I’ll come clean with you, I’m nervous because my son is taking his phonic screen check this week. He’s in Year Two. He failed it last year and it is likely that he will fail it again. Systematic synthetic phonics has been a slow burn for my child, he is on School Action Plus for… I’m not sure as I’ve not had the report from the educational physiologist yet… But what I do know is that if given the right support, learning to read will happen for my son. I just think that he needs a variety of methods to help him read including synthetic phonics, decoding words in context and sight reading.
The flip slide of this is that I have a daughter who began reading with the Jolly Phonics system back in 2008 and now I find it hard to pry a book out of her hand each night! I know the latest pedagogic thinking on learning to read works for most children, I just think that we should be able to trust our educators to adapt their teaching to the individual child’s learning style.
The other issue is this. Although, many children can read and decode words fluently at the end of Key Stage Two, many do not understand what they are reading. Comprehension is a problem at this stage because some children are unable to put the words they are decoding into context. I listen to children read at a school I volunteer at and I hear some wonderful reading. However, when I stop the children and ask them to explain what is happening in the story the answers are often sketchy or missing important information. So, how do we conquer this? Perhaps we need to work on helping our children to have a love of reading, making sure that the texts in school are current and exciting, inviting authors into schools for readings and workshops and most importantly encouraging families to visit libraries, get out books and read together. Five minutes a day at bedtime can make all the difference.
As for my son, I know he can read ‘zee’ and ‘nerg’ but more importantly, I know my son loves books and with that foundation he will get there, he’s just going to take his own sweet time.
Follow me @MichelleGrant
No comments:
Post a Comment