And this helpful clarification of differences, from Debbie Hepplewhite:

http://www.syntheticphonics.com/pdf%20f ... ciples.pdf

One write-up of the difference is in the report on the Clackmannanshire study. It is right near the beginning in the following link:

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2005/02/20682/52383

Jennie (U.S.)

Elizabeth, I quite agree with you that in the U.S. even those who use phonics for teaching often use programs that focus on the 26 letters. And even if/when they do get to the advanced code they continue to be primarily grapheme-focused. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard strong phonics p...

Well, Spelfabet often has a good post, such as:
http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2015/03/one ... -epiphany/

Jennie (U.S.)

I greatly admire Willingham's work, but his belief that ''by around the fourth grade, most kids decode pretty well'' has bothered me for some time now. I have found that even students who are performing between the 50th and the 80th percentiles on normed reading comprehension tests often have signif...

How wonderful that this school provides these excellent pointers on the school website. Here is one that I have found incredibly helpful, but have not heard used in any classroom near me (U.S.), nor have any of the parents of my tutoring students received this advice from their child's school: "Prac...

Well, I think Elene has the same impression that I used to have: That "adult readers" = "highly skilled readers". adult readers DEFINITELY DO NOT use the same strategies employed by RR to work out how to say unknown words. How can I say an unknown word unless I sound it out? Part of the communicatio...

Debbie wrote: I spend some time talking about the practice of 'skipping words' when learners read privately and silently. It was not until I began tutoring that I realized that word-skipping was not only common among weaker readers, but is actually encouraged by some (many?) teachers at the elementa...

I am curious about the requirement that appears to be going into effect in England this year: that schools use decodable books with beginning readers. Am I correct? If so, what are the details of this requirement?
Jennie (U.S.)

Yes, Lucy, there are quite a few "parents-turned-tutors", myself included (5+ years ago). I don't know of any online forum specifically for tutors, much less specifically for SP tutors. This is the best site in that regard, even for SP tutors like myself who live outside the U.K. Debbie Hepplewhite'...

Quite right, Elizabeth. I certainly didn't mean to imply that teaching morphemes and about connections between words is not important! Such knowledge helps greatly with spelling, and it is interesting in itself. I find that many SP programs include that type of information, but not as a precursor to...

John Walker wrote Me? I just point to the <gn> and say, "This is another way of spelling /n/. Say /n/ here. Yes! (I tend to put a light pencil mark under the letters, and say "Say /n/ here".) At an appropriate time SP teachers show the student other words with that spelling for /n/, and the student ...

I don't know how long the May LDA Australia bulletin will be available free online, but it is excellent.
[Note: I wasn't able to reach it via Susan's link, so I just went to the LDA website.]
Jennie (U.S.)

From here in the U.S., the national phonics check looks wonderful to my eyes. We certainly have nothing like it here. Many schools here, voluntarily, use NWF (nonsense word fluency) assessments - either from DIBELSNext or from AIMSweb, although there are plenty of teachers who don't care for such as...

2012 video of synthetic phonics teaching in some primary schools in South Australia. Specific programs are not mentioned, but I recognize Jolly Phonics materials and Dandelion Readers books. http://vimeo.com/62842356

Jennie (U.S.)