Theoretical approaches to helping children to learn to read: Unit 10

Refresh: Word search 15 minutes.

Lesson Aims: To familiarise with the terms phonemes and phonic. To understand how settings use phonics. To acknowledge Chomsky’s theory in regards to learning.

Theoretical approaches to learning to read: Children usually begin to learnt to read when they start school between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Different theoretical approaches have emerged relating to how children learn to read and we should support children effectively.

Key terms: Phonemes – the smallest units of sound in a language that help to distinguish one word from another. In the English language, for example, ‘P’ and ‘b’ are separate phonemes because they distinguish words such as ‘pit’ and ‘bit’. Phonics – the name of a method used to teach reading that breaks down different letter patters into their individual sounds.

Phonics and phonemes: The phonics approach is based on the breaking down and blending of letters so that children learn to link sounds with individual letters and phonemes. The sound system is more complex and inconsistent in English than in other languages as there can be a number of different phonemes to represent the same sound (e.g ‘f’ and ‘ph’). Phonics is, therefore, used as a method of teaching sounds as it helps us to look at the different letter patterns together, along with their sounds. There are around 44 different phonemes in spoken English.

Lets watch:

Synthetic Phonics: Synthetic phonics require the reader to learn individual sounds and blends in a particular order, then put them together to form words. The sounds are taught in a particular way, not to sound like the letters – for example, the sound ’t’ would be taught as a short sound and not as ‘tee’ or ‘tuh’. The simpler and most commonly used sounds will be the first to be taught, as these are also straightforward (s, a, t, l, p and n). These can then be put together to form many simple three letter words, which can be sounded out by children from a relatively early stage. Lets watch 

Analytical phonics: In analytical phonics, blends are taught, rather than individual letter sounds, for example, ‘sh’, ‘th’ and ‘ch’. Children are encouraged to learn sets of whole words that have similar spelling, such as ‘cat’, ‘hat’, ‘mat’, ‘fat’ and ‘bat’. A disadvantage of this system is that many words in English are not written phonetically (for example, ‘said’, ‘know’ or ‘was’) and children will need to learn these words separately.

Whole-language/apprenticeship: Another approach to phonics is the whole-language/apprenticeship approach. This grew from Noam Chomsky’s ideas about language acquisition. Chomsky theorised that we all have an innate ability to learn any language and do not learn it by imitating others.

Ken Goodman: In 1967, Ken Goodman had an idea about reading that he thought was similar to Chomsky’s theory. He described a system for reading by which learners have to use four different cues in order to decipher the words: Graphophonemic – the shapes of letters, and their corresponding sounds. Semantic – what you would expect the word to be, based on the meaning of the sentence so far. Syntactic – what word or phrase would make the most sense, based on the context and grammatical structure of the language – word order, tense and gender. Pragmatic – the function of the text.

The whole-language approach is also sometimes called the ‘look and say’ approach. It encourages the learner to look at, and recognise, whole words when learning to read, rather than breaking them down into sounds. In this way, the child will be introduced to high-freqency words, such as ‘said’, ‘because’, ‘they’, ‘were’, and ‘who’, which do not fit into regular phonic patterns. Although the child may take longer to learn this way, they are less likely to make errors than a child who has learned synthetic phonics.

Task: How has phonics and phonemes influenced current practice? Research Chomsky and Ken Goodman in more detail. What are Chomsky’s theories and ideas (sentences can be grammatical without making sense)? How have their approaches influenced current practice?

Using phonics and whole-language: Most educationalists agrees that a combination of these two main approaches works best, as different children will approach reading in different ways. It is likely that in most settings, although there will be a structured environment for the teaching of reading, you will also find that children are, for example, encouraged to learn high-frequency words as well as learn to sound them out using phonics.

How do children learn to read? Who? When? How? What resources? Where?

Did we include: Recognising own name. Using pictures as cues. Book conventions. Phonetic awareness. Retelling stories. Building a visual vocabulary.

Role models: It is important for young children to make sense of why they are learning to read and write and to be able to put this into context. They should opportunities to see adults reading books for pleasure, to find out information and to pass information on to others. For this reason, children should have role models who read and write and refer to books as a matter of course. Early years professions may also refer to books that they are reading at home so that children can relate their own reading to adults experiences.

Task: Page 395 – assessment practice. Do not Evaluate the role of the early years professional in planning provision to support literacy development in children from birth to 5 years.

At least five examples must be given. Task: Group PowerPoint presentation - describe experiences and activities that support early reading and writing skills. Your examples could include: The role of a language rich environment. Hearing stories and rhymes Understanding simple words. Sequencing activities and mark-making. An appropriate range of books and games. The use of displays. Labels. Pictures and posters in the environment. At least five examples must be given. Watching next week 

Any Questions?