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Children taught to read using phonics 'two years ahead' by age seven
Nick Gibb, the former schools minister, attacks the continuing use of ‘progressive’ reading methods as research shows that children taught using phonics are two years ahead of the national average
And the boys were out-performing the girls; addressing the stubborn problem of poor comparative performance by boys. Even more importantly, Dr Grant reported that the children were reading “with confidence and enthusiasm”. Schools all over England that adopt this approach could report similar outcomes.
Yet, many do not. There is a large disparity in results between different local authorities. One of the weakest is Liverpool where just 59 per cent of 6-year-olds passed the test last year.
Liverpool does have high levels of deprivation with 32 per cent of its primary school pupils eligible for free school meals, but then so does Newham, one of the poorest London boroughs with 33 per cent of its primary school pupils eligible for free school meals and three-quarters from families where English is not their first language. Yet in Newham, 76 per cent of pupils passed the Check, one of the highest pass rates in the country.
Sir Robin Wales, the borough’s directly-elected mayor, is a committed supporter of phonics and his determination to raise reading standards is inspiring.
If further evidence is required that it is not deprivation that explains the gaping difference in the success rates of schools in different areas in teaching children to read, just look at prosperous Wokingham where only 5.8 per cent of its primary school pupils are eligible for free school meals yet just 62 per cent passed the check.
Grant said that there was no evidence to suggest that phonics teaching will "switch off" children from a love of reading books. "On the contrary, children taught in this way pick up reading quickly. They become enthusiastic and confident in their reading and are more able and willing to engage in the world of reading around them," Grant said.
What counts here is the informative response of Dr Grant to the hasty attacks on her report of the two studies involving many years and a humungous amount of work - work for the teachers and children - work for Dr Grant and others.
Consider the many years prior to the adoption of systematic synthetic phonics practice of the teachers concerned in the study, the lifelong experience in the field of Dr Grant and the subsequent programme development, the teacher-training, the commitment, the teaching and learning processes, the assessing and testing, the collation of results and their write-up - and so on:
A number of people, thankfully, have interpreted and repeated the news about Dr Marlynne Grant's report (of two studies) in an unemotional and matter-of-fact way rather than the vitriolic attacking way of some. Here is an example to compare with the vitriol in the posting above:
News of Dr Grant's report has spread across the globe and received a range of responses - positive and negative.
This is one of the latest in 'Best Education News' and I felt the need to respond to Stephen Krashen's comments - as he is one of the biggest promoters and defenders of 'whole language'!
The Guardian’s enthusiastic report about the efficacy of phonics is an instance of “cold fusion” journalistic practice: Ppresenting research reports to the public just before the scientific neighborhood has reviewed them. I provide a single quick “peer overview” right here. Neither the review (thanks to the Guardian for supplying a hyperlink to the preliminary report) nor the Guardian’s write-up stage out that the review only confirms what we previously know: intensive phonics instruction helps children do greater on tests in which they are asked to pronounce phrases out loud, and on tests of spelling.
Not mentioned is the constant locating that intensive phonics instruction can make no considerable contribution to performance on exams in which youngsters have to understand what they read through. Genuine reading ability is the end result of actual reading, particularly of books that readers uncover interesting. Excellent readers at some point acquire nearly all the principles of phonics and spelling, as a end result of reading.
Stephen Krashen
Professor emeritus, University of Southern California
Debbie Hepplewhite says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
23 June, 2014 at 11:07 pm
We don’t need children to ‘acquire’ phonics, however, because we can teach them explicitly.
And for those children who historically or currently are not able to ‘acquire’ phonics and accurate spelling, they will not become the ‘excellent readers’ we would all want them to be.
Phonics proponents, like Dr Grant (the author of the studies) and myself and many others, know that teaching the alphabetic code and the phonics skills is only one aspect of reading, or spelling, but this is essential knowledge and skills – and should not be left to chance for children to ‘acquire’ themselves.
Exactly where does phonics match with the pronunciation of pear, pare, pair? There are numerous, a lot of far more examples: Gove, love, move between them.
With further reference to the letters published in response to Dr Grant's article, it is common to read various comments in the public domain and to get the impression that even many academics really don't 'get' the English alphabetic code or how well we can unpick it and teach it.
Such folk would maybe benefit from a copy of an Alphabetic Code Chart to enlighten them.
See the spelling alternatives '-ear', '-are' and 'air' in the 'vowel sounds' section of this Alphabetic Code Chart for example:
Further, Krashen comments about the outcomes of 'intensive phonics instruction' and asks about "...performance on exams in which youngsters have to understand what they read through: [see the red print below]:
The Guardian’s enthusiastic report about the efficacy of phonics is an instance of “cold fusion” journalistic practice: Ppresenting research reports to the public just before the scientific neighborhood has reviewed them. I provide a single quick “peer overview” right here. Neither the review (thanks to the Guardian for supplying a hyperlink to the preliminary report) nor the Guardian’s write-up stage out that the review only confirms what we previously know: intensive phonics instruction helps children do greater on tests in which they are asked to pronounce phrases out loud, and on tests of spelling.
Not mentioned is the constant locating that intensive phonics instruction can make no considerable contribution to performance on exams in which youngsters have to understand what they read through.
Krashen is mistaken as Dr Grant DOES provide long-term outcomes in her report of children's language comprehension in Year 6 and in Year 2 where children in England are assessed by national assessments according to criteria provided by the Department for Education.
Did Krashen actually read the report closely enough?
Professor Norman Thomas, said, “It would be valuable to know far more about the tests used”. Susan Godsland kindly put up a comment about that on the UK Reading Reform Foundation website:
·
“absence of clearly specified measures for determining reading age” (Stephen Krashen) - The standardised measuring instruments and other measuring instruments are clearly specified throughout the Grant report – British Ability Scales II Word Reading and Achievement Scales (see pp 5, 6, 7 for 2010-2013 study) and Burt Individual Word Reading Test and Schonell Test for spelling (p18 for 1997-2004 study).
Also national Standardised Assessment Tests (SATs) for reading, writing and English at Key Stage 1 (age 7 years) and at Key Stage 2 (age 11 years) were used in the studies.
· although the “tests” of reading are about decoding and involve individual words, the national SATs results clearly involve comprehension. In SATs children are required to read running text for meaning.
Last edited by debbie on Wed Jun 25, 2014 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
This is a blog posting via 'Miscellaneous Witterings' which resulted from harsh criticism of Dr Grant's studies. There is some considerable detail in some of the answers raised by a parent re the difference between systematic synthetic phonics practice and mixed methods (or multi-cueing):
Reading methods – defining terms
This is a rather lengthy response to a post by @Par4Ed here, which I thought might be better here than in their comments field. (NB You can get to my post’s comments field by clicking on the grey speech bubble by the heading…)
As a parent who’s new to all this, one of the reasons I think I find myself feeling baffled by the phonics/mixed debate is that it sometimes seems people are using the same words to mean different things.
What I’d find really helpful in understanding the issues is a definition of terms from both SSP advocates and mixed-methods advocates. I think it would help us as parents to see to what extent a like-for-like comparison can be made across the different approaches (NB I’d love to see responses relating to a Montessori approach in there, too, so apologies for the binary nature of the questions).