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

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

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.

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.

Thanks, Mollygo.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 🤦‍♀️)

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

Mollygo

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

👍

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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 🙂