Anti SSP articles on the University of Chester forum...

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debbie
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Anti SSP articles on the University of Chester forum...

Post by debbie »

A forum of the University of Chester is very worrying as there are a number of articles which give the impression of students being misinformed.

Historically I responded to a couple of the articles and I have just revisited the site and added another comment.

It has not 'appeared' yet and I'm concerned that the forum might be locked and I will have wasted my time trying to contribute the message below.

However, it occurred to me that, just in case, I could copy and paste my message on this forum and include a link to the University's forum so that my message below makes sense.

Here is the link to the forum of the University of Chester which leads one to wonder what on earth lecturers are are saying to their student-teachers!

https://languagedebates.wordpress.com/2 ... mment-1008

And here is my latest comment:
Many of the arguments against the promotion of systematic synthetic phonics are based on the premise that teachers know their children best and therefore they should be able to choose, as individual teachers, how to teach their children, as individuals. The arguments against SSP refer to surveys of a number of teachers and others, and opinions of members of the public, against what is described frequently as a political 'imposition' of a methodology and against national assessment of phonics at the end of Year One.

What Sir Jim Rose pointed out in his independent national review of beginning reading in 2005/6 was that regardless of the learner, it is the SAME alphabetic code and phonics skills that needs to be taught, and learnt, and that children should not have to 'ferret out' the alphabetic code on their own.

What many teachers and members of the public don't appreciate well enough is that alphabetic code knowledge and the phonics skills of blending for reading and oral segmenting for spelling, allotting letters and letter groups, and word chunks, to account for the sounds in words, are necessary for lifelong knowledge and skills that may be so sub-consciously applied that people aren't even aware of their application of, and dependency on, phonics of one form or another!

Where children have not been taught phonics at all or in a systematic way, many adults now don't even realise that they have 'ferreted out' or deduced, or intuited, the phonics code for themselves and that they apply phonics routinely in one form or another to read new, longer and more challenging words and to write or type longer words at least.

The 'perception' of 'phonics' is often extremely limited especially, it appears, of the most ardent critics (who should know better such as teaching union leaders who seem to be vociferous in their criticism of the Year One phonics screening check). So, alphabetic code knowledge and phonics skills are life-long features of literate adults reading and writing - but how ironic that so many of those adults, even in the teaching profession and teacher-training profession, don't fully appreciate this.

Our duty as teaching and teacher-training professionals is not to leave the level of alphabetic code knowledge and the phonics skills of the pupils to 'chance' and for them to 'ferret out on their own' - regardless of 'learning styles' or 'individuality' or 'preference'. The profession should be truly up to speed with their professional knowledge and skills for teaching phonics systematically - and up to speed with their knowledge of global research into reading instruction. The perception of phonics needs to change from it being perceived as 'baby stuff' to it being understood as 'adult stuff' and it needs to change from the idea that is optional for some learners or that teachers can opt to teach something different. We should be way past these misperceptions by now but clearly we are not.

Sir Jim Rose recommended the Simple View of Reading model for teachers to understand that being a reader in the full sense is dependent on two main features: ability to decode new words technically (word recognition) and level of language comprehension (spoken language). Systematic synthetic phonics is not taught in isolation. The only 'only' about SSP is that teachers should avoid teaching children to guess words from picture cues, initial letter cues, word shape and reliance on context. These multi-cueing reading strategies are discredited by world-renowned researchers such as Louisa Moats and Marilyn Jager Adams (known as the 'Searchights reading strategies in England and the '3-cueing' system internationally). Teaching children to rely on guessing words to get through a book which they cannot decode fully means giving children the wrong message about how reading works, it detracts from application of phonics knowledge and the blending skill, it undermines phonics teaching - it promotes the kind of inaccurate reading teachers witnessed when some of their 'better readers' mis-read some of the pseudo-words in the phonics check. The explanation of this given by many teachers was that the children were trying to 'make sense' of the words by turning them into real words. Such children were probably reflecting their reading reflex of having a 'quick stab' at words and guessing them - a default or taught method to get through reading books consisting of too many words that they could not decode by a reliance on guessing words instead. Any 'better readers' should have been able to read the pseudo-words accurately if they knew the alphabetic code well enough and were efficient at blending. The reality is that literature is full of words which are 'new' to children - new in the sense of young children may not have read the actual words before - or new in the sense that the words are not even in children's spoken vocabulary. It is essential that ALL children are taught the alphabetic code well and the phonics skills for decoding and encoding. This is simply not a matter of phonics suiting some children and not others - with the implication that teachers can pick and choose which method to use with which children. This is a nonsense and the body of research is such that the teaching profession should be far, far more knowledgeable about the research and about phonics provision.

Further, many of us even as adults will 'skip' longer, new words when reading privately and silently because we are too lazy to decode such words accurately. We still get the gist of the text. This 'word skipping' state of affairs is enforced, however, when children cannot apply alphabetic code knowledge and come up with a pronunciation. Teachers may consider various children are 'free readers' with no appreciation that children HAVE to skip words that they cannot decode. As many words in literature are NEW to the children as in brand new (not in their spoken vocabulary), then the children cannot add such words to their spoken vocabulary if they do not, or cannot, come up with a pronunciation. As literate adults we may choose to skip occasional words but could come up with a pronunciation if we had to, or if we were reading aloud. If young learners are not knowledgeable and proficient at phonics, then they have no choice but to 'skip' words and therefore they cannot expand on their spoken language as much as they should be able to. I suggest that there is a silent epidemic of learners who skip words through necessity, but who may still get the gist of the text sufficiently to dupe teachers and parents into thinking the children are better readers than they really are. Our secondary colleagues, however, keep sharing their alarm at how many of their pupils cannot access the texts at secondary level.

We have a long way to go as can be seen by the series of articles on this forum.
Last edited by debbie on Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

This link should lead to a stream of rather anti-SSP articles published on the University of Chester forum - do these reflect the prevailing lecturer-views on phonics?


https://languagedebates.wordpress.com/c ... ntroversy/
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Just to add that I've checked back on the University of Chester forum and my latest message (which I copied above) has been accepted and it has 'appeared'. That's good. :wink:
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

I'm so pleased to have received a response from an interested person and I have now written a further comment (three in total on this thread although one of my postings appears twice - oops!):


https://languagedebates.wordpress.com/2 ... mment-1030
Last edited by debbie on Thu Dec 10, 2015 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Read the great response from Jacqui MB who describes the inaccurate reading of children in Years 3, 4 and 5 - the damage of 'guessing' - a consequence of multi-cueing reading strategies and weak or no phonics teaching. :?
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Jacqui MB has left yet another, detailed, excellent message and so I have flagged it up via the forum of the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=500
Debbie Hepplewhite
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