subject: Phonics Teaching [print this page] Do teachers in primary and secondary schools have a true picture of how many of their students are 'blurgh' readers? To what extent does this skew full comprehension of the literature? I suggest that there are untold numbers of 'blurgh' readers - many of whom will drop out of school or college because they don't really cope with advanced reading material.
Whole Language is more difficult to describe. At its core, it focuses on meaning: making meaning when reading; expressing meaning when writing. It advocates a love of books, uses 'guided reading' and encourages group 'read alouds'.Fortunately the debate is less heated than it once was and there are few who sit squarely in one camp or the other. The most thoughtful compromise is a certain blending of the two methods: 'Phonics within Whole Language'.
The public domain resources available on the internet today are an excellent source of materials with which to begin one's research, and to source age appropriate material with which to educate young children by way of reading comprehension. One soon realises that there is little difference between early education and that of today - schools are man-made. Home Education has been around since the beginning of time!
It is a fact of life, of biology, that our children arrive when we are young ourselves. They arrive when our futures, whether intellectual or technical are being cemented in the tough world of competition. We are moving from trainee to establishing ourselves on that greasy pole of promotion. Time is the enemy, sleep and dogged commitment, critical for continuous development in out field of choice.
Basically, it bottles down to two major approaches: Top-down modes of instruction known as whole language and bottom-up approaches known as phonic instruction. The danger is teaching exclusively phonics without incorporating meaning. The mechanics of reading need to be combined with acquiring meaning. Providing frequent opportunities eventually result in word automaticity.
What about letters like "g" that can either be like "giraffe" or "golf"? The trick here is to realize that it's the sound that comes first, and the letter comes afterwards. The kids will already have the "giraffe" sound from "j". Luckily most consonants have one major sound that they produce most of the time, so it's best to start with that e.g. "c" for "card" not "circle".
In the phonics method, children are taught how to "sound out" new words. Phonics is a series of rules that children have to learn, memorize and apply when they are sounding out new words. Children are taught a rule, for example, "short a", and then they practice reading words with "short a" (hat, cat, sat, bat, rat, etc.) Then children do skill sheets at their desk highlighting the "short a" rule. Children must learn letter sounds to an automatic level - they must be able to see the letter(s) and say the sound immediately.
The main problem with trying to find out which reading method is the best is that the best students will learn to read no matter what method is used. So we have to look at the problem readers and find out what method is best suited to them. And phonics usually comes up on top because phonics are a roadmap to reading. It gives you a code to follow so you can say the written word the same way that it is spoken. Then after you hear yourself read the word correctly you know the sound of the word then you know the meaning.
