1. Why every teacher should understand the importance of phonics
Dr Wendy Jolliffe
19 November 2012

2. To gain an understanding of:
Session outcomes
the impact of poor reading skills on accessing the curriculum
the role of phonics in the teaching of reading
the features of systematic synthetic phonics
the alphabetic code
methods of support for struggling readers
To gain an understanding of:
Over 5 per cent of pupils enter secondary school at National Curriculum
level 2 or below. These pupils are still struggling to master the core skills
of reading – word recognition and swift comprehension – and they will
not be able independently to read texts in books, on screen and on
worksheets. National Strategies, (DCSF, 2010)

3. The impact of limited reading skills
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Chronological age years
Reading age years

4. Chronological age 10 -11 years
Reading age years
1 year adrift
Percentage of words unknown 8.3%

5. Chronological age 10 -11 years
Reading age years
2 years adrift
Percentage of words unknown 17.4%

6. Chronological age 10 -11 years
Reading age years
4 years adrift
Percentage of words unknown 44%

7. Reading has two essential key components
Understanding the role of systematic synthetic phonics in reading and writing
Reading has two essential key components
Decoding (word recognition)
Comprehension (language comprehension)
Outline the knowledge that student teachers need – a summary
Draw out key aspects of this through discussion
Rose: Because our writing system is alphabetic, beginner readers must be taught how the letters of the alphabet,
singly or in combination, represent the sounds of spoken language (letter-sound correspondences) and how to
blend (synthesise) the sounds to read words, and break up (segment) the sounds in words to spell. They must
learn to process all the letters in words and ‘read words in and out of text’. Phonic work should teach these skills
and knowledge in a well defined and systematic sequence.
Systematic synthetic phonics refers to teaching word recognition whereby phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesized) in order to decode words. Synthetic phonics for writing reverses the sequence: children are taught to say the word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes, say them in turn and then write a grapheme for each phoneme to produce the written word.
Contrast with analytic phonics: This is where sounds are taught in connection with words and not in isolation. So that children learn for example that a number of words share the same initial sound, as in bat, bus, beg, bill. Children therefore learn phonics by deduction from texts and the teacher draws attention to letter sounds as they occur. There is often an emphasis on learning to blend sounds by analogy, so if they read ‘hand’ they can read ‘sand’, etc.
Brief summary of research findings re systematic synthetic phonics
Systematic review of research (York and Sheffield – Torgeson et al (2006) found: systematic phonics teaching was associated with better progress in reading accuracy. This effect was seen across all ability levels.
Johnston & Watson (2004) Clackmannanshire study found that in a 7 year study using SSP – word reading was 3yrs 6 mths ahead of chronological age and spelling 1 yer 8mths ahead.

8. Can you read this? bj bj blac xkp hav yu eni wol yes sm yes sm
trk bagz fol
the basic code consists of learning one spelling choice for each of the 40+ sounds. The advanced code involves mastering the multiple spellings for each phoneme.
Sounds/phonemes are represented by letters/graphemes.
A phoneme can be represented by one or more letters, for example the phoneme /igh/ can be written as ‘i-e’ (in line), ‘igh’ (in sight), ‘ie’ (in tie), or ‘i’ (in tiger). A one letter grapheme is called a graph, a two letter grapheme a digraph and a three letter grapheme a trigraph and occasionally a four letter grapheme (as in ‘weigh’ = /w/ eigh/) a quadgraph.
The same phoneme can be represented (spelt) more than one way, as in /or/ spelt as ‘or’ in fork, or ‘aw’ as in ‘claw’ or ‘oor’ as in ‘door’.
The same grapheme (spelling) may represent more than one phoneme, as demonstrated by the letter ‘s’ which may make the sound /s/ in ‘sip, or /z/ in ‘laser’.

9. - - + + Good language comprehension, poor word recognition
Good word recognition, good language comprehension
Word Recognition - +
Key points:
Word recognition includes building up a automatic memory of a number of common words in addition to decoding skills. Need for teaching phonological awareness and then systematically teaching all 44 phonemes and their common graphemes (followed by alternative spellings). This is time limited.
Language comprehension is complex and is ongoing – we continue to develop this. It is multi-layered and incorporates understanding of oral and written language. It requires:
understanding of the words (importance of developing a wide vocabulary (understanding) of words – research to show the impact of low vocab on later comprehension.
understanding of the sentences – importance of the impact of sentence construction.
understanding of the text itself -contextual knowledge (which includes cultural aspects and general knowledge) including inference and skills of self-monitoring.
Poor word recognition, poor language comprehension
Good word recognition, poor language comprehension -
Language comprehension

10. The research evidence
Explicit teaching of phonics within meaningful context of texts (Adams, 1990)
Importance of developing phonological awareness (Bryant, 1993, Goswami, 1995)
Three major international reviews:
National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000)
Independent Review of the Reaching of Early Reading ‘Rose Review’ (DfES, 2006)
Australian government review (DoEST, 2005)
Educational neuroscience (Dehaene, 2009, McCandliss, 2003)
Summary of evidence all shows the importance of systematic phonics instruction - handout with references from Intro to Teaching systematic synthetic phonics in primary schools’
Professor Bruce McCandliss – Vanderbilt University (show clip from to )
Neuroscience:
While brain-imaging tools cannot yet precisely track reading
progress in the brain, advancements do indicate that literacy development affects the
anatomy of the brain and that certain parts are demonstrably ‘thickened’ in literate brains.
In addition, as Dehaene (2009: 209) states, there is a ‘massive increase in the exchange of
information across the two hemispheres – perhaps explaining the remarkable increase in
verbal memory span in literates’.
A particularly fascinating experiment was carried out by
McCandliss (cited in Yoncheva et al ) that provided a new invented alphabet and
involved two groups, one that learned to read whole words and the other that learned the
letters to construct words. While the whole-word group outperformed the other group
on the first day, thereafter the group that had learned the code and were able to apply it
to decode words performed significantly better.

11. c a t b ir d f i sh kn igh Phonics and the alphabetic code 1 2 3
01/05/08
Phonics and the alphabetic code 1 2 3 c a t b ir d f i sh kn
igh
These words each have three phonemes (separate sounds). Each of these phonemes is represented by a grapheme.

12. The complexities of the English language
24 consonant phonemes
44 phonemes 26 letters
20 vowel phonemes
The same phoneme can be spelt in more than one way
A phoneme can be represented by one or more letters
The same grapheme may represent more than one phoneme
See Mr thorne does phonics - Youtube

13. There are 44 separate phonemes and, it is generally agreed, there are over 200 ways of spelling those 44 phonemes!
There are 24 consonant phonemes. For 18 of those consonants there is a fairly close match between the letter and the sound it represents in a word.
There are six further consonant phonemes: ‘sh’ ‘ch’ ‘th’ (as in ‘thin’), ‘th’ (as in ‘then’), ‘ng’ and the sound ‘zh’ (as in television). These are digraphs.
There are 20 vowel phonemes:
five short vowels (cat, pet, big, dog, nut)
five long vowel phonemes where the vowel ‘says the letter name’ (ay, ee, igh, oa, oo)
Some long vowel phonemes are called ‘split vowel digraphs’ where the two letters of a digraph, for example ‘ie’, are ‘split’ by a consonant, e.g. ‘time’
nine further vowel phonemes:
‘ar’ (car), ‘er’ (term), ‘or’ (port), ‘oo’ (book), ‘ow’ (how), ‘oi’ (boy), ‘air’ (hair),
‘ear’ (hear), ‘ure’ (pure).
There is one unstressed vowel which represents the sound ‘uh’ as in ‘letter’.

14. Segmenting words - Sound buttons
fin bridge
Dividing words into syllables – how it helps
catch
daughter

15. Teaching systematic synthetic phonics
In primary school, pupils are taught phonic knowledge in a systematic way:
1. to blend CVC (consonant–vowel–consonant) words, for example ‘b/i/g, ’‘ch/i/p’
2. to recognise all 44 phonemes
3. to blend adjacent consonants (e.g. bl, br, dr, sp, tr)
4. to know all long vowel phonemes
Struggling readers at KS3 should be assessed against these 4 aspects
Strengths/weaknesses need to be identified and teaching strategies developed across all subjects

16. Supporting struggling readers

17. Supporting struggling readers
Consider the following aspects:
Phonics - decoding complex words
Orthography – knowledge of common spelling patterns
Semantic knowledge – vocabulary
Syntactic knowledge – structures of sentences
Morphological development – knowledge of meaningful roots of words
Development of reading – requires skills of
Phonology
Orthography
Semantic and pragmatic development
Morphological development

18. Supporting struggling readers
Examine the specific subject and context of what is to be read and make links to pupils’ own experiences
Provide opportunities for brainstorming, group discussion, displays, diagrams, charts and summaries
Provide glossaries of key words
Provide opportunities for collaborative work
What can secondary teachers do?

19. Plenary
What is the role of phonics in the teaching of reading and writing?
Consider how it can be used to support older struggling readers
In seminar groups – revisit your understanding and consider how you can support in your subject area

20. Further reading
Dehaene, S. (2009) Reading in the Brain: the new science of how we read. New York: Penguin.
DCSF (2010) Teaching Struggling Readers. National Strategies/ DCSF Publications.
DfES (2006a) Rose, J. Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading, Final Report, March 2006.
Jolliffe, W. and Waugh D. (2012) Teaching Systematic synthetic phonics in primary schools. London: Sage/Learning Matters.

21. Any questions?