Whether or not you are using the Phonics International Programme, feel free to visit this informal 'Chat' forum!
Here you will find all sorts of interesting articles, links to research and developments - and various interesting topics! Do join in!
Here's the introduction - but do read the whole blog posting via the link above:
Sunday, 14 September 2014
International reading comparisons: is England really doing so poorly?
I was surprised to see a piece in the Guardian stating that "England is one of the most unequal countries for children's reading levels, second in the EU only to Romania". This claim was made in an article about a new campaign, Read On, Get On, that was launched this week.
The campaign sounds great. A consortium of organizations and individuals have got together to address the problem of poor reading: the tail in the distribution of reading ability that seems to stubbornly remain, despite efforts to reduce it. Poor readers are particularly likely to come from deprived backgrounds, and their disadvantage will be perpetuated, as they are at high risk of leaving school with few qualifications and dismal employment prospects. I was pleased to see that the campaign has recognized weak language skills in young children as an important predictor of later reading difficulties. The research evidence has been there for years (Kamhi & Catts, 2011), but it has taken ages to percolate into practice, and few teachers have any training in language development.
But! You knew there was a 'but' coming. It concerns the way the campaign has used evidence. They've mostly based what they say on the massive Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the impression is they have exaggerated the negative in order to create a sense of urgency.
I took a look at the Read On Get On report. The language is emotive and all about blame: "The UK has a sorry history of educational inequality. For many children, this country provides enormous and rich opportunities. At the top end of our education system we rival the best in the world. But it has long been recognised that we let down too many children who are allowed to fall behind. Many of them are condemned to restricted horizons and limited opportunities." I was particularly interested in the international comparisons, with claims such as "The UK is one of the most unfair countries in the developed world."
So how were such conclusions reached? Read On, Get On commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to compare levels of reading attainment in the UK with that of other developed countries, with a focus on children approaching the last year of primary schooling.
HeatherF's posting has stirred up a lot of interest, she maintains 'Schools shouldn't be relying on parents to teach reading' and yet much of the 'Read on Get on' campaign seems to be about libraries and parents' role - and very little on reading as two main processes: 1) Technical decoding (lifting the words off the page; 2) Language comprehension (understanding what the words mean. You will see from my comments on HeatherF's post that my aspiration is for teachers and parents to work-in-partnership but I think that schools should make it very explicit to parents what the various contributory factors are to becoming a great reader:
Please do read the original, whole posting, link above:
Schools shouldn’t be relying on parents to teach reading.
September 13, 2014
Curriculum, Early years, Phonics
Most schools rely on parents to teach children to read.
No! I can already anticipate the angry response as teachers explain that they run weekly or bi-weekly group reading sessions and daily discrete phonics sessions…
It will make me horribly unpopular to say it but still I stand by my original claim.
I have spent too many hours on the TES early years and primary forums where teachers discuss their practice to be entirely ignorant. I’ve also read the interminable Mumsnet discussions in which mums compare notes on how much their children read at school. Mums with kids at all sorts of schools join in. There are voices from urban and rural schools. Some of their kids go to schools with mainly middle class intake others underprivileged. Ofsted outstanding and special measures are both frequently discussed. The standard system for reading instruction reflects my own knowledge of schools local to me. In most schools (there are exceptions) all sustained reading practice is done at home.
The middle of the road average model is a Reception or Yr1 child doing two group reading sessions a week and then reading alone with the teacher maybe once a month. In group reading sessions the children take turns to read a few sentences and follow on as others in the group read. Lots of the time is taken discussing the meaning of the text (which is great) but it means a child may only read a handful of sentences a week in this way.
What about the discrete phonics sessions? I am all for teaching reading through synthetic phonics but the vast majority of schools use ‘mixed methods’ which marginalises the use of phonic decoding when reading. This means that phonics sessions are tacked on top of contradictory ‘mixed methods’ instruction that is used when actually reading books. Phonics decoding requires scanning words left to right without guessing before you reach the end of the word. However, when given reading books the child is taught to let their eyes dart about looking for cues from context, picture, word shape or initial letter. This means they don’t tend get sustained practice applying their phonic knowledge to sound out words especially as the most popular reading books are written to encourage guessing rather than being written to allow practice of incrementally more difficult phonics knowledge. Add to this that if schools follow the good practice videos for phonics instruction issued by Ofsted, most phonics sessions will involve delightful games that may be engaging but contain little sustained practice.
Here's a view from the secondary sector via the 'ThinkingReadingWritings' blog - very clear that it is the school's job to teach reading as the priority:
Headline Measures? If some can’t read, the school is failing
by thinkreadtweet
In many secondary schools, the highest priorities are the headline performance tables, such as the 5ACEM and the new ‘Progress 8’. This is understandable, given the relentless pressure on schools to improve results. Remarkably, there is little pressure by the government to improve children’s reading. Progress in this area is presumably meant to be implied by the headline measures. In reality, it is possible for a school to have good 5 A* – C including English and Maths and still have scores of students in the same cohort unable to read and write properly. It is a reality I have witnessed.
The American Federation of Teachers makes an explicit statement about priorities: “Teaching children to read is the most fundamental responsibility of schools.” Although health and safety might be seen as even more fundamental, schools do not exist in order to provide health and safety. They provide health and safety because children are entrusted to them to learn – and the most important skill they need for learning is reading. Reading ensures curriculum access, releasing children to use their intelligence. Fluent reading brings comprehension, curiosity and enjoyment. Weak reading brings frustration, embarrassment and a host of disruptive behaviours designed to escape from the reading task or to divert attention away from the real problem. Good readers do better all round: they are more independent learners. They are likely to gain better grades and to make more levels of progress.
Here is Laura Perrins' view (co-author of The Conservative Woman) of Nicky Morgan passing the buck back to the parents for reading - I've added a 'readers' comment' but it has not appeared as yet - I hope it will eventually.
Laura Perrins: Nicky Morgan’s latest wheeze. Get granny to read Postman Pat to the infant
Another day, another story revealing what is lost by the feminist/progressive geniuses pushing mothers of young children into full-time work. It seems many parents cannot find the time to read to their child for ten whole minutes a day.
On Thursday, we were told by none other than the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, that: “It is hard, of course, finding 10 minutes when you are juggling work” to read to your child. In fact it is so hard now for the double income family to find 10 minutes in the whole day to read to their kids, ITV's Good Morning Britain is launching a campaign to encourage parents to do just this.
Now, I don’t blame the parents that much – they have been put under immense pressure from the withdrawal of child benefit to outright childcare bribes, as well as stigmatising the role of full-time mothers, to go to work and leave someone else to do the caring.
Turns out, this makes some important aspects of a strong family life more difficult. Who knew? Family meals are out, contributing to the childhood obesity crisis, the bedtime story is dwindling and even baking a few cupcakes with mum is proving a challenge as our children now roam around the school playground ‘like ghosts’ because they spend so much time out of parental care.
These days parents can barely manage to read to their own kids for 10 minutes a day. Perhaps the policy-makers did not see all this coming because they are myopic fools.
Anyway, what is even more shocking about this story is how Morgan believes that ‘making like the Waltons’ can solve Britain’s shockingly low rates of literacy. She wants grandparents to ‘share the load.’ I hazard a guess that if grandparents are living near to our double income, full-time working family they are probably sharing quite a bit of the load anyway in terms of heavy duty childcare.
Is this really Morgan’s great plan to improve the British education system – get granny to read Postman Pat? We are doomed.
Laura continues:
Listen up Secretary of State. The reason why “tens of thousands of 11-year-olds” are still struggling with reading, writing and maths is because of our dodgy education system that you are now in charge of and have the opportunity to change. It is because synthetic phonics are still not being taught adequately enough in schools. It is because weaker pupils are not getting the attention they need and because of ineffective ‘child-centred’ teaching that still dominates the profession.
It is shocking, and I mean shocking, that a Government minister with a budget of billions would take to the couch of some morning TV programme to tell parents to read to their kids and ask grandparents to do the job of teachers.
Why don’t you implement some policy changes and get the teachers to start teaching? There’s an idea. Because ten minutes of even the Witches, which we all love, is not going to cut it for a struggling child that does not know what sound ‘ch’ makes.
Overworked teachers and dumbed-down libraries are behind Britain's shocking literacy levels.
12 SEPTEMBER 2014
English school children have crashed to the bottom of yet another education league table. When it comes to reading, less able 10-year-olds are a full seven years behind their brighter classmates. This attainment gap, highlighted in a report published by the charity Save the Children, is the second largest in Europe; only Romanian children demonstrate greater inequality in reading ability. In response, a number of charities, pressure groups and publishers have come together to launch ‘Read On. Get On.’, a campaign with the laudable and ambitious aim of getting all children not only reading, but reading well by 2025.
Much ink has been spilled despairing over the fact that some children, white working-class boys in particular, either can’t or don’t read enough, and as a result are falling behind their more privileged peers at school. There’s now a list of the usual suspects paraded by way of explanation for this problem: poverty and parents are always to the fore. Some homes, it seems, do not strain under the weight of shelves crammed full of brightly coloured picture books and some parents don’t set aside 10 minutes a day to read with their children. The Save the Children report, subtitled ‘How reading can help children escape poverty’, rehashes all of these well-worn arguments.
