Tag Archives: reading skills

Government Guidelines for Teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics

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International Research into Methods of Teaching Reading

Because of generally poor levels of literacy among school students despite many years at school, governments of all the major English-speaking countries (including USA, UK, Canada and Australia) have recently conducted major studies into the best ways of teaching basic reading skills.

ALL THESE STUDIES CONCLUDED THE SAME THING:

The best way to teach basic reading skills is to teach the spelling rules for each of the 44 sounds in English – this is called Phonics.

For example, using the Synthetic Phonics Method students would be taught to work out the sounds in the word ‘third’ by breaking it up into three groups of letters:

  • The group of letters ‘th’ which has the /th/ sound as in ‘three’.
  • The group of letters ‘ir’ which has the /er/ sound as in ‘germ’ and ‘girl’.
  • The letter ‘d’ which has the /d/ sound as in ‘dog’.

If you would like to go into more detail, the Australian Government Report from 2005 called ‘Teaching Reading’ is well written and relatively easy to understand if you refer to the glossary which will give you the meanings of the technical words. It also has references to many of the reports from other countries.

Not All Phonics Instruction is the Same

Not only do all the reports recommend the teaching of Phonics, more specifically they recommended teaching a particular type of Phonics called Synthetic Phonics (see the example above). Evidence shows the other four or five ways of teaching Phonics are not nearly as effective as Synthetic Phonics.

In 2011, the UK Government Education Department added another criteria – systematic. In other words, teachers need to follow a system so that all the letter-sound rules are taught. They have set out their criteria for assuring high-quality phonic work in detail here.

In summary the UK Government recommends:

  • Synthetic Phonics should be the prime approach to decoding print.
  • Children should be taught a formal program of Phonics from the age of 5.
  • The Phonics program should be broken into discrete daily sessions, progressing from simple to more complex rules as time goes on.
  • Enable children’s progress to be assessed.
  • Use a multi-sensory approach integrating visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities.
  • Teach blending of sounds right through the word from left to right.
  • Teach spelling by teaching sound-to-letter rules.
  • Ensure that Phonics is the first approach a child uses when reading a word.
  • Ensure children are taught how to read irregular words.
  • Give children the opportunity to read texts at their level of understanding of Phonic rules – in other words – give them the opportunity to read graded readers.

The High Performance Learning Approach to Phonics

High Performance Learning has been teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics for more than 35 years, long before it was fashionable in schools anywhere in the world. I wrote the first version of the Phonics Program in 1975 and have been using it successfully ever since. The version we use today includes multimedia text that is colour-coded for the rules of English, and readers can click on individual letters in words to hear the sounds they represent. Our Phonics Program satisfies ALL the guidelines just put out by the UK government, and more. Read more here: Learning Basic Reading Skills Using Phonics.

You can get a taste of our multimedia materials by clicking here.

To find out how you can access our Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program contact us by email here or phone us in Australia on (08) 8370 0110.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

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How to Get Your Child Ready to Start School

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How to Get Your Child Ready to Start School

Blowing bubbles father and baby

Make parenting a win-win situation for
you and your child.

Many parents, especially with their first child, are reluctant to start educating their child until their child starts school. This is because they do not feel they have the expertise or are scared that what they do may conflict with what is taught at school.

Little do they realise that the school is relying on the parents to have taught their child quite a number of skills before sending their child to school.

This does not mean that as a parent you should have taught your child to read before getting to school, although that is not a bad thing if you know what you are doing – but certainly you should have made a start teaching pre-reading skills so that your child will be ready to learn more formally when she/he reaches school.

Getting Your Child Ready to Learn

Learning is a social activity requiring meaningful interaction between people – and this requires good communication skills – especially listening, talking and comprehension skills.

Build good comprehension and communication skills requires you to spend a lot of active time with your young child – putting in the time in the first five years will help your child learn how to become independent of you. Failure to set aside regular time to do simple activities, games, craft, singing and so on, will cost you dearly later on as your child will not be ready or able to learn quickly at school.

Skills to develop in the first five years include skills like these:

  • Good speech skills
  • No baby talk
  • Proper use of pronouns (Say, ‘I want you to …’ rather than, ‘Mummy wants Robbie to …’)
  • Able to follow instructions. First just one instruction at a time, then try two instructions like, ‘Put your pyjamas on then clean your teeth.’
  • Prepared to follow instructions that you give (Don’t make requests like, ‘Will you please clean your teeth now Rob.’ as you are not really saying what you mean. Instead give clear instructions like, ‘Go and clean you teeth now Rob.’
  • Gradually develop longer and longer conversations with your child. This is much easier if you are sharing an activity together like reading a book, preparing food together, going shopping and so on.
  • Help your child master speaking in sentences – do this gradually.
  • Develop fine motor skills by doing craft work with modelling clay, folding and cutting paper, drawing with pencils and so on.
  • Develop gross motor coordination skills and build core strength by walking, going to the park, throwing and kicking balls and so on.
  • Logic skills can be developed with games and learning to count. Simple board games teach a lot of skills at the same time, including emotional and social skills.
  • Emotional resilience is a critical skill to develop before your child reaches school otherwise she/he will have a lot of difficulty adjusting to the school environment. Your child needs experience being looked after by other people, and good communication skills like all those listed above.

What About Technology?

Watching TV and DVDs, or playing games on computers and mobile phones need to be kept to a minimum not just with very young children, but right through school. Just being good at using your thumbs, or being able to recite a video word-for-word after watching it many times are not useful skills at school and beyond if they are at the expense of a more well-rounded education.

Too many parents use technology as a babysitting device so they can get on with their busy lives – or so they can have a rest from their busy lives. I understand completely how you feel but the little benefit you get in the short term will be more than negated by the pain you will experience later on. Remember that children are social beings who crave interaction – if you don’t give them lots of chances for positive interaction then they will get your attention eventually by using negative behaviour. Once they get into the habit of controlling you through negative behaviour you will find it very difficult to break out of the negative cycle.

My recommendation is no more than 30 minutes of technology per day, or 3-4 hours a week total! Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you go over that amount. Everything in moderation.

What About You?

Having a child will be a very rewarding experience if you feel that you have been successful at building an independent person. If your child does not manage to do well at school and other activities, both you and your child will be under a lot of stress and your lives will not be enjoyable.

Life is complicated and challenging without children, but it is ten times more challenging and complicated with them. If you have children then I’m sure you would agree.

This means that you need to learn a lot of skills and strategies to be able to manage all your responsibilities to your child, your relationship, AND, to yourself. The best parents are not the parents that worry a lot about their child, but those who are a good role model, those who demonstrate good coping skills and those who are independent enough to have a bit of life for themselves that does not involve family – that just might mean going to the gym every afternoon, or to a book club once a month, or doing voluntary work once a week, whatever you want.

Make Parenting a Win-Win Situation for You and Your Child

A positive mind set will go a long way to making your job as a parent easier. Do things that will kill two birds with the one stone.

For example, rather than plonking your child in front of a DVD while you cook dinner, keep your child in the kitchen with you and give him/her jobs or activities to do. Teach simple cooking tasks, sing simple songs while you work, listen to recordings of stories or tell stories yourself, get all the saucepans out and let your child play with them.

There is lot’s more I could say on the issue of making sure you look after yourself but I will save it for another article.

Just remember – if you are not in good shape, you will not be in a good position to help your child.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Getting Help or Helping Others

If you have any comments or questions, leave them below and I will try and answer them. If you have been there and done that as far as parenting is concerned, leave some of your pearls of wisdom for the rest of us.

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