[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

is trying to teach them an auditory method of decoding a visual notation.

No - you got me - can't let this one pass.

but SP
> is trying to teach them an auditory method of decoding a visual notation.
> And they are learning these skills to please the teacher but the do not
seem
> to know why.

Graeme - I'm not a SP advocate in the current, rather driven and political
sense.  But the term 'synthetic phonics' actually means slightly
different things to different people (a bit like 'reading').

The authors of the Clackmannanshire study describe synthetic phonics by
contrasting it with analytical phonics.  They suggest that AP is a way of
teaching reading in which the word is presented first and the learner is
told what it says - s/he then has to 'analyse' the word, i.e. work out which
bits make the sounds.

What the authors are really describing in their version of AP is a 'whole
words, whole books' teaching approach in which phonics are only taught
explicitly after the introduction of initial 'reading'.

Now I'm among a host of people who haven't ever believed that this a good
approach for the teaching of initial reading.  But what the 'SP movement'
seems to have distilled from the Clackmannanshire study (and this may not be
the fault of the authors - I'm being generous here) is that there is one
particular method for the teaching of initial reading, and this shall be
given the brand name 'Synthetic Phonics'.

Now I've used a teaching approach for years that I conceptualise as
'synthetic phonics' but it certainly isn't the same as the 'brand name' SP.
Firstly, it isn't used with 'beginning' readers, but with 'began, several
times, but it didn't really take' readers.

But all of the 'phonics' activities are interwoven with a range of different
'reading with thinking' tasks, illustrating ( I hope) how incredibly useful
this stuff can be.  So it's SP, but as part of a calorie-controlled diet.
And I expect that every other pukka practitioner on the forum approaches it
in a similar way.

There are lots of different reasons why a child might present as a 'weak'
reader.  But the biggest single group that I've encountered is the cohort of
the last 7-8 years who seem to be adequate sight readers but can't decipher
unfamiliar words and can't spell.  And most of them had 'whole words, whole
books, with phonics as an afterthought' as their initial reading experience.
(Or was it just the National Literacy Strategy?)

So slow down, you're getting a fixation about the demon SP - and there's
more than one flavour.

> To get away from my cutting remark about SP, which was supposed to be
tongue
> in cheek, but seems to have been taken the wrong way.

A very difficult sense to convey via e-mail.

Regards

Biff

----- Original Message -----
From: "dolfrog" <dolfrog at tiscali.co.uk>
To: "'Eddie Carron'" <eddiecarron at btconnect.com>;
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 6:48 PM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

> Hi Eddie
>
> To get away from my cutting remark about SP, which was supposed to be
tongue
> in cheek, but seems to have been taken the wrong way.
>
> Most children at this age are using very visual multi-media at home where
it
> is easy to learn most things of importance to them visually. The play
> computer based games that utilise their visual skills and dexterity, and
> when the look up the cheats web sites most of the instructions are visual
> and the text content for the most part is overlooked. And this is what you
> are competing with, in their minds, they are able to learn most to the
> things important in their lives using their visual learning skills, but SP
> is trying to teach them an auditory method of decoding a visual notation.
> And they are learning these skills to please the teacher but the do not
seem
> to know why.
>
> So if it were possible to combine some visual reading learning skills with
> the auditory reading learning skills this may help improve this problem.
The
> problems here would be training teachers to understand all the various
> reading programs so that they could adapt their teaching methods to match
> the needs of the children in front of them. (but then we have all the
> problems with professional bodies of opinion which seem to take precedence
> over the children's learning needs mentioned in another thread)
>
> Best wishes
>
> Graeme
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
> [mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Eddie Carron
> Sent: 07 February 2007 11:07
> To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary
>
> Graeme
>
> Teaching SP doesn't create parrots - it creates people who are able to
> decode.  No-one has ever implied anything other than that as far as I am
> aware. This may not be of importance to you personally but it is a
critical
> skill for millions of poor readers.
>
>
> Comprehension of language beyond a restricted expressive code is a
> consequence of life experience and innate intellectual capacity.  It is
> generally agreed that there is no specific and separate phenomenon called
> 'reading comprehension' - there is only language comprehension. If you
> define 'reading' as the retrieval and assimilation of the intellectual
> content of text then these children have learned to 'retrieve' but not
> 'assimilate'  It is not a weakness of synthetic phonics that some children
> have limited language appreciation.  Another feature of innate
intellectual
> capacity is the inability of generalize information and this specifically
> limits the ability to assimilate implied meanings. Such children usually
> cope reasonably well with non-fiction reading material but generally fail
> with fiction where inferrential comprehension is required. It is important
> to appreciate that SP is about improving decoding skills and is not in any
> connected with 'comprehension'
>
>
>
>
>
> Eddie C.
>
>
>
>
> --
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