The story behind the Teeny Reading Seeds resources...

[debbie]

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/trs.html

We've just launched the new Teeny Reading Seeds webpage full of handy resources for young children who are beginning to make links between letters and sounds.

There's quite a story behind this new bank of resources and I've had to think hard about the advisability of producing resources intended for children of such a young age (around three to four years old).

I am not someone who has advised that the teaching of reading should be as early as possible - and I have always been very hesitant to suggest an exact age and stage to start phonics teaching.

We know that children vary enormously as they grow and that their parents and teachers may have different philosophies regarding the suitability of learning provision - such as 'child-initiated', 'discovery learning', 'learning through play' and 'direct teaching' - and so on.

Children also have different needs, different priorities and different home backgrounds. There is so much variety to consider.

I have also worried, however, that we can miss out on windows of opportunity - that if we leave the process of direct instruction of teaching reading and spelling and handwriting until the age of seven, that this is too late for most children. We know that children's brains have an enormous capacity to learn and I never cease to be amazed at the potential of our youngest learners.

There is a huge lobby group in the UK who are against the planned teaching of children below the age of seven - they often refer to this as 'formal teaching'. They don't want children taught 'formally' before the age of seven.

But what is the definition of 'formal' in any event? Is 'direct instruction' of specific code knowledge and the skills of blending, segmenting and handwriting 'formal' and not good for children just because it is structured and specific? Or do children thrive on structured step-by-step teaching which actually has simple routines and which empowers children to read anything and to express themselves in writing?

This debate has also led to the promotion of systematic, synthetic phonics teaching dressed up as 'fun and games' and all sorts of activities and games are used which, in my view, are not necessarily fit-for-purpose and which can detract teachers from the job in hand of simple and core teaching and learning techniques - involving children sitting at desks with good posture doing paper and pencil activities for reading, spelling and handwriting.

Instead we see all sorts of jumping around, fishing word cards out of the sand pit to read the words, and writing on mini-whiteboards at the expense of writing on paper with ordinary pencils. Why do we have to perceive fit-for-purpose teaching and learning as something which children do not enjoy? And whatever the enjoyment levels, the children themselves are surely entitled to the best teaching possible leading to children/learners developing their full potential.

It was with some hesitance, however, that I wrote some materials for the three to four year olds considering the breadth of views and the difficulty we have had to get systematic, synthetic phonics on the political and educational agenda at all!

What I have found during my teacher-training travels is that many 'nursery' professionals felt left in limbo about exactly what they should be providing for the three to four year olds. Some teachers, for example, I found trying to slim down and simplify my Early Years Starter Package materials and Phonics International materials for the younger children. Some were using various phonics materials with the older children but did not know quite what to provide for the youngest children in the setting.

Many Early Years professionals feel unsure what is intended by the authors of the UK government's 'Letters and Sounds' publication for 'Phase One' (aimed approximately and mainly at the three and four year old children pre-reception and early reception). In 'Letters and Sounds' the activities of oral blending and oral segmenting are promoted - but it says that some children may have an interest in letter shapes 'from home' which they bring into the setting, but not that the Early Years providers should introduce letter shapes specifically.

Oral blending: To say the component sounds of a word to train the learner's 'ear' to 'hear', or discern, the spoken word.

For example, the adult says, /f/ /i/ /sh/. Can the child discern the word 'fish' from its component sounds?

This is a sub-skill of sounding and blending all-through-printed-words for reading (decoding).

Oral segmenting: The adult models how to say the whole spoken word slowly and how to split this up (segment) into its component sounds.

For example, the adult starts by saying the whole word 'fish' and then models how this can be split up into the small component sounds /f/ /i/ /sh/.

This is a sub-skill of spelling where we start with a spoken word and need the skill to split it up into its sounds so that we can then allot letters or letter groups for each sound from beginning to end of the word to spell the word.

Research indicates, however, that children will learn these sub-skills even better when they are also taught the links with the actual letter shapes. This is making 'multi-sensory' links.

Whilst it does not say for Phase One of 'Letters and Sounds' that letters should not be used, neither does it make it clear that Early Years professionals should introduce letter shapes to link with sounds - although clearly children are 'seeing' letter shapes all around them in their environment and in children's literature.

Meanwhile, I met Rachel Hornsey on my travels in a school which was taking on board the Phonics International programme as a whole school approach. Rachel is very talented at inspiring children with great literature but she realised that no matter what the inspiration, children will struggle to write and express themselves if they do not have well enough those core basic spelling, writing - and, indeed, reading skills.

Currently Rachel is working with three to four year olds and she told me about her wish for simple resources which would help her and the children make those links with letter shapes and sounds. With this age range, there is no pressure whatsoever on what the children do, or do not, achieve in terms of their knowledge about the letter shapes and sounds. They will go on to start a full systematic, synthetic phonics programme in their reception year which will contiue throughout the whole school.

Rachel has already described to me the advantages she has seen with her previous cohort of children from trialling the idea that the children would learn not only oral blending and segmenting as described in Phase One of 'Letters and Sounds' but that they would also learn specifically about the letter shapes of the alphabet letters. Rachel has helped me to design our Teeny Reading Seeds resources and has been able to try them out over the last year or so.

Such an approach might help a lot of Early Years professionals and parents with their three to four year olds - appreciating that there is no pressure, no time-scale, no expectation that children will say all the sounds to automaticity on seeing the letter shapes, and no expectation that children will actually sound out and blend simple words. They can just see the processes of reading and spelling simple words demonstrated to them.

In fact, there is not a 'cumulative' approach with the Teeny Reading Seeds resources. You can introduce any of the 44+ sounds at any time through oral blending and oral segmenting activities, and introduce letter shapes linked to sounds when you want and related to whatever you want!

Please do not think that a resource like Teeny Reading Seeds is 'required' learning prior to a systematic synthetic phonics programme such as Phonics International. It is not.

You can start teaching a full synthetic phonics programme when learners have no specific prior knowledge about letters and sounds - and I suggest that it is fine to wait until the learners are four to five years old.

In the UK, Jim Rose suggested in his independent national review of beginning reading instruction that 'by the age of five' children can be introduced to a systematic phonics teaching programme.

Finally, I see much confusion still with capital, or upper case, letters and the alphabetic code. The Teeny Reading Seeds resource provides a good opportunity to teach that upper and lower case letters are code for the same sounds - it's just that capital letters are used in special circumstances such as the beginning of our names.

With Teeny Reading Seeds, children can focus on learning about capital and lower case letter shapes before an emphasis on digraphs such as 'sh' and 'ee' and other complications such as spelling and pronunciation alternatives.