Hi ...,
Just for interest (and you don’t have to actually answer), have you tried using the Year One Phonics Screening Check from England to see how your children are faring after about two years of ‘Letters and Sounds’?
The translation of ‘Letters and Sounds’ into provision and practice can vary hugely from school to school bearing in mind that the publication does not provide resources for teaching and learning.
In my consultancy work, I am fortunate and feel very privileged to observe many, many teachers ‘delivering’ Letters and Sounds in schools that state they are ‘Letters and Sounds Schools’.
What I see looks very different not only in one school to the next, but sometimes in one class to the next.
Having said that, there are definite patterns of provision in Letters and Sounds Schools which can look typical.
I know that I’ve provided links to this document before, but it is perhaps timely to do so again to exemplify what I mean. I have labelled this diagram the ‘Simple View of Schools Phonics Provision’:
http://www.phonicsinternational.com/for ... .php?t=847
The ‘Letters and Sounds’ publication is excellent in so many ways and has made a huge difference to the uptake of systematic phonics in England. Many teachers are extremely attached to it because it has changed their practice and understanding and really, tangibly made a difference.
However, a deeper understanding about phonics provision is the ‘next step’ because the very fact that teachers can translate its guidance into provision which looks very different school to school and class to class is flagging up a number of questions.
For example, a look at a school’s struggling group – its size and the profile of the children’s reading, spelling and handwriting – may be revealing as to a lack of provision of one kind or another.
It could be a lack of provision and understanding in the school itself, or a lack of rigour in Letters and Sounds – and the fact that teachers do have to equip the programme with teaching and learning resources and end up doing this in many ways.
That is why it is truly essential for all schools to use the same screening check so that they are fully aware of what is possible in the teaching of schools in various contexts and where, in the scale of things, one’s own school lies within the bigger picture results.
Regarding the issue of teaching older children, my personal opinion is that phonics provision can, and should, be maintained in addition to more sophisticated elements of the English writing system and language.
Good systematic synthetic phonics teaching teaches the vast majority of children to decode extremely quickly – and then they just need to be taught about more alphabetic code. SSP also teaches them to orally segment, and spell, simultaneously with teaching reading.
But for spelling, the children need a very good grasp of a comprehensive range of spelling alternatives BUT ALSO they need to know that they have to work hard to begin to assimilate ‘spelling word banks’ of words spelt with the same letter/s-sound correspondences (not onset and rime ‘word families’). In order to enhance this assimilation or ‘building up knowledge of spelling word banks’, the children need to be told of that need, and activities can take place within the teaching which facilitates this – such as glueing together certain words in memory through spelling stories and recall activities and highlighted word lists and associations with illustrations – the type of things that are ‘memorable’ to children.
This is built into the Phonics International programme and the level of vocabulary and design of the core resources is not infantile. If you are looking for phonics for intervention for older learners and phonics for longer term spelling, you might want to investigate what PI has to offer and it is not at all expensive.
In April this year (two thirds the way through England’s academic year), some Year Ones were filmed trialling materials which are redeveloped PI materials. You might be interested to watch it purely to see the expectation of Year One content and practice which is supported hugely by paper-based resources and activities. The teachers in this school (previously a ‘Letters and Sounds School’) were very upset when I first observed their phonics practice and pointed out to them how little they were teaching lesson by lesson and how little ‘practice’ the children were, in reality, getting – with no tracking and monitoring possible as this was what I call a ‘mini whiteboard’ school. The headteacher told me recently that the points I raised for phonics have profoundly changed the school’s approach to all its teaching and learning based on the notion of examining the difference between ‘extraneous’ (superfluous) activities and truly fit-for-purpose activities.
Sir Jim Rose raises this issue (warning) of ‘extraneous’ activities but teachers of young beginners have been trained, and led to believe, that all activities must be ‘all-singing-and-dancing’ to maximize engagement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children LOVE having their own activities to do which they can get stuck into and which keep them very busy – and learning.
Anyone who truly knows me will know that this is not at all intended as self-promotion – just intellectual discussion.
Best wishes,