Papermover v RR teacher

[chew8]

The CLPE used to have a very whole-language orientation, but that was years ago and it may have changed.

Jenny C.

[Debbie Hepplewhite]

Say I have 15 mins 3 or 4 times a week to do spelling with her-what would you sugest is the most productive thing to do? I can't spell for toffee and am really anxious about this part.

Find the spot in the Phonics International programme that seems right for your daughter - and then do the Sounds Book Activity Sheets at least - they have instructions on them for each multi-skills sheet.

You could alternate them with the matching 'I can read' texts of 'Sentences' for self-dictations and comprehension work.

Please feel free to contact me for any further suggestions.

[kenm]

Oh, has anyone been on a CLPE Phonics Course? This is who the school use for their inservice phonics training and I would like to know if it is the course that is at fault, or if it is the interpretation and implementation?

I have not been on any of their courses, but when they write (on their web site)

At CLPE, we believe in:
• A child’s right to be literate and to enjoy literature
• The importance of texts that engage children and support developing literacy
• Practice that is underpinned and supported by robust classroom-based research

and make no mention of GP Correspondences, my suspicions are raised.

Their Phonics courses are based on Letters and Sounds, presumably because of its widespread use.

[kestrel]

They are selling Henrietta Dombey's view of phonics in their publications section:

https://www.clpe.org.uk/publication/17

[chew8]

I have the book. It was first published in 1998, but I don't know if it has been revised at all - probably not, in view of the fact that it's still called 'Whole to Part Phonics' and in view of the blurb in the link given by kestrel. My edition promotes analytic phonics, with a heavy emphasis on phonological awareness.

As I see it, the big fly in the ointment is the belief that children start by reading words as unanalysed wholes. Once people accept that, it seems logical to think that children need phonological awareness in order to start breaking words down (analysing them) into smaller units and that they will grasp onset-rime units before phonemic units.

Jenny C.

[Papermover]

Thanks all. Yes I wondering how the school used match funding to obtain whole school CLPE phonics training, but maybe they didn't, maybe they used funds from elsewhere.

[volunteer]

Probably.

I don't think our school used any of the match-funding scheme at all. We offered personally to give money for them to buy a whole load of phonics books and they would get the match funding which would double the purchase. They said no.

I think you might be coming up against some beliefs that the early teaching of reading is driven by different political ideologies - crudely put the belief that phonics is right-wing, whole-word methods are left-wing.

[Derrie Clark]

Yes Jenny:

As I see it, the big fly in the ointment is the belief that children start by reading words as unanalysed wholes. Once people accept that, it seems logical to think that children need phonological awareness in order to start breaking words down (analysing them) into smaller units and that they will grasp onset-rime units before phonemic units.

But unfortunately it seems to be surfacing again. This belief about developmental stages (Goswami) persists despite the research evidence that teaching GPCs is more efficient. As McGuinness points out - children only need to learn one alphabet code rather than a confusing mix of several. Nor do teachers have the time to teach all these different codes, particularly given the amount of information involved (2000 plus onset-rimes?)

Also it seems CLPE charge £1500 for a five day training and then you can be a part of their project?? They suggest there is evidence although I can find no peer reviewed research papers and again there does not appear to be a control group?

[Derrie Clark]

Yes Volunteer

I think you might be coming up against some beliefs that the early teaching of reading is driven by different political ideologies - crudely put the belief that phonics is right-wing, whole-word methods are left-wing.

This has been an ongoing problem. Yet, all political parties have supported the implementation of phonics.

[chew8]

I don't think the belief that children start by reading words as unanalysed wholes has ever gone away, Derrie. Goswami has helped to keep it alive - so has Henrietta Dombey.

Jenny C.

[john walker]

Funnily enough, some of our Sounds~Write trainers have been wondering aloud whether we should continue to talk about 'onset and rime' in the very explicit way in which we deal with it on our courses. This has been because the trainers have been encountering blank looks from trainees when the subject has been raised. However, I have always stuck out for keeping this explanation and discussion in the training precisely because, like the Hydra, it keeps rearing its ugly heads.
Is it the case that Goswami has been given money to revive the fortunes of the onset and rime beast?

[Debbie Hepplewhite]

In training I also discuss the difference between the very economic approach of synthetic phonics (or UK linguistic phonics) of letter/s-sound correspondences which are generally based on the phoneme (or smallest sounds which can change the meaning of the word such as /b/ /oa/ /t/ compared to /k/ /oa/ /t/) compared to onset and rime which are basically words or syllables which are snapped in two (such as sn-ap).

But, with onset and rime, you are effectively teaching a method with a huge number of 'units of sound'. If you teach '-ap' words, then you need to teach '-op' words and '-ep' words and '-ip' words and '-up' words - and so it goes on.

And why would we need to teach both the phoneme level units of sound such as a /a/ e /e/ i /i/ o /o/ u /u/ s /s/ n /n/ t /t/ and so on, in addition to the onset and rimes such as 'st' /s+t/, 'cl' /k+l/, 'spr' /s+p+r/ (consonant clusters at the beginning of words) and rimes which may also include various letters and letters groups as code for the many vowel sounds plus either single consonant letters or consonant clusters at the end of words. In other words, the potential complexity of an onset and rime approach is huge and not mathematically sensible.

Synthetic/linguistic phonics, although appearing to teach a very large number of letter/s-sound correspondences, actually teach far, far fewer than would need to be taught, or that could be taught, through onset and rime phonics.

The phonics 'skill' is also different. Synthetic/linguistic phonics is about decoding the letter/s-sound correspondences at phoneme level all-through-the-printed-word and orally segmenting the sounds (mainly phonemes) all-through-the-spoken-word (and then allotting the letters and letter groups for the identified sounds) whereas onset and rime phonics is a somewhat 'snapping together' process for reading or 'snapping apart' process for spelling.

The implication with the Usha Goswami emphasis on onset and rime, for example through games and activities based on onset and rime, is that this may contradict or contrast with the type of phoneme-level code knowledge and skills that children in England should have already received from Reception to Year Two (or even from Nursery in many cases).

Synthetic/linguistic phonics working at phoneme correspondence level also means that the 'spelling word banks' to focus on and recall as much as possible do not have to have identical rimes.

A SP/LP spelling word bank, for example, for 'ou' would be:

out, mouth, cloud, noun, stout, pound - and so on - with different final sounds.

An onset and rime word bank for 'ou' would be:

out, shout, pout, clout and so on - with the same 'unit of sound' end chunk.

But then another word bank for 'ou' in onset and rime would need to be:

south, mouth - and so on - so can you imagine the variety of word banks needed with the onset and rime approach?

Whereas we do have the most complex alphabetic spelling system in the English language, nevertheless, synthetic/linguistic phonics has simplified it enormously as a teaching and learning approach through a breakdown of the spelling system at mainly the phoneme level.

Without a doubt.

The trouble is, people such as Usha Goswami and Henrietta Dombey don't appear to understand that - or appreciate well enough the rationale of teaching through a synthetic/linguistic phonics approach.

And, dismayingly, now the Education Endowment Foundation appears to be devoting hundreds of thousands of pounds in 'researching' Goswami's onset and rime game.

It doesn't feel like a state of affairs of treading water, but swimming backwards to the wrong end of the pool.

[Papermover]

I don't think our school used any of the match-funding scheme at all. We offered personally to give money for them to buy a whole load of phonics books and they would get the match funding which would double the purchase. They said no.

The head told me that they spent £3k on phonics books, and that all the teachers were recently retrained in phonics. I haven't seen any phonics books

.

I think you might be coming up against some beliefs that the early teaching of reading is driven by different political ideologies - crudely put the belief that phonics is right-wing, whole-word methods are left-wing.

This was levelled at me by the school, that SP is political and not about helping children to learn. This saddens me, and makes me feel a bit paranoid. I'd hate to be seen as right wing.

[john walker]

Good post, Debbie!

[JIM CURRAN]

Thanks Debbie, for an excellent posting.