What won Westminster’s ear for synthetic phonics was essentially a seven-year experiment in Clackmannanshire in Scotland. By the age of 11, children taught to read there through synthetic phonics are three and a half years ahead of their peers taught by other methods. Some reckon that boys, in particular, do better with a system like this that offers hands-on tools.
Speaking as a member of the phonics generation - I could read from a newspaper before I finished first grade - all I can add is "You don't say?"
I'm not so convinced. I taught myself how to read by the time I was four - mostly because Mom and Dad read to me every day. My kid brother got trapped into the leading edge of Phonics, taught to him by a well-meaning Dutch lady and he always had trouble with reading comprehension. He still can't spell worth a darn.
I'm with Kate on this one. Versus word recognition or whatever the latest craze is, I think phonics leads to a more flexible ability.
I learned to read via my family reading books to me from the earliest possible age. I'd listen and look at the words as they're spoken.
Funny thing: at age five I woke up after a serious illness and found myself no longer able to hear a thing at all. But... fortunately I could read, so that made it a hell of a lot easier to communicate with me 'till I learned to lipread.
Well, that's me. Many parents, I believe, could care less about teaching their kids to read, leaving it up to the public schools, which have a less than stellar record in turning out fully literate graduates.
I believe education must start as early as possible, in the family. That way, the individual will have a headstart and an edge in the future.
And I salute families that practice homeschooling all the way. I don't get the liberal-left's apparent phobia wrt homeschooling... perhaps they realize that the more homeschooled people there are, the fewer state-indoctrinated (and thus controllable) folks there will be to toe the line and all that...
We lived in a rural setting prior to our four children attending public school.
Kindergarten was out of the question. Nonetheless they could all read when they entered their first grade.
Phonics, pure and simple.
I have watched in disgust for the past forty years as children have been subjected to one of the worst possible experiments in education.
Quite frankly those bright lights that forced the whole language method should have all been charged
in a class action suit for this disastrous human experiment in education.
Word recognition doesn't help unless you know the definition of said word, eg wind and wind.
Then there are the sound alikes, knew, new, too, to, two. Unfortunately spelling skills have gone the way of the dodo bird, as you are told there is spell check (cheque). No one is taught the basic laws of pronounciation anymore, or spelling. I before E except after C, or in the exceptions of neighbour and weigh,(way). No wonder there are so many who can't write (right) a proper letter or memo. There was a time one had to know (no) all these things to pass.
If one can't spell or pronounce properly, you might(mite) be (bee) able to read, but you sure can't understand what you are reading or hear (here). I think that is the problem with the leftist kooks. They don't know (no) what they are reading or saying.
We home-schooled our kids for three years until we could no longer financially manage. Phonics all the way! Our text book "Why Johnny Can't read, what you can do about it" copyright 1955.
Apparently one must combine the sound and the spelling, plus learn proper grammar, sentence construction, punctuation, etc...
Myself, I paid close attention in English class (guess my peers didn't much care to, themselves, as most ended up far behind me wrt mastery of English) and read progressively more difficult books, thus really learning the language.
Well, voila...
What's Phonics? I was reading by the time I went into Kindergarten, middle of the year Kennedy got shot - that's what I remember of Kindergarten. I learned to write from reading.
Frankly, I don't see how reading to children helps them learn to read--otherwise simply talking to them or story-telling (not from a book) would help. Fact is, reading is unnnatural. No one learns it unless taught or exposed to it. Reading from a book probably just shapes their aspeirations--I want to read like Mom does; Mom does it so it must be important.
I have seen good evidence of successful non-phonics teaching to read through visual pattern learning without phonics in children under five. At that age there is explosive neural branch and prune development, so visual pattern recognition is strong. After six, the window seems to close. A child who has not mastered some grammar by six likely will never, because neural branch and prune mechanisms have slowed significantly.
I would expect this is why phonics is so overwhelmingly more successful for children of school age, as it would piggy-back on predeveloped oral communication neural development. Whatever anecdotes people bring forward, the evidence is clear now that phonics is far more successful. The British govrnment has reintroduced it on the conclusiveness of the data.
There is an expression that economics is the dismal science. Plainly, it is public education that is the dismal science. How many teachers did you have that studied neuroscience. Think about it. Their job is to develop and train the brain, and they do not study the brain. Imagine an Olympic coach that did not study muscles, physiology, nutrition or sports psychology. Shameful, really.
In Ontario, phonics is banned and strictly discouraged in the elementary schools. They opt for the whole word method to ensure that most students are functionally illiterate. Phonics, however, is the method used to teach adults in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes.
You would think that they would give the children the tools to teach them HOW to read vs. WHAT they read - like they do with the adults.
as the father of 3 daughters(grade7, 10, 2nd yr college)...i have spent the last 15 years 1. fighting the education system, 2. doing the teachers work at home and with tutors....if most of these "educators" would get their noses out of politics and social engineering, and get back to teaching, things would probably work out in the long run
It's been my experience that each child is unique.
I have one child that phonics worked very well for, and another that sight words works and can't do phonics work a darn.
Phonics are banned in Ont. So are guns. Lets turn things around, tell gang members to use the banned phonics instead of banned guns. Tell the kids to rebel, use phonics not drugs.
I was taught that phonetics was an integral part of the language....don't know when or how that went out of fashion but it seems to me that an integral part of anything is not a matter of fashion. Treating it as such reduces the value of the whole system.
Proof of this is evidenced in the lowered standards of literacy and language competence at all levels today.
Virtually all our school boards and Educational bureaucracies have been overrun by left-wing, socialist nutbars who are driven by two things: socializing our children to their liberal values; and ensuring that no child's precious self esteem is hurt through failure. As a result, discipline, structure and individual pride have been abandoned to sensitivity, tolerance and collaboration. Given the number of, like, semi literate kids, like, graduating from, like, high schools these days, we have to conclude that the current system is just not getting the job done. But don’t expect the educrats to admit it and don’t expect a return to a phonics based approach to reading in our public schools. They’re too busy fighting sexism, racism and capitalism to bother with such academic trivialities.
Our school district (Broadview/Kipling) used the phonetic method in the late 'fifties (does anyone remember the "Think and Do" books?), and our students of that era consistently out-performed the kids from a couple of school districts over (including Regina) who had opted for the ever-changing fashion of "sight-method", "language-experience,", "psycho-linguistic," "whole-language" readings methods: or, as they were more accurately known, "look-and-guess." Ironically, the work of one of the most radical of U.S. academics, Noam Chomsky, validates the phonetic method (although he may be disowning his early research at this point).
My daughter just started Grade 1 in a French school so she is learning to read and write this year (she can read a little already but in English). I live in Western Quebec and I am quite impressed with her school's teaching method for reading which is a combination of phonics and words by sight, seems to be working quite well as my daughter now reads a lot of words already.
The NEA opposes home schooling they want all kids to be dumbed down at these rotten public schools controled by the NEA and other leftist
the english language was *built* on phonetics.
you learn to SPEAK before you learn to read; the letters are merely a reflection of the SOUNDS you are speaking, ergo emphasis on phonetics is correct.
is it true grade schoolers are taught to read by recognizing the entire word? they may as well start teaching Chinese writing .....
Phonics worked for us. Utilizing a phonics-based book we purchased from the Chicago Tribune, my wife taught our children to read before they went to Kindergarten. The three oldest are now a teacher, an occupational therapist and a college senior preparing for optometry school.
I've never understood this phonics/whatever debate, but then it isn't important to me. I learnt to read by recognizing sounds from groups of letters and also the "special cases".
If Kate learnt via "phonics" then I can understand that the left detests the approach :-)
PS I learnt to mis-spell with a computer :-)
Just returning from Wikipedia. Yes, I learnt via phonics. I didn't know that. It is so natural. I was reading the English Daily Telegraph when I was seven. I was atheist by 11. I am now Joe Blow-nowhere.