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Bringing Word Sounds to Life
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"What? This is a word approach to reading. This Office takes a strictly sentence approach, a strictly sentence
approach to reading." "And where did you get the words from? What? The Oxford Dictionary. You should have used an Australian Dictionary etc. etc." "In any case we are ansolutely not interested in this booklet. We take a strictly sentence approach." Such were the words ringing in one's ears on leaving a certain Education Office in the late 1990's. In retrospect, one has to pity any sub-Primary teacher in the 1990's who tried to continue |
teaching reading in the
traditional, phonics-based way, when this sort of person came visiting to the school. If you are (still!), "a strictly sentence approach to reading" teacher, then forget about the e-book link below. The book takes a (shock and horror) phonics approach to reading. That is, 2000+ one syllable words are sorted out into their vowel sounds. However before flicking off to the entertaining sentence-based web sites, you may like to reflect on some of the comments lifted from an ABC Australian Four corners program in 11/11/19. A link to a verbatum recollection of the whole program is also below. |
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Comments from and about Dan Tehan Australian Federal Minister for Education. "One-fifth students are at or below the lowest level of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)." "We're flat-lining as a nation." "At the moment we are very concerned that teachers don't know how to teach phonics in the classroom." |
"What phonics does is enable those children.... to get the fundamental skills to learn how to read." "I can't understand how people would oppose it. As a matter of fact it's such a no-brainer that it absolutely just confuses me." (Dan Tehan wants all phones to be banned at school.) "If you as adults... don't read yourself, your children are not likely to become readers." |
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Other interviewees made comments such as: Dr Peter Cross: "Year Three is OK but by Year Seven students are flat lining...Years 3-4 children are switching off." Veronica Saunders, High School English Tutor: "Their vocabulary has decreased. Their spelling is atrocious. Children don't know how to use an apostrophe.The boys are worse... The average student is about twelve months below what they were a decade ago." Prof. Snow, cognitive therapist: "One in seven are not reaching the OECD standards". (Other):" Twenty percent of Year Nine's are below or barely average.... at the level of Year Five students." (Teacher Students) "We are taught an abundance of approaches. But we are not taught which one works." (Other) "There has been less focus on grammar, spelling and a system of phonics where children were explicitly taught to break apart and sound out words. The new way was teaching children to recognise and remember whole words. Children may never hear the alphabet being recited.... Children identify with total words and related objects." |
Reflect a little on the sentence "The new way was teaching children to recognise and remember whole words."If children have to memorise every single word in order to recognise and read it in a different context, then no wonder they are running out ofPUFFAnd some would say that learning phonics is boring, too taxing and is a "word" approach to reading. |
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Notes from a Four Corners Program November 2019 Sounds Alive Book |
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