[senco-forum] Re: literacy

Elizabeth

I probably did not make myself clear. I do not believe that it is the case that SP is useful only to children in the lower ability bands - SP is useful to ANY child who is having difficulty in learning to decode/blend. That is, always has been and remains, my view. When a child has a SPECIFIC reason why they are not learning to decode/blend such as those you describe, SP may well help some but alas not all. I think Graeme and Aly would deem automatic imposition of SP on those with APD, quite unhelpful and possibly even damaging. My view is that the needs of such children must be individually assessed and if SP is recommended as being a productive counter for that particular child's learning difficulty then of course it should be used with that child. 

My personal interest is in the vast majority of children who leave school illiterate and by far the greater proportion of these do not have a specific learning difficulty - they have a general learning difficulty which is reflected in the fact that they are, for the most part at least, in the below average ability band. My belief is that these children leave school quite unnecessarily illiterate and SP offers them a way of learning to read - but nothing more than that!

You say 'I cannot see that a 16 week program of synthetic phonics in year one would be such a turn off to the majority of children' This is just another way of saying that 'it will do them no harm' and I believe that to be a quite unacceptable educational philosophy. SP is about teaching children how to decode/blend so that they will learn to read. Tell me that you believe that it is not true that 80% of children learn to read without SP or tell me what GOOD it will do children who have no difficulty in learing to read. Do not tell me that they should just put up with SP simply because it will do good for the others. I could provide an endless list of things you could teach children which would do them no harm but I might have difficulty in demonstrating what actual good they would do. I would have no such difficulty in demonstrating the good that SP does for childen who will otherwise remain illiterate and that validates its being used as a teaching strategy for these childen.

Perhaps the Shakespeare example was a mistake because this thread is not really about literacy. It is about the acquisition of one of the basic tools of literacy ie. reading. Let us not forget that SP is a set of mechanical exercises which can have no impact whatseover on literacy in the fuller sense of the word and we must be wary of endowing it with magical powers which will transform children into literary creatures. No mechanical exercises can achieve that. At most, these exercises will make 18% or so of children who will otherwise leave school unable to read, able to read at least to a standard at which they can read a page of a tabloid newspaper. That is a worthwhile objective in its own right and one which I have long supported but please explain to me how you think that that justifies its imposition on children who manifestly have no need of it.

We dont need to make 20% of the children fail, to get them appropriate teaching. We need to wait only until their need becomes apparent. I know a school which does not use SP and where a child failing to learn to read is a very rare event indeed and when it does happen, an EP is summoned immediately. Please explain to me how you would justify the impostion of SP on such a school?

Eddie C.