Jacqui Moller-Butcher has now written to me about the BBC 'B is for Book' documentary. She has written a detailed commentary and a 'gentle parody of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' (original version by Michael Rosen).
To set the context for Jacqui's message, she drew my attention to her reflections on Michael Rosen's possible reactions to the documentary and pondered, '
. You see here in England, Michael is known to be a vociferous critic of the government's promotion of systematic synthetic phonics and the statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check - so much so that he led a petition against the check signed by over 90 children's authors and illustrators.
So here is Jacqui's commentary about 'B is for Book' with references to Connie Rosen's observations:
It was heartening to see enthusiastic delivery of SSP alongside a strong focus on reading for pleasure in ‘B is for Book’ but disappointing to see approaches that dilute the impact of SSP which wastes the time of the teachers involved and limits attainment, even where attainment is deemed to be ‘good’.
I continue to be puzzled by a school approach that teaches children phonics with enthusiasm yet simultaneously teaches children not to use phonics when reading. To argue that ‘children are taught to use a variety of strategies including phonics to read’ just doesn’t add up.
It doesn’t add up because, in the early stages, while still insecure, it requires focus and concentration to decipher words using phonics. Given a choice at this stage of learning to read, most early readers will plump for guessing every time, especially when invited, encouraged and told to do so. If we teach something that we don’t want children to put into practice, we are wasting time. If we teach something that we want children to put into practice but they tend not to because of something else we tell them to do, we are wasting our time. It makes no sense at all to teach phonics and to teach guessing too.
In ‘B is for Book’, we saw a repetitive reader being used for reading ‘work’ with a Reception child. The little boy in the sequence could not access the text, presumably because it contained words outside his phonic range like 'table', and so he guessed the content of each page.
As long ago as 1973, Connie Rosen, Michael Rosen’s mother and lecturer in primary education, despaired of the use of repetitive readers that invited children to guess their way through a book – the very approach shown in use with struggling readers in ‘B is for Book’, 43 years later.
Connie Rosen describes her despair in her book (co-authored with her husband, Harold Rosen) ‘The Language of Primary School Children’ 1973:
'Difficulties arise when children meet the 'reader' and it is hard to know what justification there can be in maintaining reading material of such poor quality in the schools. What a pitiful return it offers for the enormous efforts a young child must make in deciphering it.'
She goes on to write: 'One six year old said she had discovered a quick way to read a page in her reader. She said if she read down the page she could say, 'Come, Come, Come, Come, See, See, See, See, Go, Go, Go, Look, Look, Look,' and so on, picking out the words repeated somewhere in each sentence. She had discovered the non-event of the language on the page and her gobbledygook was just as good as the stuff that was printed. 'Reading a page' did not even remotely mean to her following someone else's thoughts.'
Connie Rosen knew very well indeed that these kind of repetitive, non-decodable readers required ‘enormous efforts’ from the child to decipher them properly and so guessing is an easier option. We see this in 2016’s ‘B is for Book’ when the boy doesn’t try the first page at all – too enormous a task for him. After he is told what the first page says, he barely looks at the others. With a quick glance at the pictures, he says each sentence with the new item on the table inserted. And the result? ‘Reading’ by guessing is, as he says, ‘boring’.
Of course this approach is not at all part of any SSP programme. It is a throwback to a time before the 1970s - criticised for lacking justification and for offering a pitiful return by Connie Rosen – and yet we find it still in use in 2016.
As an aside, did the little boy mean ‘boring’, or did he mean that when asked to read something by himself for which he had insufficient reading skill, he felt angry and upset? Did he think that the exercise was a waste of time and was one in which he could not possibly succeed? Did he know that guessing each page wasn’t reading at all and he was embarrassed and so he lashed out? He’s unlikely to say, ‘I really think that I need to be taught to access this text before being asked to decipher it in order to maximise my chances of experiencing reading success’ and so ‘boring’ is the next best thing.
Allowing the guessing strategy to take hold undoes the teaching of phonics because if knowledge of phonics is insecure and/or decoding is not the primary habit, as the teaching of phonics peels away in KS2, guessing is all that’s left for children to use to make sense of texts.
We know guessing words incorrectly is common in KS2 readers of all abilities – even the more able, just less frequently. Without the instinct to decode, children look at a new word and try to recognise it like a face, wondering ‘have I met you before?’ They match the ‘face’ to a known face in their bank – reading ‘attractive’ for ‘activity’ for example, and move on. On this, Connie Rosen goes on to say that a ‘child’s response to a ‘sense of misfit’ is rarely to go back and re-read. He is more likely to accept it as one of the many things he doesn’t understand in life or simply to lose interest and discard the book.’ Even if the book is not discarded, if a sense of misfit occurs frequently, a grasp on overall meaning is lost.
Despite the best intentions of schools, Connie Rosen states that ‘We could say that the majority of children do learn to read, but it is also, unfortunately, true that only the minority even by the end of the primary school are real readers. The group of children who do become successful readers by that age, who will read three or four books a week on any and every subject is still very small.’ We are still facing the same problem today. If our children are guessing words as they read, habits made concrete by the use of deadly repetitive readers and the advice of well-intentioned adults, we can assume there are holes in the their understanding when attempting the longer, chapter books that we all hope for them to read. If there are holes in understanding, we knew in 1973 and we know now that they are unlikely to re-read to try to better fill those holes through further guesswork and this is very likely to lead to children discarding books all together.
Therefore, is it surprising that so many of our children lack enthusiasm for reading and that only a ‘minority … become successful readers’? Is the group of children who will read three to four books a week still ‘very small’ in 2016?
In ‘Understanding Reading’ first published in 1971, and republished many times since, Frank Smith himself, who believes that phonics is unnecessary because ‘Reading is as natural as recognizing and interpreting facial expressions’ and because ‘letters correspond to sounds only coincidentally’, states that even though ‘Prediction is the core of reading’, ‘Prediction is not reckless guessing’. He goes on to emphasise that ‘the meanings that listeners and readers bring to language can't be wild guesses’ and again, ‘Prediction doesn't mean staking everything on one wild guess (which would indeed run the risk of frequent error)’.
It is common knowledge that the cross-party parliamentary Education and Skills committee reported in Teaching Children to Read that ‘the NLS themselves accept that its ‘Searchlights’ model represents a pragmatic compromise between divisions.’ Dr Collins admits that the model was invented by ‘A group of us’ and that it ‘was something which three or four of us sat at one point and did.’ Unsurprisingly, the committee reported that they did not consider there to be ‘conclusive evidence of the National Literacy Strategy’s basis in sound research’.These facts and the fact that the model has now been replaced with the Simple View of Reading mean that no school should still be delivering SSP while teaching children to use other reading cues - and not for the last 11 years. There has been no logic to do so. No SSP programme can work effectively if it is diluted by teaching children to use other cues and whole language advocates believe phonics is not necessary. The Searchlights model was a made up hybrid and has been debunked. Dr Collins, one of the group who put together the Searchlights model, says in the very same enquiry that he ‘would be appalled if [he] saw a seven year old who was just guessing words’. He stated that 'to read well in English at all levels you need two things - you need absolute phonic knowledge, that is your first and foremost certainty, but you also need the ability to problem solve words that are not regular'. Dr Collins emphasised phonics over problem solving and he makes it clear that he views 'guessing words' appalling.
Further to this, revised criteria for assuring high-quality phonic work were published by the Department for Education in 2010, clearly stating that
‘…as pupils move through the early stages of acquiring phonics, they are invited to practise by reading texts which are entirely decodable for them, so that they experience success and learn to rely on phonemic strategies,
‘Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional ‘methods’ or ‘strategies’ for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-phonic clues such as pictures before applying phonic knowledge and skills.
And ‘It is important that texts are of the appropriate level for children to apply and practise the phonic knowledge and skills that they have learnt. Children should not be expected to use strategies such as whole-word recognition and/or cues from context, grammar or pictures.’
These criteria were not fulfilled in what we saw of practice in the Outstanding school in ‘B if for Book’, no matter how much the school enthused about reading for pleasure and no matter how dynamically they delivered phonics in the classroom.
If, on all sides, for over forty years, professionals engaged in researching reading have clearly stated that guessing is not a strategy for reading, it defies belief that more than half a century on, use of the repetitive reader and the teaching of guesswork is still normal practice in any of our schools.
Echoing Debbie Hepplewhite’s descriptions of how many children have learnt to read over the years by ferreting out, deducing or intuiting the alphabetic code, Connie Rosen observes from her own research that some children learn to read 'painlessly without noticing it in the space of a few months' and these children 'derive for themselves a basic set of rules about sound/symbol correspondence and also a knowledge of the grouping of sounds and the grouping of symbols'. She goes on to acknowledge that there is a sound/symbol correspondence in English but she says that [in 1973] it was 'difficult to teach a six year old the rules of the relationship between our sound system and visual system. He can be made aware of some of them and on the basis of this understanding he has to create understandings of his own about the text. Considering the difficulty of the operation it is scarcely surprising that some children have considerable difficulty in learning it.'
Connie Rosen felt at that time that ‘we know relatively little about how readers make sense of what they read’, We have an additional 43 years of research to shed light on the issue. Understanding has moved forwards. Of course, Connie Rosen was absolutely right. We didn’t have the knowledge, skills or systems in place to teach sound/symbol correspondences systematically and effectively at that time and so it was, perhaps, impossible to embrace the teaching of phonics even though, as she says, ‘it is true that recent research studies have indicated that there should be more attention to phonic work in the early years’, even in 1973. Perhaps alternative approaches have to be devised or relied upon where there is insufficient understanding of how to teach phonics thoroughly, and Connie Rosen describes a few very inventive initiatives that she felt were an improvement on the dominant use of repetitive reading schemes in the many schools she visited.
Today, however, the scope and detail of modern SSP programmes directly answer Connie Rosen’s concerns because we now have the system and the procedures in place to teach what was too difficult to attempt in 1973. There is no longer the need to teach guesswork at all. I should hope so after 43 years!
It was heartening to see reading for pleasure central to the school’s work on teaching reading in 'B is for Book'. Of course, learning to decode accurately and fluently is taught in order to read for pleasure, for information, for life. It was good to show that can be achieved easily as some teachers worry about the impact of an intense focus on phonics on time for reading for pleasure. And, again, we can look back in time and see that these concerns are nothing new...
Interestingly, ‘substandard books are the order of the day’, in 1973 Connie Rosen tells us, with ‘a constant demand for them.’ She seems to be referring to repetitive readers in particular (we know decodable readers didn’t exist so it can’t be those) and gives examples from her many school visits: ‘the reading matter presented… for five hours a day for two years was only the impoverished language of the reader’ and, in a different school, a teacher showed her a ‘shelf of picture storybooks in her cupboard which she said she had to give the children secretly as the head-mistress had said that no child was to have a storybook until he or she had finished all the reading schemes.’
Carving out time for reading for pleasure has always caused concern, it seems. Perhaps teachers and schools today are managing it more and better than ever, and certainly it seems so compared to Connie Rosen's observations in the 1970s.
Happily, at home, things have never looked so good for children's fiction. We know, according to Booksellers (Children’s Market Overview, 2015), that by September, 2015 was on course to be the best year on record, ever, with picture books one of the strongest performing categories of all. Dawn Finch said ‘this is golden age of children’s literature’ and that she’d ‘never seen such a steady flow of extraordinary fiction’. John Dougherty said authors were ‘ahead of the curve’ and publishers ‘have taken risks’. All this despite the many distractions vying for our children's attention today.
We know there is more and better children’s fiction for our children to enjoy than there has ever been, and schools are promoting children's books more actively than ever. But it cannot be right, after all this time, after all the years of research, that the number of real readers who read three or four books a week remains relatively small and that we are still using such out-dated practice with our youngest children, new and fresh-faced to school. How is it possible, in 2016, that we are still asking them to read repetitive readers, written without thought for complexity of alphabetic code, without the necessary decoding skills to do so, and teaching them to rely on reckless guessing as a strategy for reading at all?
And this in our very best schools?
I'm Going on a Book Hunt
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to choose a big one.
Crisp white pages.
What a beautiful smell!
Lots of books to choose from.
Lots of shapes and sizes.
So many many stories.
Think I'll try this bear one.
Love LOVE talking.
Love LOVE listening.
Sixteen thousand hours of thought
And nearly nearly five!
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to read this bear one.
What a beautiful smell.
I'm not scared!
Lots of funny pictures
And words from my sight list
Will help me understand it.
Off I go!
I know I know the 'bear' word
And 'on' is really easy.
I'm really really reading.
Don't stop me now.
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to read a bear one.
Crisp white pages.
What a beautiful smell!
Uh-oh! New words!
I've never seen this funny one.
I don't recognise it.
Or the one that's near it.
And not the one below.
T h e y r e m a k i n g m e g o s l o w
I can't go over them.
I can't go under them.
Oh well...
I'll have to guess right through them.
Guessy messy!
Guessy messy!
Guessy messy!
On to the next page.
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to read this bear one.
What a beautiful smell.
Do I look scared?
Uh-oh! Strange words!
I've never seen this odd one.
What a weird shaped one.
It's all a-jumble-mumble.
I don't understand.
I t s m a k i n g m e s l o w
I'm supposed to use the pictures.
Why worry about the words?
I'll still enjoy the story
And I'll make-believe I'm reading.
Makes Mum happy,
One big hug.
Granny thinks I'm reading,
Two big smiles.
Uncle Mickey says
Use lots of different ways...
The picture makes it easy.
Guessing's much more fun.
Muddle Mix!
Muddle mix!
Muddle mix!
On to the next page.
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to read this bear one.
What a beautiful smell.
I'm not scared.
Now I'm going quickly,
I'll use a letter too.
I'm really really reading.
Don't stop me now!
M...
Ah-ha! Mad!
Dad's really really mad.
I see Dad's mad with baby.
Won't carry baby.
Think he's saying you carry baby.
Think it's something in his nappy.
Stench stonch?
Stench stonch?
Stench stonch?
On to the next page.
I'm going on a book hunt.
I'm going to read a bear one.
Crisp white pages.
What a beautiful smell!
Lots of funny pictures
And words from my sight list
Should help me understand it.
Off I go!
Uh oh! Word-mud.
I'm not scared!
But I am feeling rather lost now...
I don't feel happy now...
(I'm not really reading-brave...)
I'm stopping stopping reading.
I'm sticking in word-mud.
I think that I should know them.
Do I use them every day?
T h e y r e m a k i n g m e g o s l o w
The squiggles don't make sense.
They wriggle on the page.
The weird words are whirling.
It's a squiggly wiggly word-storm.
Wiggle woooo!
Wiggle woooo!
Wiggle woooo!
Turn the page! Turn the page! Turn the page!
Uh oh! More horrid squiggles.
I think they're getting harder.
They're really getting longer.
And where are all the pictures?
Don't know what to do.
Stuck in a word-bog.
I'm feeling all alone.
I can't go over it.
I can't go under it.
I just can't guess right through it
No matter how I try.
I'm trying not to cry.
Tumble tip!
Tumble tip!
Tumble tip!
Quick! Turn the page! Turn the page! Turn the page!
I really don't like this.
I don't know what to do.
I'm really really sad.
My book hunt isn’t fun.
I wish I had my teacher
To tell me what the words say.
Mum is far too busy
And Granny's gone away.
I'm nearly at the end
And there's nobody to help me
So I'll guess the last few words
Even though it hurts my head.
...One silly went nice?
...Two big funny ends??
...Three big giggly yes???
But in the picture IT'S A BEAR !?!?!?!?!
It's all a great big muddle.
I just don't get the story.
What's it all about?
I want to shout and shout and shout!
I w a n t i t t o m a k e s e n s e.
Too hard! Too hard! Too hard!
Too slow! Too slow! Too slow!
Close the book! Close the book! Close the book!
Back to my Skylanders! Go go! Go go! Go go!
Back to my Nerf Gun! Shoot shoot! Shoot shoot! Shoot shoot!
Back to my Minecraft! Build build! Build build! Build build!
Back to my Electric Scooter! Zoom zoom! Zoom zoom! Zoom zoom!
Back to my Lego! Build build! Build build! Build build!
Back to my Bop It Tetris! Bop pop! Bop pop! Bop pop!
Switch on the TV. Hold the remote. Snuggle in the cushions.
WHY WOULD I EVER GO ON A BOOK HUNT AGAIN ?????????
You can read more about Jacqui's experiences in hearing children to read whereby they are guessing their way inaccurately through their books - so it is no wonder that Jacqui is distressed when she sees the kind of practice we see in the 'B is for Book' documentary. See here:
