Here is an article on The Australian.com that was posted on
twitter. You may read the whole article here.
Following is my summary of the comments followed by comments
by readers/teachers I have extracted from the article.
I note that most of the comments are pro phonics and rote
memorisation of sight words but they are basic phonics and not what is being
marketed now as Systematic Synthetic Phonics and Science of Reading.
I was taught basic phonics in my school by teachers who had
studied from British teachers who came to this country. Phonemes of Consonants were taught with no extraneous sounds unlike
it is taught nowadays. The parents and teachers commenting in this post are
from the 60s’ to 80s’ who can’t understand why there is objection to phonics
and rote memory.
My tweets on Twitter in the last two months have only been on
one main item and that is to teach pronunciation of phonemes of consonants
without extraneous sounds. If this is done correctly children will not be
confused and will be able to read sooner.
It is mind boggling why educators like Nathaniel Swain and
Pamela Snow from Australia do not understand why consonants should not be
taught with extraneous sounds.
Both Nathaniel and Pamela have tweeted the following in
response to my tweet.
“I haven’t responded as I haven’t found your contributions
very relevant or conducive to collaborative discussion.”
The above was tweeted after I had collated the tweets and
posted it in one of my blogs and requested Nathaniel to respond. You can find my post here.
We also have educators from the UK and the US who can’t
accept that this is the basic problem why many kids disengage from learning to
read.
Read the comments below from readers of the Australian. You may read the full comments on the website above.
23.5.2020
DIR TEN289
Strange the author shoots off with
vowel sounds.
Consonant sounds by far the best to
start. That’s where we get potato/potarto and tomato/tomarto from. Doesn’t
matter does it, unless you want to argue the pointless point with Brits and
Yanks.
Also strange that letter sound
relationships are not the start point for reading learners at home, when the
dead giveaway is a child reading not able to ‘read’ (recognise) the
word-pronounce it.
But this will have been said
countless times by other here before me...as I am not a subscriber.
Richard
If I were to attempt to translate
it, I would probably say "Phonics teaching is a serious subject and should
be taught in a way that children understand and enjoy"
And just another observation: it seems reading teaching is another
discipline that's been subjected to a whole lot of non-empirical, almost
ideological, tinkering over a number of years.
Tony
Not again?? Can't we stop kicking
this tired old issue around the block? The 'reading war' refer in the title is
over! This article by a phonics evangelist is one-eyed and misguided. Research
and good teaching practice (which requires good teachers) has convincingly
shown all over the world that a combination of phonics (learning the sounds of
letters and letter combinations) AND whole language (putting words into an
understandable context) works best. Unconvinced? Consider the need in phonics
to learn lots of variations and exceptions (say these words out aloud and
listen to the sounds: rough, tough; thought, bought; cough, trough; dough,
though; plough, drought; thorough, borough). It makes sense to learn sounds
properly AND put them in context. My own kids learned to read this way and they
kicked goals all the way through their education.…
Ermie
Our son was a School of the Air
student in the 80s when phonics was definitely out of fashion in the
Department. Fortunately, we were able to
override the idiotic “whole language” system so that his reading age at the end
of Year 1 was around 10 not his real age of 6.
How sad that so many children emerged from this “dark age” functionally
illiterate (and often innumerate) because the “experts” deemed rote learning
too old fashioned.
Tess
I started to clean out boxes from
the garage during our lockdown and l and behold the basics of how to teach
reading from the 70's
Excellent, all based on phonics
with repetition.
Those teachers who think that you
can teach a new letter each day and be on to digraphs by term 2 in Prep are
sadly mistaken - rote and repetition works.
Sounding out works
Joanna
Well I was taught to read using
phonics in the 80s... can’t see why it’s controversial. Easy and it works. The
reading penny dropped for me at 6.5 years and I’ve been a voracious reader ever
since.
RichardO
I can never figure out why the
animosity towards phonics. It works, so why the closed mindness?
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Matt
There is no animosity.
Every school teaches it - as well
as other strategies.
If you just continually taught
phonics you would have a class full of kids bored out of their brains.
You also need to teach them to love
literature, and write creatively.
The phonics vs. whole language
battle exists among academics.
Gives them a bit of a buzz.
Meg
I think the problem is not the kids
being bored out of their brains but the teachers don’t like it because it bores
them. Phonics works for kids and works
quickly. Not only that, it teaches them to spell. Whole word does not work for
most children and this rubbish about parents being to blame for their children
being poor readers because they don’t read to them at night is humbug. No one
read to me at night when I started school, but after our teacher’s excellent
phonics tuition, by age 6 I was reading simple stories by myself and even
writing my own little tales though the spelling was often hilarious. Teaching
should be about what’s best for the children, not about what’s the most
interesting for the teachers.
Alpal
We haven't even started on
discussing learning your times tables by rote. Is that happening today or do they
use calculators from year 3? Still know my tables up to 12 times. It's
hardwired in and makes basic maths so simple.
susan
Now 73 years on I can’t really
recall. But 65 kids in class and taught
from blackboard and everyone could read.
More had problems with math.
Debra L
As a teacher of English as a second
language for 15 years I was innately drawn to the phonetic alphabet from day 1.
It was a constant in every class I taught (adults and teens) and to see their
eyes light up when they finally got it was brilliant.
I taught the 44 sounds and their
related symbol to each new class until they knew it by heart then used it daily
for new vocabulary and in games. From then on pronunciation of any difficult
word was as easy as writing the phonemes on the board and they always got it
right.
David
Decoding is an essential skill for
reading and yet still so many years down the track there is debate on whether
phonics should be taught! It appears that fashion above commonsense has the
strongest influence in the way reading programs are presented even now when the
evidence is overwhelming. It is time that the leaders in education bring an end
to the reading wars for the benefit of our young learners especially those
children who find decoding a difficult skill but one they must master if they
are to become efficient readers.
Aivis
This subject really complicates
something that is not all that hard. My wife and I are both in our sixties. We
were taught basic phonics reading at school. Cannot recall anyone having all
that much trouble.
Without any teaching background my
wife taught each of the 4 kids basic phonics reading before school age.
Different personality, motivation and gender. No problem. With just a little
encouragement they read lots of books in their growing up years.
The kids did the same to their 3
year olds. The basics only took a few weeks but the practice is ongoing. A
sceptical grandfather was very impressed with the 4 year old reading something
from an unfamiliar newspaper. Of course you don’t understand he said but he
answered every basic question correctly.
This is just ordinary parents
teaching ordinary kids simple basic stuff that has worked forever.
Also how can you possibly read an
abstract word without sounding it out phonically?
Kenneth
When I went to school in the 1950s we were
taught the name of a letter, then the sound of the letter, followed by blends
at the beginnings of words then ends of words. We were taught vowels and
“sounds” eg oo, ee, etc. Everything we learnt was reinforced via music and
rhymes and this had been done for many years.
It worked. By the time I got to Teachers College the experts from the US
had arrived with “reading for meaning” where you were instructed not to teach phonics
however the older ladies who taught junior primary stuck to their guns and
insisted you teach phonics because it works.
Surely we should be doing what is
best for our children not playing culture wars.
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