‘ whole word ‘ approach only works up to a point. An example that I always remember was hearing a pupil reading aloud . When she said the words,
‘ cracker special ‘, I checked her text, and it was actually
‘ cocker spaniel ‘. She was using a whole word approach, which didn’t work.

Thanks, Mollygo.

Successive governments, and so I suppose OFSTED, seem to have been obsessed with phonics for years. Different kids learn in different ways, and good teachers have a repertoire of teaching methods.

Sarnia
Her school uses phonics so from Reception to Year 3 she was told to write down words as they sounded.
That’s not phonics, it was known as emergent writing many years ago. The idea was that children were discouraged from writing by the need to spell.

It went alongside the idea that doing spelling corrections were bad for their writing confidence.

If a frequently used wrong spelling went uncorrected, it soon became the norm and had to be unlearnt, far more confidence destroying than leaning it in the first place.

MaizieD had a good explanation of phonics at 11:18.

Having written the above I’ve just realised I didn’t answer the spelling question. Spelling usually follows about 6 months behind learning to read a certain word. A child needs to see, read and spell a word approximately 25 times before they achieve this - some children need fewer than 25 times, some need more but on average it’s 25 times. As an ex teacher I would correct Childrens’ spelling BUT not every single word as it disheartens the child and a maximum of 3 corrections in younger children and a maximum of 6 corrections with an older child

Not all children learn to read through phonics - some use the look and say method. If you cover the bottom half of words you will see the top of half of words and you can decipher what the word is. Children may use this method to recognise what a word is. Phonics help some children but in doing so they also need to recognise some letters are read differently such as split vowel diphthongs. Some phonic sounds are blends of letters. Children who prefer the look and say method may become frustrated using phonics. However with large class sizes it is very difficult to cater to a single child no matter how hard the teacher tries. Incidentally one of my DC used look and say and the other used phonics. My 4 year old DGD is now teaching herself to read using look and say.

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

Mojack as I said in my post I was a very early reader with phonics and totally understood by repetition that spelling was different but we did a spelling test every week and there was really no problem I would never spell as I read The same with my children all learnt by phonics and were good readers and spellers never anything like the examples you give

Should add my children were taught by phonics all good readers

No I hated them when my daughters were learning to read and write. I was also a teacher and insisted my girls spelled correctly as they would have to eventually...learn correctly first time and saves relearning later. I was a secondary school teacher and I was forever correcting poor spelling...I put a lot of it down to phonics. ie nife instead of knife and gard instead of guard,hors instead of horse.. I hate it...

That’s awful I was taught to read by phonics or as we called it sounding out the words but we always had to learn spellings from about 6 /7 years old so we were well aware that words and spellings didn’t always match I don’t remember anyone having a problem I remember learning spelling every night and having a spelling test at the end of every week

Three of my four children were taught with phonics and my youngest daughter without. It took her much longer to master reading than the others, in fact until her teacher produced some books from the old phonics system she didn’t progress at all.

Our German SiL, now a senior professor at a British university, did remark, when his sons were learning to read, that he was surprised that they managed it so well!

Not all children can learn to read using the phonics method. Unfortunately , our English language, does not always lend itself to spelling using phonics. The school I used to work in, taught spelling in separate lessons. They used Jane Considine spelling programme for year 2 upwards.

(To my utter dismay I found myself spelling out a word to a call centre operative last week using curly k and kicking k 🤦‍♀️)
😂

None of my DC or GDC learnt by phonics or the ITA method but I do remember my friend's DGD were taught the ITA method at their primary school. She was a teacher and disliked that method, she always said they had to learn twice.

I know that the theory behind not correcting is that you shouldn't be negative as it discourages a child, but it's perfectly possible to be very positive about the work while helping with the spelling of a word or two.
My DGN's primary school did not believe in correcting spelling or grammar as it inhibited the child's imagination, apparently. His spelling was always very erratic although he is now an extremely clever scientist.

I think that research has shown that phonics is, indeed, the most useful way to learn to read.

ITA was a big mistake.
Children learn in different ways, so a structured mix of methods works for most classes.

Yes, phonics is the best way to learn.

MaizieD I am on your side. My MiL was an infant teacher and for 3 terrible years under one headmistress had to teach children to read using the ITA, initial teaching alphabet. She said that the gransfer from that to normal spelling, pushed some children's reading skills back by about a year.