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READING INVOLVES MUCH MORE THAN SIMPLY SOUNDING OUT LETTERS OR , AND IS HARD TO MASTER, BUT SYNTHETIC PROGRAMS ENABLE EVERY CHILD TO LEARN TO READ AND SPELL. JO-ANNE DOONER EXPLAINS HOW.

30 teacher june/july 2010 Teachers, principals and academics are complexities that puzzle many children starts from the basis eagerly the new draft national Eng- such as the letter ‘c’ starting words such that there are 44 sounds used in the English lish curriculum, a document that makes it as ‘cat,’ ‘chop,’ ‘Christmas’ and ‘ceiling’ and that these are all taught in an clear that reading involves much more than to say nothing of its use in words such as explicit fashion. Synthetic phonics teaches simply sounding out letters or words, and is ‘social.’ George Bernard Shaw once chal- children how each of the 44 can much harder to master. Over the past dec- lenged his audience how to pronounce be represented by letters or combinations of ade alone, governments in the United States, ‘ghoti.’ In response to their immediate baf- letters – or . It allows children to Britain and Australia have all commissioned flement, he pronounced it ‘fish,’ with ‘gh’ master the phonic code from the very simple major reviews in order to establish the best as in ‘cough,’ ‘o’ as in ‘women’ and ‘ti’ as to the more complex in a systematic way. approach to implement programs in in ‘initial.’ Shaw’s demonstration shows This step-by-step method of teaching, with early childhood . that English is a difficult written language each stage building on and reinforcing the All have independently come to the same indeed, one that’s not easily caught with- previous stage, really gets results. central conclusion that the early stages of out being taught and, yes, this is the reason In the Get Reading Right program, for teaching reading and must include behind the renewal of interest in explicit example, the sequence of the first eight a synthetic phonics approach – often called teaching. The fact is, though, that English sounds – ‘s,’ ‘m,’ ‘c,’ t,’ g,’ p,’ ‘a’ and ‘o’ – systematic or explicit phonics in Australia. is nowhere near as random or difficult as are taught together over four to six weeks. As the draft national English curriculum you might think when you’re taught how it This is much faster than other approaches recognises, though, learning to read must works and given lots of time and feedback that can take ‘a sound a week,’ even though take a balanced approach that encompasses to get it. what is actually meant is ‘a letter a week.’ , synthetic phonics, Other countries with a more straight­ Putting these sounds together is called reading , vocabulary and compre- forward such as Italy where, ‘blending’ or ‘synthesising’ and produces hension. by and large, their 21 letters can easily over 40 words; not bad for a child’s first few Exactly how best to teach reading and accommodate the 26 sounds of Italian, have weeks at school. You can also imagine the spelling is still not agreed upon, partly a drastically lower level of national reading confidence levels that come from this level of because English spelling is pretty compli- failure. Such is the straightforwardness of progress. The first 30 sounds can be taught cated. Another problem is that, while our the Italian system that their for writ- in about 20 weeks, in some cases even faster. brains are programmed to learn spoken ing is the same as their word for spelling. Synthetic phonics aims for zero reading language, they’re not hardwired to learn to If only we could make it so simple. Back in failure so that from day one, lesson one, read. We’re not born with a ‘reading’ gene, the English-speaking world, many children struggling children are identified for small but our neural pathways have been able to do ‘crack the code’ for themselves, but the amounts of attention in order that no one ‘re-wire’ in such a way that allows reading unfortunate fact is that we also leave far too in the class should be left struggling before to be learned. many behind. the class moves on to the next unit. The idea This is why we need strategies for teach- As the draft national English curricu- is that the first wave of teaching is as effec- ing that respect the technical difficulties of lum states, English learning for early read- tive as possible rather than relying on literacy reading and spelling in English. The fastest, ing and must include ‘phonological support to pick up the pieces over the years to most effective and most inclusive strategies knowledge and phonemic awareness, sound- come. Studies in Scotland show that the bene- that avoid the unnecessary underperform- letter correspondences, and using syntactic fits of synthetic phonics are more widespread ance and failure of many of our children and semantic cues to make meaning.’ Let than with other approaches and have even are based on systematic synthetic phonics. me tease that out in terms of phonemic shown boys to be ahead of girls in a number A further problem is that some teaching awareness; phonic knowledge; vocabulary of areas. The benefits of the approach have has emphasised the importance of children knowledge; reading fluency; and reading been shown to persist through to secondary getting ‘the right answer’ rather than the comprehension. school, almost seven years later. development of underlying reading skills, A particular emphasis in some phon- which can lead to guessing and an over­ Phonemic awareness and phonics ics programs has been to target fluency, reliance on illustrations. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, or automaticity, at each level with a ‘fast Traditionally, the teaching of reading focus on and manipulate phonemes – or read’ of the target words – looking for ‘cat,’ has focussed on the letter, often alongside sounds – in spoken words. It has been found not ‘c-a-t.’ This frees up working memory its name; but with only 26 letters and 44 that having good phonemic awareness is the capacity, making the next stage easier to sounds to be represented there just aren’t best indicator of future success in learning learn and also assists in improving compre- enough letters to go around. This leads to to read. hension. The easier the decoding process is

curriculum & assessment 31 for the child, the more working memory is Reading fluency approaches to address vocabulary knowl- left for comprehension. Reading fluency is only one of the several edge, reading fluency and reading compre- Synthetic phonics theory recognises the critical factors necessary for good read- hension. Classroom teachers read to their limitations of an over-reliance on visual ing comprehension. When children read classes every day, increased vocabulary memory approaches and so reduces demands out loud with speed, accuracy and expres- through rich talking and listening activi- on memory to a minimum. Children need sion, they’re more likely to comprehend and ties, and initiated an explicit, systematic to learn ‘by sight’ only a small number of remember the content than if they read with comprehension program. ‘The aim,’ says irregular, high-frequency words that are difficulty. Being a fluent reader leaves a child Zahra, ‘is to support all children in achiev- essential for their writing and that, at their with enough working memory to attend to ing success.’ stage of reading development, can’t yet be comprehension. Killara Public School in the North Shore decoded. The first half dozen are ‘I,’ ‘was,’ of Sydney also implemented the same pro- ‘are,’ ‘the,’ ‘to’ and ‘she.’ Such an approach Comprehension gram in the middle of 2008. ‘In one term clearly delineates the decodable from the is the ability to get we were able to see real differences,’ says non-decodable in the early stages, thus help- the meaning from a text. We use our back- Killara Principal Kathy Rembisz. ‘Our ing the child to adopt a blending and seg- ground knowledge and vocabulary knowl- Kindergarten students can now make words mentation approach as their default strat- edge to create sensory images and then to independently, can identify sounds any- egy, which can quickly become automatic. understand what is read. It’s the creation of where within a word, and are reading and sensory or visual images that makes read- writing much more challenging words. Our Phonic knowledge ing so much fun. Very good comprehension Year 1 children have taken off, and we’re Once a child can hear phonemes in a word, allows a child to take meaning from the text seeing a great improvement in all aspects he or she needs to learn that we can assign and transform it into something different, of literacy.’ a letter to represent each . For something their own. Without good com- The good news for teachers is that you example to read the word ‘cat,’ the child prehension, all learning, in all subjects, is can give your students the types of early has to recognise that the ‘c’ represents the affected. learning experiences that ensure reading phoneme /c/ the ‘a,’ /a/ and the ‘t,’ /t/; then development in ways that they find enjoy- blend or glue each of these together to read What are schools doing? able and entertaining. the word ‘cat.’ Similarly to spell the word, There is a small but growing number of I’m looking forward to seeing the roll ‘cat,’ the child needs to be able to break the schools whose goal is zero failure; they have out of the new national curriculum for word ‘cat’ into each of the three phonemes had to challenge accepted ways of teaching English because, if its current draft form and then choose a letter to represent each and have adopted synthetic phonics enthu- remains largely intact, it will help our one, thereby spelling the ‘cat.’ siastically as their approach to the early schools to implement a synthetic phonics teaching of reading and spelling. approach, which is a simple, scientifically- Vocabulary knowledge In late 2007, Blaxcell Street Public School proven way to teach every child to read and Our children are living today in a society in Sydney implemented synthetic phonics spell. T where they are more likely to have mastered across the whole school. In an area where the internet before they even start Kinder- 98 per cent of children are from a language Jo-Anne Dooner is a literacy trainer, pri- garten. takes so many non- background other than English, teaching mary school vice principal and author of vocal forms that we sometimes forget to use reading and spelling is a huge challenge with the Get Reading Right literacy program. words and simply talk. The result? Word 52 per cent of pupils facing reading difficul- poverty, or an underdeveloped vocabulary. ties. With just two days of literacy training LINKS: We teachers can do a lot to enrich the vocab- on the theory of synthetic phonics and the Email [email protected] ulary of children simply by reading to our practicalities of its implementation, the staff or visit www.getreadingright.com.au students more, and encouraging parents to of Blaxcell Street initiated synthetic phon- read to their children. The more we read, ics lessons across the school for just half an REFERENCES the better our vocabulary. Add the convo- hour per day. In just four months, the pre- Australian Curriculum Assessment and luted of the , and vious figures of 52 per cent were reduced Reporting Authority. (2010). Australian we find that more and more children, and to 12 per cent. The staff aim to push this Curriculum Information Sheet – adults, underperform in writing because even lower. English. Sydney: ACARA. Available at they can’t spell the words they’d like to use, As Blaxcell Street Deputy Principal Hani www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/ and so write the bare minimum. Zahra explains, staff also used some simple English.pdf

32 teacher june/july 2010