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These visual models may help the early years teachers to
appreciate how teaching the knowledge and skills
required for beginner reading, spelling and writing fit
into the larger picture. Children are not required to
read books which are beyond their level of phonic
knowledge, but they do have free access to books and
share books with adults in a variety of ways. The
teacher identifies the precise
learning intention for activities so, for
example, the teacher would not worry about teaching
letter/s-sound correspondences whilst reading a lovely
story book to the children or demonstrating how an
information book can be used! The idea of 'phonics fast,
first and only' is serving to mislead people to think
that the 'diet' for children is only phonics when
this is not the case at all. Children are not taught
letter names or words as whole shapes, they learn their
correspondences quickly (from 4 - 6 per week) and then
apply them to all-through-the-word blending
(synthesising) for reading and all-through-the-word
segmenting for spelling from week 1. Most importantly,
they are not taught the 'range of reading
strategies' which amount to guessing from picture,
context and initial letter cues. Without competent
handwriting skills, children cannot record the spellings
they may know orally. A good pencil grip needs to be
reinforced from the earliest days in school if not
before. For children identified with literacy special
needs, the teacher may need to go back to the core
knowledge and skills as illustrated - see the
downloadable assessments on the SyntheticPhonics.com
homepage. |
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Once the
children know to automaticity a first/common version of letters
and letter combinations to represent the 42+ single sound units
of speech, then they need to learn the spelling variations of
the sounds of speech. They need the knowledge and flexibility to
know the letter/s-to-sounds correspondences (for reading) and
the sound/s-to-letters correspondences (for spelling). Beware of
programmes which tend to over-emphasise the reading process or
the spelling process - pupils need to know and understand the
reversibility of the alphabetic code. Handwriting skills are
also required to automaticity and fluency - so many pupils are
let down by insufficient opportunity to practise thoroughly
because of a lack of basic skills rehearsal. As the children
gain basic reading and writing knowledge and skills, they
themselves will apply these to a wider range of activities and
integration will occur with the wider curriculum - both planned
by the teacher and occurring naturally through the children's
input. |
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