Phonics Blog: How children are short-changed by watered-down phonics

This is the hub of the site and the place to post queries, start discussions and join in the conversation!
Post Reply
User avatar
Susan Godsland
Posts: 45
Joined: Sun May 24, 2015 1:32 pm

Phonics Blog: How children are short-changed by watered-down phonics

Post by Susan Godsland »

Mike Lloyd-Jones has written a new blog post. It's horribly accurate in its description of what passes for phonics teaching in the majority of schools in England today.

Phonics and the Art of Bonsai: How children are short-changed by watered-down phonics

http://www.phonicsblog.co.uk/#/blog/456 ... ai/9791994
In too many primary schools – perhaps it is the majority of those schools – the phonics teaching provided is a cut-down version of what children should be entitled to. The children are short-changed by a version of phonics which is fragmentary, partial and disjointed– and for so many the inevitable price of this cut-down teaching is stunted reading development.
User avatar
Debbie_Hepplewhite
Posts: 2498
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

Re: Phonics Blog: How children are short-changed by watered-down phonics

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Thanks for flagging up Mike's post, Susan, it's really good as always.

I also highly recommend Mike's very readable book, 'Phonics and the Resistance to Reading' - well worth a read!

On the same subject of schools cutting down their phonics teaching, this seems an appropriate place to provide a link to a graphic I've drawn up to illustrate pretty much the same issues as Mike has done in his latest post.

The Simple View of Schools' Phonics Provision:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/Sim ... chools.pdf

I think it might be a good thing if all infant and primary school teachers could see a graphic such as this and could read Mike's post.

It would be interesting to see where teachers might place their phonics provision according to the graphic! :|

In teachers' defence, however, I have to say that they have been led to believe that 20 minutes of phonics daily is the expected norm.

I suggest that it is long overdue that we draw a line under the '20 minutes a day' notion to look at what phonics programme authors would suggest and the realities of providing for up to 30 different children in a typical infant class with all their different needs, different 'cultural capital' and their different learning capacity.
Post Reply