Teachers Do Not Focus On Phonics

In this article, Moats provides an overview of the whole language reading instruction approach as well as a critique of the approach, its shortcomings in literacy based on scientific studies, how and why it is still pervasive in classrooms today, and how educators can fix the situation. First, Moats presents the reader with the background of the phonics instruction versus whole language instruction “reading wars” debate which led many educators to try to synthesize the two different types of language instruction under what she refers to as “balanced literacy”. Whole language is literacy approach that deemphasizes phonics in favor of meaning; advocates of this approach believe that literacy is similar to natural language acquisition therefore children can acquire skills through exposure to print and teaching modeling without explicit phonics instruction.

Comprehension is also an important factor when speaking of literacy. Students should be taught the many strategies that will help them with comprehension and word recognition. In my experience in a first grade classroom I used many of these strategies. Within my lessons I included the activation of prior knowledge to construct meaning, the use of context clues in a sentence, pictures clues, predicting, and drawing inferences about ideas or characters in the text. I always made sure that I modeled the strategy for the student before they set of to do it.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the importance of a supplemental phonics program, such as Fundations by Wilson Language, to ensure that students are making noticeable and trackable changes in reading and understanding. Phonemic awareness is the key skill needed for students to better understand how letters and sounds correlate. Some basal reading programs do not have an

Phonics will start to be taught in nursery or reception and a child will not be able to learn to read without proper understanding of phonics.

DfEE (1999, p4) defined phonics as; phonics consists of the skills of segmentation and blending, knowledge of the alphabetic code and an understanding of the principles which underpin how the code is used in reading and

Phonics advocates have been arguing that in order for children to learn to read, they need to have an explicit instruction in the rules of printed text in order to read properly. The phonics approach has been described as “bottom up” as it teaches the children to decode text and then the meaning and understanding will follow while the whole word approach is described as “top down,” as the children depend on the pictures within the book, form hypothesis and make predictions of the words with the text of the book being read (Wren, 2003).

The contrasting perspectives of the two passages, “CliffsTestPrep” by Jerry Bobrow (2006) and “The Place of Phonics in Learning to Read and Write” by Marie Emmitt (2013), address the issue of the importance of phonemic awareness in reading and writing scores. Bobrow believes that phonemic awareness is important to understand since it affects reading scores. Emmitt however, argues that there is no evidence that phonemic awareness has a major impact on reading achievement.

’51. Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a systematic approach’ (Rose, 2006, p20). To further his proposal Rose (2006) proclaimed that the teaching of systematic phonics should be enhanced and active by the age of five; It can be evidence through practice that children as young as five can define the terminology for a phoneme and a grapheme, due to the position phonics has within the English curriculum. There is also a world-wide debate on the various ways educational practitioners can most effectively implement phonics in their practice states Dombey (2010). Due to the impact of the Rose Review, it could be suggested that the value of systematic phonics had increased, meaning that primary teachers have to be confident in their ability to teach and support pupils in their reading and spelling through the use of phonological

In primary schools, literacy is taught through things such as Phonics. In 2012, The Department for Education (DfE) introduced a phonics screening check for pupils at the end of year 1. The check asks pupils to read 40 words, of which 20 are pseudo-words. This allows teachers to identify which pupils have a genuine grasp of decoding and which pupils are in need of further support. “Since 2012, the proportion of pupils meeting the expected standard has increased from 58% to 74% in 2014”. Literacy enables children at a young age to understand how the alphabet works and concentrates on speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. Additional activities that can be done to help with literacy are drama, guided reading, peer work and talking in groups. Children with good literacy skills are abler to take advantage of the opportunities that they may come across as they would be literate in a subject area. A child should have good word recognition and language comprehension in order to be successfully literate. Furthermore, Literacy skills can be developed outside of the school environment. DfE found that “research has shown that children’s motivation and achievement improve when their parents or carers are involved in their education”.

Phonics are essential to literacy and children’s ability to learn to read and write. Phonics are a system of associating letter symbols with speech sounds (Orton, n.d.). They have an important role in the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority: phonics and word knowledge [ACARA]. There are two main concepts related to phonics they are analytical phonics and synthetic phonics. Diana Rigg (2016) states that “direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read” (para. 3). Phonics are used by children to learn to read and to write, they include letter identification, onset and rime, blends and the relationships between blends and phonemic awareness (Hill, 2012, p.259) (Rigg, 2014). There are many teaching approaches that may be implemented to teach phonics effectively. This essay will discuss, critique and analyse phonics their importance and how different teaching approaches may be implemented to teach phonics to students effectively. It will maintain that synthetic phonics have been proven to be more successful in teaching children than analytical phonics, although it is imperative to use both a synthetic and analytical approach to teaching children phonics.

Systematic phonics instruction is beneficial to children regardless of their socioeconomic status; it helps children from different backgrounds overcome reading difficulties. Different strategies to phonics instruction might be used in the classroom, such as synthetic phonics (children first are learning how to convert letters into sounds, and after they are learning how to blend the sounds together to create words); analytic phonic (children learn words and after analyze letter-sound relationships in these words); analogy-based phonics (children identify unknown words using the parts of word families they learnt before); phonics through spelling (children divide the words into phonemes , and after writing letters for phonemes they are creating words).

As the standards of education change a consistent factor remains the focus on reading. Early childhood educators must provide an atmosphere that is both developmentally stimulating to the student while also meeting the standards of education. The methods used to help recognize phonics and begin the transition into emergent readers vary from student to student. Without the foundation of phonics research shows that a child will not learn to read. All children must know the alphabet in order to communicate effectively. Phonics cannot be drilled into the child. This will only produce memorization. Instead, educators must understand a child’s individual needs as well as balance. There is no true need to teach phonics as a separate subject. Most children will develop a sense of curiosity from their own knowledge, ideas, and interest. There will of course be a select few that may benefit from a more formal instruction. When children

Phonics is described as “understanding letter-sound relationships, as well as larger letter pattern/sound pattern relationships” (Ruddell, 2009). Though in my opinion there is a lot more to phonics than this. There are several aspects to phonics, different types of phonics, negatives to the idea, and several ways to teach it. In this paper I will address all of these based on research I found, the discussion I had with my peers, and my own opinion.

What is Phonics? Phonics is the teaching of the association of sounds with letter identification. With that, there is an extreme amount of emphasis on word decoding skills to help a student sound out unfamiliar words. Phonics is actually a word-recognition strategy that becomes a teaching method only through heavy emphasis. Using phonetic principles, youngsters learn to associate the correct sound with each part of a word and to recognize and pronounce words. (Farr 2004) Phonics systematically teaches a child to break the code of written language. (Ghate 2003) Children are taught to identify letter-sound correspondence with phonics, which helps them put together a word by using sounds.

How did you learn to read? Most of us do not put much thought into this question, but learning to read is a difficult task. According to Cervetti and Hiebert, the National Reading Panel identified five essential components that a teacher should use during reading instruction, which gives the student the highest chance of being an effective reader (2015, p. 548). These five essential components are also called five pillars of reading instruction. They are Phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This paper will describe each of the five pillars, how they are related, the benefits, as well as give some effective methods of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. It will continue by addressing the relationship between reading assessment and instruction and end by identifying ways to address the needs and different learning styles of a student. This paper will start by looking at a definition of phonics and phonemic awareness, then move onto the role that each play in learning to read, how they are related, the benefits and effective methods of teaching both.