Why Phonics Teaching Must Change

In "Why Phonics Teaching Must Change" (members, log in to read), Jeannine Herron writes that "phonics instruction can become more engaging and effective if we teach students to write words before they read them." 

What are the advantages of doing so? Do you see potential problems with this approach?

The September 2008 issue of Educational Leadership (themed "The Positive Classroom") is available online.

Comments

[Margo/Mom]

Back in the early days of classroom computers, a teacher developed a system called Write to Read, which utilized interaction between writing and reading. It was very well thought out, using stations of various kinds (one was computers, but others included paper/pencil, one was very tactile--writing in sand on a cookie sheet), and I believe it was evaluated and found to be successful.

I think that the downfall was that it was bought and distributed by IBM (the software ran on PC Juniors) who was using it to get computers into schools.

[Nicole]

I believe phonics is so important in 1st and 2nd grade. Where I am at we use saxon phonics and I really truly believe it makes a HUGE differemce in their reading and writing skills. We have songs and games to remember rules and sounds. I also feel that it can be really boring but with the right attitude and teacher it can be fun!!! WE call it FUN PHONICS in my classroom. With this program they give a script to follow and it uses a lot of different techniques like using spelling tiles, and visuals and worksheet and games. It works.

[R. Wisham (Valdosta, GA)]

I completely agree! I teach first grade and I always try to stress the importance of our phonics time. We use a program called Open Court, it is like Saxon, we have a script to go by and various activities. It really does work, but it can become very monotonous! I try so hard to incorporate games and songs and make sure they understand the importance of paying attention. When it is time for phonics, I ask them to get into "learning position". I call out each rule, and they repeat it as they follow it. I say "Hands on your desk", "feet on the floor", "body is still", eyes on teacher", "ears are listening", and "mouth is closed". It is a great way to get their attention (they repeat what I say back to me) and it lets them know it is time for our lesson. If anyone has ANY ideas they could share with me like games or activities, I would love to hear them!

[Valarie]

I also agree that phonics is very important. I teach kindergarten and we spend a lot of time on phonics and phonemic awareness. We use the Harcourt program. Each day is scheduled for you. It has a fun oral activity, a book/story that supports the phonics and centers ideas for you to use. Every day is different. The oral activity could be a song, rhyme, or game. My children are always excited to see what we are going to do that day. I also mix it up with a phonics game that I have. You spend the wheel and what ever the arrow points to, you pull a card from that stack and complete the strategy.

[Valarie]

I also agree that phonics is very important. I teach kindergarten and we spend a lot of time on phonics and phonemic awareness. We use the Harcourt program. Each day is scheduled for you. It has a fun oral activity, a book/story that supports the phonics and centers ideas for you to use. Every day is different. The oral activity could be a song, rhyme, or game. My children are always excited to see what we are going to do that day. I also mix it up with a phonics game that I have. You spend the wheel and what ever the arrow points on, you pull a card from that stack and complete the strategy.

[R. Wisham (Valdosta, GA)]

Valerie,
Would you mind sharing some of the games or activities you do during phonics? I would love some new ideas!

[donna]

I am also a Kindergarten teacher now and couldn't agree more on the need for innovative phonics programs. I also taught junior high for 15 years and had students who suffered under the whole=language experiement!I like bits of the Writing Road to Reading but am not happy with the full approach. Keeping learning relevant and meaningful seems to happen for the children when they are secure in early phonics instruction and build on that knowledge to learn words, word families, and reading.

[Katherine Collins]

I taught in a school district that believed we did not need to teach phonics and wow did we pay for it. I was not happy with with the attempt to teach the students without this basic foundation. We also adapted the belief that students should just write and not worry about the spelling of the words. As long as we could figure out what they were trying to say, it was fine. I knew this was going to mean we would be promoting students that could not do the simple thing as write a sentence correctly. Well my school had a spelling bee and as predicted the fifth grade students could not spell simple words. It was an eye opener to the higher up and we adopted a phonics program the next year. All I could say was about time. It seems that it does not matter what the teachers believe, we are only the ones that spend every minute of our days with the students.

[Valarie]

I have a game that my students love, There is a large spin wheel in the middle divided into sections. Each section represents a differnt deck of cards. They cover:
Beginning Sound
Middle Sound
Ending Sound
Rhyming Words
Missing Letter
Blend it Together
Each card has a color picture and/or word on the front and the answer on the back. We ordered this game for each of our kindergarten classrooms. I'll have to look up its exact name and where we got it from.

[Amanda]

I am not teaching in the elementary schools, (I teach in middle school) but I am a parent of a child who struggles to read/spell and I think that a lot of her problem is that the school system does not teach phonetics. I don't know who it was that decided phonics is unnecessary, but I really think the decision was not well thought out. I am sure my child is not the only struggling third grader. I also have students in my classroom that have no phonetic awareness and have terrible spelling/reading skills; I am pretty sure they didn't have a good phonics program in their elementary schools either.

[Dana]

RITE & Houston ISD/TITLE 1- Fast Cycle Reading Mastery -Storybook 2 this one book contains all of these repetative negative "site words"- hate, we hate you, hit, loves to hit ,I don't like, telling lies, yelled, yelling, mad, makes me mad, very mean, likes to do mean things, sad, very sad, very scared, mean ghost, we have a fine con in jail, call upon the wizard for help, casting spells, very mean monsters, filling with fear, better than you. The illustrations are negative and intimidating depicting anger, sadness and fear. The story content, characters and wording are offensive and reinforce negative behavior, promotes corrupt behavior, violence and anxiety, depression. How to bet, con people, repetition of the word "hate". First writtings "Mad at Me". This is Beginner Reader & Workbook for Kindergarten taught as "using your imagination". Children should not be taught negative values at school which promotes fear using hate, violence, coercion, feeling of sadness, intimiadation. This has no place in our schools or society.

[Tammie]

I agree that it is very important to teach phonics in the lower grades. I teach Kindergarten and I love our phonics program. We use Saxon phonics. I love the scripted lessons, anyone can teach it. This is really helpful because I can take a group of students and my parapro can take another group of students and I know that we are both teaching the exact same thing. Also, I believe that children need a basis for learnin how to read and write and the phonics program provides this for them.

[Megan]

I notice there are quite a few kindergarten teachers commenting here. In our district we do not use a scripted phonics program. We have a set of old phonics books with teacher's manual, but we haven't used them in a few years. Our district uses Building Blocks (Four Blocks for grades 1-3). We had a professional development day last school year where someone came to speak about it. Last year we used bits and pieces, but this year we are expected to implement the majority of our day using this progeam. I like it so far. Does anyone use this same program?

[Katie]

As with many of the other comments, I believe that phonics is necessary. However, it should be used in conjunction with other methods of reading instruction. Without phonics, I am seeing many students who lack the skills to figure out words for themselves. Because no one has ever taught them a certain word, these students cannot figure it out on their own and just guess. Good job to all those districts out there teaching phonics!

[Christine]

Phonics is important, but so is a basic sight word vocabulary. Phonetic words comprise approximately 40% of the English language. Children need instruction in phonetic awareness and phonics, but they also need to have a mastery of sight vocabulary words. I am an intermediate grade level reading specialist.

[Angela K.]

I agree! Phonics is an essential portion of our Guided Reading program everyday. I am trying to implement a new Program called Lindamood-Bell(with fidelity)for my second grade students. We were desperate to have an effective intervention to use with our At-risk learners. The program consists of; Consanant practice
Vowels
Prefixes/Suffixes
High Frequency Word Practice
As well as a variety of other tasks.
The program surrounds sensory imagery as well as the gestalt(visualizing)key concepts while using visual imagery and air writing activities. I am excitied to be a part of the process which engages my students into phonics immersion.Students definitely benefit from a kinesthetic approach toward learning and a visual means to recall information later.

[Joan Campbell]

I agree that phonics is a very important part of a child's foundation for reading. I have seen phonics programs that work and phonics programs that don't work. I teach kindergarten and in my school we use Saxon Phonics, I personanly do not like the program. We do not cover all of the letters of the alphabet until the end of January, you cover one letter a week. It is very rote and the students get bored with it very easily. I am always trying to come up with new ways to make the lessons exciting. One phonics program I have seen that works great is the Ortin Gilliham Method. It is an expensive program to get trained in, however you never have to replace you materials. It teaches a lot of hands on skills with the use of manilpluatives and such iteams as shaving cream, sand, etc. I have seen children that were in 4th grade that had a phonics level of a kindergratner be tutored in Ortin and were soon on their grade level in the phonics area and their reading levels increased as well. My county will not pay for me to be trained in Ortin Gillignham nor will they allow me to tale of during the year to be trained; so I am hoping I can take the training next summer.

[Jim Baker]

I'm happy to see that primary school teachers are on the phonics bandwagon. When I first began teaching nearly 30 years ago in an alternative high school, I took training in the Orton Gillingham method — after attending a conference and hearing from formerly dyslexic adults who had become proficient and in some cases avid readers. How? Training in Orton Gillingham. It really is the industrial strength program of all that are out there. Ideally, you'd take a 13 week training and develop high level proficiency with it to become a certified teacher, as I did. Here, in the Midwest, Arlene Sonday was the point person for spreading the Orton Gillingham word far and wide via the hundreds of teachers and teacher-trainers she trained. Realizing that there might be a more economical way to reach the masses with the essence of Orton Gillingham, Arlene developed the SONDAY SYSTEM (I'm not receiving any gratuities for mentioning her program). This system costs about $300.00 and can be learned quite easily, even by volunteers who lack formal educational training (e.g., those moms you'd like to invite to your classroom periodically). You can find information about the SONDAY SYSTEM on line. Keep up the good work, all you hard working, compassionate primary school teachers. The future is literally in your hands.
Jim Baker, Ph.D.

[Patrick Groff]

The proposal that young students should learn to write before they learn to read is not supported by logic nor relevant empirical findings. I remain amazed that there are educators who seem ignorant of the above fact.

Patrick Groff
Professor of Education Emeritus
San Diego State University

[Randi]

I'm curious....what are your thoughts on continuing phonics in older grades....even through high school for those who are still struggling? If it is not something you find worthwhile for older students, at what grade should phonics be cut off?

[Linda]

Teaching phonics in isolation is a waste of everyone's time. Teaching at the point of need will engage students and help them understand the application of phonics in reading. All reading instruction needs to begin with reading for meaning. If a student has been read to and has a good sense of "story," the student will be able to correctly predict (through the use of meaning) and confirm (through phonics) a "tricky" word. If reading skills are not integrated and balanced, the student will struggle unsuccessfully. Common sense should prevail in all instruction. Unfortunately, many primary teachers and school districts jump on the current bandwagon and "throw the baby out with the bath water."

[Jade Tippett]

Teaching reading through writing is not limited to the early grades, nor is the brain science of reading instruction.

I taught a "high-risk" self-contained 9th grade program for six years. I always began the year with a writing project based on the unit "An Annotated Map of Your Neighborhood" developed by a New York City teacher. No matter what the reading level, and most were 3 to 5 years behind, every student was able to write about their own experience.

Later in the year, I used Anita Archer's REWARDS program for building word recognition and fluency through choral response.

Archer is so dynamic and demanding in her trainings that I used to joke that if Archer gave her presentation in a funeral home, the corpses would sit up and respond chorally. The intensity I had to put into the lessons to make them "take" was exhausting, at least at first.

At the beginning, my students, being ninth graders who had failed everything and had nothing left but their pride, resisted the REWARDS program. When they began to realize that their reading skills were actually improving dramatically, their attitude took a 180 degree turnaround. By the end of the eight weeks or so of the program, I could even leave a substitute plan indicating which students were to run which pieces of the REWARDS lesson, and the students would run the lesson themselves.

Part of the reason REWARDS worked, I think, is that I included cognitive instruction on the brain science of reading as it was then understood, explaining the need for the choral response to involve the auditory cortices in the process of processing language into meaning. When it started working, why it was working made sense to them.

[Diane]

I am a firm believer in teaching phonics and writing in a integrated fashion. I have used Saxon, Wilson, REWARDS and Harcourt. My job is to teach struggling readers. I have 7th and 8th graders who read on a 1st or 2nd grade level. This is a travisty. These students have never been taught phonemic awareness or phonics. Yes, there are students who can just "catch on to reading" by being exposed to literacy. However, we have to meet the needs of all students. Teaching decoding and encoding simultaneously, with an emphasis on the alphabetic principle, allows students to learn how to read, write and comprehend. The teachers who feel they are doing their high flying first grade readers a disservice by teaching them phonics are not looking ahead into middle school. These same high flyers begin to have difficulty when they don't know how to break words into sylables or the rules of pronunciation or spelling. They don't know the meanings of affixes or frequently used root words. Jumping on the current band wagon is more like opening your mind to changing your teaching methods in order to meet the needs of all students, now and in the future. I have used Orton-Gillingham based programs that are taught directly, explicitly and systematically to my struggling students and it works. Reading begins to make sense. They can spell words and write paragraphs.

[Karen Tankersley]

One of the most effective ways of getting students to learn their sounds is by integrating the aural with the visual as well as the kinesthetic. In my school and district we used a program that helped students integrate hand signals, sounds and animal visuals that helped students have several ways of associating the letters and sounds. Even though we had a high percentage of ELL and high poverty learners, this method was effective. The brain uses all of the senses to learn and so should educators.