THRASS News Dash

This is an essential read for all those, like me, following the evidence from the science of reading. The science is not settled.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/.../urn:aaid:sc:AP:0bd41a59...

THRASS has provided many posts on the importance of phonics teaching being explicit and adaptive allowing for differentiation to cater for all learners’ needs. The power of literacy is indisputable.

Unfortunately, there is a misguided understanding that ‘systematic phonics teaching’ means a sequential and laborious ‘diet of phonics’ in a particular instructional order, delivered only using a ‘synthetic phonics’ teaching process that is supported with ‘Decodables’ reading books. Many learners are left waiting for phonics sequences to catch up to their needs and as such are being held back in the reading and writing/spelling processes. What they are being taught is not transferable or sustainable in the world of print around them. It gives no agency for implicit learning or the ability to problem-solve at their level of need.

This misguided understanding of ‘systematic phonics teaching’ has once again distorted the ABSOLUTE POWER of phonics in literacy teaching. We can’t again let the power of phonics be diminished because of the ‘misconceptions’ by some of how phonics should be taught. We need a middle ground in the ‘polarizing war’ of teaching reading in which explicit and comprehensive phonics teaching is part of a systematic process that provides for sustainable and transferable learning.

Systematic phonics teaching means that phonics is routinely taught as part of our literacy teaching system, not ad hoc, or not at all, and not only. Phonics is directed at word-level instruction and is the teaching process of learning to identify the letters and letter combinations we use to represent sounds in words (graphemes). We teach the graphemes (phonics patterns for sounds) to build our visual memory and orthographic mapping of words for sight vocabulary. As we build our understanding of these patterns, we build our reading and spelling ability.

It is important and indisputable that phonics should be taught in all the recognized ‘teaching’ forms, to build the understanding of the phoneme-to-grapheme and grapheme-to-phoneme relationships in all words. Importantly, phonics must be used across the curriculum and grades. Phonics is an essential part of systematic word study teaching and underpins the teaching of morphemes and etymology needed for building oral and written vocabulary.

The process of ‘synthetic phonics’ (part to the whole blending of graphemes to phonemes) is best to serve the teaching of blending used in the decoding process, but it is indisputable that learners must also be explicitly taught analytic phonics and phonics in context. These phonics strategies build the orthographic mapping of words to develop our sight vocabulary. Along with handwriting, this rich mixture of phonics teaching supports the development of reading and writing to supersize literacy outcomes.

Time to rethink what is best for all our learners.

We need to understand the power of explicit teaching and the power of implicit learning. We need to provide a curriculum that allows every child to work to their potential. We need to raise the bar and not let literacy teaching be guided by a deficit model of teaching. We need to provide for learners who have specific difficulties with literacy acquisition for many and varied reasons.

We at THRASS have been diligent in following and promoting the body of research evidence known as the science of reading for decades now, making sure that all the essential phonics elements of literacy teaching are covered using an integrated and systematic teaching approach. We embraced in the 90s the research that showed phonics as essential and non-negotiable in literacy teaching and THRASS was created as a visual reference to teach the Alphabetic Principle of English, PA of the 44 spoken phonemes of English, the phoneme to grapheme principle (phonics), oral language and vocabulary all which are needed to develop fluency in reading and writing, comprehension skills and written language skills. We have been vocal in our promotion of the need for explicit and systematic phonics teaching to build a solid foundation WHILE AT THE SAME TIME acknowledging the power and importance of implicit learning. We have acknowledged the absolute importance of the code and, of the language strands of teaching reading.

No one element is greater than the other when teaching reading - and literacy teaching requires the simultaneous teaching of the many elements required to build competent readers and writers.