Posted on 12/01/2005 4:25:16 PM PST by ncountylee
LONDON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Starting next year, all British school children will learn to read using the traditional technique known as synthetic phonics.
A report released Thursday said that, by the age of 11, children taught by the phonics method are typically three years ahead of others in reading ability. Jim Rose, a former director of the Office of Standards in Education and the report's author, also found that synthetic phonics works best when used alone and not in a combination of methods, the Times of London reported.
Rose recommended that children be taught nothing but phonics until they are 5, followed by a rich exposure to language. Under the present system, phonics is combined with the "look and say" method where whole words are taught.
"I am going to adopt the recommendations in this report to make sure that synthetic phonics is taught systematically and early in British schools as quickly as possible," Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said in a BBC interview.
END
There goes spelling.
Seems like an awfully early cutoff, to me.
This is a proven method of instruction. California threw this out years ago, and the children there paid for it....dearly. In standardized tests, after using the "whole language method" California children scored lowest in the entire nation, scoring above only Guam.
But the NEA and other liberals keep pushing the "whole language" guessing approach anyways.
Excellent. There's nothing more pathetic than watching an adult try to figure out what a word is, when they haven't been taught phonics.
Kids that are taught phonics are sounding out difficult words and reading easily a lot earlier than other kids.
Why it was ever stopped, I can't imagine.
So, how does one use phonics to pronounce "drought", "nought", "worchestershire" and "colour"?
Whole Language is a joke. It teaches "creative spelling" rather than just teaching kids that there is a right and wrong way to spell. Heaven forbid we damage their self-esteem. I taught Language Arts in AZ for 7 years during the height of the whole language movement. I hated it, and was very happy when my principal took it upon himself to switch to a phonics-based program.
It's doesn't matter since no one on the face of the earth knows how to pronounce "worchestershire".
Fantastic news!
I took fonix fo 5 yerz and I spel gude.
So WONDERFUL to hear you say that! There's hope!!
Half-way through Kindergarten, my daughter hadn't even learned all her letters, much less how to read. They spent all their time on self-esteem group therapy type of crap and 'reading' lines like "Brown bear, brown bear what do you see....I see Susie looking at me" ad nauseum. It was absurd!
I pulled her out of school and home schooled her from January to June. She learned to read, perfectly, by the end of February....and was ahead of most students in every class in her reading abilities (and therefore, in learning other subjects) for the rest of her school years.
I'm also very glad that at least Governor Gray Davis did something right in California....forcing all teachers to go back to teaching at least SOME phonics instruction (after seeing how badly, year after year, the children in that state did on reading tests).
Eye took hole languige trayning, and eye can rite reelly wel.
I learned to read with nothing but phonics. I'll take you on in spelling contest anytime, anywhere.
Phonics?????
Why???????????
Can't EVERYONE memorize 100,000 words so they can read the 'whole language' method?
You would win.
You forgot the great George Bernard Shaw's speeling of FISH
GHOTI
Some folks even claim that woostesher sauce has anchovies in it.
"So, how does one use phonics to pronounce "drought", "nought", "worchestershire" and "colour"?"
You learn them the way you learn an idiomatic expression - by exposure. And memorization; those words are exceptions.
My daughter was taught exclusively with "look and say" and it held her back immeasurably. Straight phonics is the way to go, IMHO.
Reminds we of the columnist Carl Rowan years ago. When an issue first arose in the news it was usually obvious that he had no opinion one way or the other at first. Once other liberals explained what the liberal position was, in their columns and on TV, he always fought like hell for it. Unless other liberals laid out the party line for him, he never had a clue on which way to go on an issue.
This is the root of the problem: what you defined is thinking (conceptualization), not reading. When you teach a child to walk, you do not even bother with meaningfulness of that ability, how it will be used and for what purpose. That will come later; for now, you just help the child to learn to walk. The same is with counting: when you teach it, do you bother with the question of meaning here? I hope not.
Reading is about mechanical intake of information. How that information is processed is an altogether different part of education.
He only did that after a major study showing California high school grads had a functional illiteracy rate of 60%. Too hard to ignore.
I beg to differ. Ask yourself what is the purpose of reading. We read merely to complete communication. Without the communication aspect there is no reason to read. Thus, reading must include comprehension of the message we are decoding.
Oh, sure you can.
Lack of phonics leads to illiterates.
Illiterates lead to crappy test scores.
Crappy test scores lead to outrage by all.
Outrage by all leads to demands for MORE FUNDING.
More funding leads to bigger budgets, more union dues paying teachers, and more more more.
Making sure there will be failure guarantees that something must be done which always leads to boatloads more government money. Failure is good for those who run the government schools.
I learned more or less on the whole-language method. As I understand it, neither method is really "better" than the other, since some kids learn better on one method, and some on the other. I learned to read long before I got to kindergarten, so I don't really remember it, but my parents tell me they used "whole-language".
They're still peddling this at the teacher colleges!
I asked my mom, a reading teacher, about this. The sight words they start in kindergarten are words like "Two". Ones that don't fit straight phonics.
Studies have show that is not the case for most all students. Overwhelmingly, children learn to read better if using phonics...especially those who are not from homes of English speaking families. Children who are slow learners also do better learning to read with phonics. Those children who are least damaged by whole language are those children who are above the norm in learning.
Agreed; a plummet down to a 60% literacy rate after replacing phonics with whole language guessing methods is a hard sell to keep promoting it as an effective method of instruction.
Huh????
Phonics is better for the majority of kids. Overwhelmingly, the teachers I encounter think teaching phonics is important. The trouble is that it is boring. Created readers (ones that are written to focus upon a particular sound or combination) are inane. Example: Sam sat. Sam sat on the hat. Oh drat!
Now, instead of neglecting good stories in favor of phonics instruction, teachers are trying to give children both. The school I am currently in teaches one hour of phonics per day followed by reading aloud or guided reading of a "real" story with characters, a setting, a beginning, middle, end, etc.
Really? Not the one I attend.
They currently are here in central New York; and they were in Colorado, at least through 1998, when I graduated....I assume they still are, as I got to know the professors who teach future teachers, and they were adamantly AGAINST teaching phonics.
I started back to school in 2002 (and graduate in 16 days). All of my texts that mentioned the subject, advocate a combination of phonics and real literature. I think you'll find there has been something of a shift in the last handful of years. I'd expect liberal bastions to be more stubborn about it, but I'm in Kentucky. :)
I started on fonix and I toorned awt just fyne!!!
(actually, I really think Phonics workd pretty doggone well).
The debate over what method or procedure to use to teach reading has been going on for decades and is not likely to end satisfactory to everyone. Everyone can learn given adequate teaching and sufficient time. By the way, what sort of phonics do Chinese and Japanese children use???
While attending college in Colorado (I was in the teacher ed program but dropped out...due to the insistence of liberal teaching methodologies throughout the college and town), I wrote a term paper in my History of English Language class on phonics vs. whole language, and provided evidence as to why phonics was a better way for children to learn to read. My professor wrote she was "giving me an A, but could not disagree with me on a subject more strongly, but because of the thoroughness of my research and how well it was written, the grade is deserved." I don't know what colleges she attended to get her bachelors and doctorate, but to call her a liberal is an understatement. (And she was NOT in the Teacher's Education Program.)
That's a strawman question. Phonics is used with the English language; as you know, Japanese and Chinese do not use the same sounds or even the same symbols.
That's the first time I've heard that case without makeing the political connection, of dumbing down the masses so they'd be more easily swayed.
Still, the unions think nothing of anyone but themselves, so perhaps some people give them too much credit.
Me, me, me, me, me... doesn't lend itself to "let's pitch in and help someone else."
I think the reason liberals prefer whole language over phonics is simple.... With phonics there is always a right and wrong way to spell or pronounce a word (OK maybe a handful of exceptions). In the Whole Language approach, their is no clear right or wrong. It is the home of creative spelling.
As a junior high language teacher in AZ, I wasn't allowed to correct spelling errors in my students' work because it would stifle creativity and negatively affect their self-esteem. What a crock.
China does not have an alphabet, therefore, no phonetics. Japan has two alphabets and Chinese characters, so partially phonetic and sight reading.
It was stopped by Leftist/Liberal administrators in total control of our educational systems -- to INTENTIONALLY impede the education of our children..
Leftists/Liberals require an uneducated citizenry to buy the bullsqat they're selling.... The public must be dumbed down, made dependent on Government and taught only to repeat the inane cliches of the left...
That's why our children are NOT being taught in the most effective manner possible to read --- they might read HISTORY and actually learn the truth...
Semper Fi
bump!
LOL!
That would be fine, as long as they continue phonics steadily. The curriculum I use has phonics classes through seventh grade!
Natural organic phonics are better.
"Natural organic phonics are better."
Don't tell me you are a phonetatarian?!
(yes, it is sarcasm)
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