The Great American Phonics Instruction Test, Part I

In Australia we have the reading wars! Proponents of systematic synthetic phonics - who often have a program to sell are opposed to proponents of phonics in context who prefer teaching phonics systematically but using interesting and rich literature as the vehicle. “Wind” for example cannot be sounded out using phonics alone. It needs context such as ‘the wind blew my hat away’. Or ‘help me wind up the rope’
Decodable texts are boring and are never going to engender a love of reading so if applied to all students rather than just struggling readers -usually one or two students in each class - the vast majority are in danger of losing interest in reading all together.
To my mind there’s no need to choose. A good teacher knows all strategies and supports every student with what they need at their point of need. Anyone who is fanatical about phonics usually has something to sell!

Teaching systematic phonics doesn't mean that you can't teach students where they are. When in small groups you may have some groups or individual students who are further along in the program and some who lag behind. This still meets students where they are, but gives them a logical progression. While the topic here is phonics instruction, I doubt the intent is that this is the only aspect of reading taught. This is just a small focus compared to when students are doing listening comprehension and using context to determine how to pronunce a word. I've seen first hand how systematic phonics have been a support, but not the sole avenue, for students to learn how to read.

Steve--
That's actually what I said. Everyone has to learn to decode, but not everyone is taught. The system can be figured out and has been often. But more kids get it when someone actually sets out to teach it.

tim

Helen--

Actually following a program has been found to be better for kids than just having each teacher trying to figure out something themselves. Indeed, that other people have consistently made such programs work better for kids than your idea of informal phonics is exactly why we should do it that way. I'm sure when you are sick you don't seek out the oldest folk recipes that you can find, but instead try to follow a regime more likely to cure or relieve what you are suffering from. Children deserve no less. I'm glad that you are confident that you can do better than a program (just like many parents are confident that in a car accident they can successful hold their children and keep them safe). The problem is when someone actually puts those solutions to the test, kids lose.

tim

In the recently published Literacy Leadership Brief from the ILA, "Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction," the following example of systematic instruction is given:

"In systematic instruction, teachers display a known word and compare it to the new to highlight this new concept, as in hop–hope or hat–hate. This side-by-side minimal contrast makes the learning of the new concept more obvious and easier to grasp. The discussion that teachers can have with students about the two words increases students’ word awareness and understanding of how words work. This exemplifies strong phonics instruction: active, engaging, and thought provoking."

Really valuable insights. Once again will be using this in some PD work I'm doing with 1st-grade teachers this week. I'd be bold enough to add one more question. "Most teachers have enough of a background in their own knowledge of phonics to do an adequate job of teaching phonics." True or false. Unfortunately, I think the answer is false (currently). In part, this is because the background they have in phonics depended on what the "soup de jour" was for the era in which they earned their degree. Time to do a retro fix for those already through the system and a major over haul in how phonics is taught to preservice teachers. Teachers need to be aware of all the ways to teach phonics and have a working knowledge of sound-symbol relations and orthographic information.

Tim,

I'd like you to reconsider your assessment of whether teaching phonics is essential. Let me off this metaphor to help you see my point.

Surgeons scrub their hands and hospitals make sure surgical suites are as sterile as humanly possible. Is this essential? If they don't, surgery can still be successful and not all patients experiences infection. Not all who are infected suffer morbidity or mortality. It is possible to do successful surgery without sterile procedures. We can rely on the patient's own immune system, as we can rely on children to figure out phonics on their own. It sometimes works.

Are sterile procedures essential?

I think it is an apt metaphor, and I hope you consider your definition of essential as it applies to phonics instruction.

Steve

To me the concept of analytic phonics seems to mean a number of things to different people and in different places. Which makes it hard to discuss.
When I think about it it has not as much to do with actual reading as leaning phonetical awareness as a first step - that is recognizing that words contain more than one phoneme when you hear them or say them, being able to hear specific phonemes that you don’t use in your everyday language (like the tuning s [z] in English for Swedes or trying to pronounce the Swedish tung twister “sju sjösjuka sjömän sjönk i sjön” (seven seasick seamen sank in the sea) for an Englishman, not to mention the Danish deep throat r ...
For those with certain idioms or a different language at home, or just bad hearing, this is a first important step that is easily missed. To me this is where this analytic phase fits in. Before learning the actual grapheme and blending the phoneme with others while decoding text.
I checked the old and new Swedish readers I have, And sure enough they do contain this step for the first taught and most common graphemes/letters in Swedish.

You've found a friend in me! I agree both synthetic and analytic phonics are effective ways to teach literacy. We do subscribe to a "program to teach phonics" and I also use informal phonics techniques when I am working with individuals and/or small groups

You've found a friend in me! I agree both synthetic and analytic phonics are effective ways to teach literacy. We do subscribe to a "program to teach phonics" and I also use informal phonics techniques when I am working with individuals and/or small groups

Sorry about that spelling ... my autocorrect drives me crazy - “tongue twister” of course. And I should have added that such an initial phase also gives a splendid opportunity to talk about what a great invention an alphabet is for writing and reading.

Thanks to Steve Dykstra for his comments on the need for the explicit teaching of phonics, comparing that need to the requirement for sterile conditions for each and every surgery. Most of the students I work with in my middle school reading support classroom have weak phonemic awareness (can't manipulate sounds) and, as a result, weak phonics skills. I would be out of a job as a reading specialist if school taught phonics explicitly in K-3.

Thank you, for your quiz!
Regarding your question #5, I wonder why you don't mention the Scottish Clackmannanshire study (Johnston & Watson, 2005; Johnston, McGeown & Watson, 2011). This longitudinal study seems to show a clear advantage of synthetic phonics over analytic on word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. What are your thoughts about their conclusions?
Best, Louise

Louise--
The reason I discount those studies is because when one does a comparative study of that type it is essential that the kids be equal at the beginning of the study. That is done either by randomly assigning students to the two instructional conditions or by testing intact groups, testing them to make sure that they are equivalent in key metrics (in this case, decoding ability or knowledge of letters, etc.). This work did neither of those things, so when one group does better than the other, I can't be certain that they didn't start out that way. It is still an open question.

tim

Louise— to conclude that synthetic phonics is more effective than analytic you have to compare them with 2 equivalent group. They used neither random assignment, nor any kind of pretesting to determine equivalence. The synthetic group may have done better because synthetic phonics is better or because that group included better students or teachers.

Tim

I want to hear more about what the brain research says about how good readers are processing words. Isn't it true that although it appears that good readers are reading whole words they are actually decoding phonograms at lightning speed? Whether self taught or taught by a parent, teacher, big sister...? We all need to learn phonograms? So, it IS essential that at some point Iearning phonics was necessary based on brain research?

In Reading in the Brain, neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene states:

"The goal of reading instruction becomes very clear. It must aim to lay down an efficient neuronal hierarchy so that a child can recognize letters and graphemes and easily turn them into speech sounds . . . Considerable research . . . converges on the fact that grapheme-phoneme conversion radically transforms the child's brain and the way in which it processes speech sounds. This process whereby written words are converted into strings of phonemes must be taught explicitly. It does not develop spontaneously and must be acquired."

Tim,

I just saw your reply to my first comment. Yes, children do pick up phonics without their teachers help, but we have no idea who else taught them. I taught all my children phonics because the school was dead set against it. I know children who learned phonics from their parents, siblings, tutors, and friends. I think the number of children who glean phonics from experience, entirely on their own, is quite small.

I hate to press you, but you know me. I'd like you to respond to my concerns about your definition of "essential". I don't think anyone uses such a narrow definition for anything else that bears so heavily on human health and well being. Your definition seems intended to make sure we can say phonics instruction isn't "essential", when we would never apply that definition to other decisions of similar importance where failure has such serious consequences.

Steve

Steve
If something isn’t necessary to success it isn’t essential. I definitely agree that some parents teach phonics just like some have kids memorizing words. However from 1945-1965 phonics instruction was relatively rare in U.S. schools and most people learned to read. The argument is over whether they would do marginally better with phonics (they would) or whether some small minority of kids would learn to read who failed at that time (I suspect so).

The claim that kids can’t learn to read without phonics undermines our ability to get teachers to teach it. Teachers often recognize that it isn’t true (from personal experience), and given that they have no reason to trust the people making the claim.

Tim

In the Montessori classroom (in addition to oral language skills) we teach writing before reading since encoding is an easier cognitive skill than decoding. We use a systematic phonics approach that introduces two sound/letter combinations at a time along with the kinesthetic activity of tracing the letter on the "sandpaper letters". Then we follow this with word building using a three dimensional alphabet. The student has the benefit of these kinesthetic activities to build letter/sound association, then the opportunity to build words that can be "read" after they are built. It is much easier to "read" a word that one has built (knowing the meaning ahead of time) than looking at a word "built" or written by someone else and not knowing the meaning. This mechanical reading of the moveable alphabet then leads to reading others "writing" and reading for meaning.
My question: Why is writing not being emphasized to help children learn to read? Writing allows the child to discover and use the letter/sound associations that have been introduced. My experience is that this leads to mechanical reading which leads to reading for meaning. Comments?

I enjoyed testing my knowledge! I loved the question "Research shows that synthetic phonics instruction beats analytic phonics instruction. True or false?" My go to would have definitely been synthetic phonics instruction. Why? Because this is what I have always been taught. I loved your breakdown and explanation. It definitely has me researching analytic phonics instruction now.