No sooner had I written about the desire for a proper education system where reading and writing enables free thinking and pupils to find a voice that the government comes up with their next method of madness in formalisation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12509477
Read this and weep. Or more constructively, get angry and do something about it.
According to the link, the government is now going to introduce a new “reading” test which includes non words such as “koob” and “zort”. This test is to ensure that the factory fodder of six year olds have understood the synthetic phonics to such an extent that they can interpret meaningless manufactured words. Hey, there’s some real irony here that Mr. Gove hasn’t quite managed to appreciate.
Or should I say Mr Gov. – the man from the ministry whose name, as the President of the UK Literacy Association quite rightly points out, definitely does not rhyme with “love”. So explain that one Mr. Gooooooove. Perhaps you ought to put your name on the “reading” test to see just how well your plastic phonics system is teaching our children how to read without any context whatsoever.
Another irony is the words chosen for this list as “meaningless”. I once taught someone whose surname was “Zort”. I wonder how he would feel to see that his surname is classified as a pointless word. But then again, he was not from Anglo-Saxon origin, so he doesn’t real count according to Mr. Gov.
His sidekick proclaims to know all about education despite the fact that significant academics and those who teach in schools tell him that this is not the only method that should be employed in teaching and indeed learning how to read. Mr. Gibb (he with a silent B – would children spell his surname correctly on hearing it?).
"Too many children leave primary school unable to read and write properly - we are determined to raise standards and the new phonics-based reading check for six-year-olds will ensure that children who need extra help are given it before it is too late, and then can enjoy a lifetime's love of reading."
So says Mr. Nick Gobb.
Pray, do tell me how children are going to enjoy a lifetime of reading when they have been put off by a gross lack of understanding by the time they are seven years of age.
This experiment was done many years ago with synthetic phonics. It works for some people but others are completely flummoxed by it because they quickly realise that the English Language is not constructed with due regard for phonetic consistency. In order to make a real sense of the language one needs to be able to look at the structure of words, their placing and meaning within a sentence, how they physically take shape on the page, where they fit with other words, how they give meaning to the reader.
I am fed up to the back teeth of people taking on these so-called miracle initiatives at the expense of children’s learning, at the cost of their enjoyment – all because someone somewhere has prioritised the need for mechanical learning in a language that does not comply with such regulations.
I think back to the children that I have taught to read, and there have been many, so I guess I am speaking from experience. For some of them, the phonics worked but it was mainly those who had no problems with reading or indeed mathematics. There was already a willingness to learn and possibly an already established relationship with books.
For others, the phonics system was as complicated as learning Arabic. The formulaic process passed them by. They did not comprehend the structures and then, when they were led to real books, there were simple words that did not fit with the rules they had just been taught. Can you begin to imagine how frustrating that must feel like to a child who already knows they are not achieving in the way of their peers? No wonder some of those children sought to release their frustration with inappropriate behaviour.
I used phonics with these children but never as a stand-alone mechanism at the exclusion of other reading strategies. There were times when my little ones were taken off by the Special Needs teacher to work through a laborious list of words and phonics. I am really not sure whether it made a difference, for I think their ability to read was far more down to the hours sitting down with the child and pouring over a book both at home and in school.
When I first had the dubious honour of being placed in a Year One class, I decided that I would like to have a corner of the room that was dedicated to free play; a place that was the children’s place – the Home Corner. Unfortunately, my head teacher at the time disagreed and banned me from creating this special place when SAT preparation needed to accommodate every single moment of the day. I argued that the Home Corner would develop their speaking and listening skills and that communicating and cooperating with one another was an essential element of all learning as well as language learning, but she decided that other rules needed to be adhered to.
That was bad enough but when she told me that my children could only read with me in guided reading time, I had to rebel.
She thought that it was the job of the parents to read daily with the pupils who could not read, not mine. I was there to teach CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). I was there to teach the “ee” sound and the “ea” sound and make the children automatically know which one was the right one to include in their writing. I was the one who should teach the letter sounds with the Letterland characters that had no meaning whatsoever to my children. I was supposed to rush them into the 250 key English Language words that they had to learn despite the fact that a handful of the kids couldn’t even write or read their own name. But what I was categorically not to do was read daily with them.
As I said, I rebelled, and the only time I had in the day, like so many of my colleagues across the country, was to take every assembly time (well, the ones where I wasn’t required), every dinner time apart from Friday, and many break times, trying to help these poor little mites who were struggling so desperately with this difficult language.
And guess what? I don’t think I ever used unreal words to get them to learn because one begs to ask – what is point?
Surely, the whole point of reading is to get meaning from the collection of letters and words on a page. Otherwise, what the hell is the point? Our language is not constructed in a clear code. There may be 44 clear phonemes but there are thousands of words that do not follow this construct and I know that my children learned to read through many different methods, such as interpretation through the picture, memory, graphemes, the works.
The thing that most upsets me about synthetic phonics is this idea that children should not look at “real” books until they have learned this formulaic approach, thus robbing children of some of the very best literature known to mankind! Is the government therefore saying that you can only read to your child if you cover up the words so that their synthetic phonics system is not diluted by the other spurious methods of learning how to read? Or is Waterstone’s and the likes now going to be full of our favourite books being syntheticised? Heaven forbid!
I make no apologies for getting angry about this because it is something that is dear to my heart. I can still see some children getting restless and frustrated as they battled with this structure that was supposed to help them but merely led them further into despondency as they just didn’t get the phonetic rules, and even if they had managed to learn in the construct of a planned programme, they could not make the transition from using this in either their reading or their writing.
It was so hard to see this, and I would sit happily for hours working time and time again, to ensure that they learned to read by my methods.
I can safely say that no child left my class without being able to read.
I would like to say that I hope the government and Mr. Gov. would reconsider their ideas about these silly words, but there is no point in wasting my breath, just as there was no point arguing for my Home Corner. My only hope is that the teaching profession refuse to administer these stupid tests and get on with really helping their children to read by creating an environment that gives meaning, purpose and enjoyment of reading both collectively and individually.
I do hope my children read for enjoyment now too.
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