We warmly welcome the 'Independent Review of the teaching of early reading', conducted by Jim Rose and his team. In particular, we agree that the following are of fundamental importance: the provision of high quality phonic work for young children learning to read from the very beginning of their schooling; the need for thorough and intensive training for those charged with teaching phonics; and the crucial role headteachers and senior staff have in taking the lead and monitoring such work and emphasised in the report are all recognised as being key elements in the implementation of a successful phonics programme.
Below, we list a number of the central issues raised in the report, all of which are already included in the Sounds-Write training for practitioners working in schools and other settings.
What does Rose recommend?
Rose begins by stating categorically that:
• '[p]honic work for reading and writing should be taught systematically' (p.1)
• the approach, which is generally understood as 'synthetic phonics, offers the vast majority of young beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers' (p.1).
At what age should phonic work be introduced?
If it was left to us, like many settings and schools in the rest of Europe, we would advocate beginning the teaching of reading and writing at the age of about five. This is because there are so many other valuable and worthwhile activities with which to engage younger children and also to allow those children to catch up with their language development who, while falling within the normal range of development, are simply not ready to start learning to read and write during their reception year.
However, in our experience, many children come into school with the clear expectation that they are going to learn to read and write straight away and these children need to be provided with the tools to achieve this. Also, we want to avoid exposing such children to damaging 'Look and Say/Whole Language' or part word approaches by default – because without an accurate phonic orientation, they will naturally drift towards a long-term failing strategy of memorising whole or part words. We have plenty of evidence to support the view that, if introduced carefully, through purposeful and engaging sensory motor play, Sounds-Write provides the right kind of focus for pupils' continuing successfully to develop literacy skills throughout their schooling.
In terms of Every Child Matters and the five outcomes of being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, and achieving economic well-being, we regard the teaching of literacy through a high quality phonics programme as 'a fundamental part of that agenda and crucial in “narrowing the gap in outcomes between those who do well and those who do not” ' (p.14).
There is also much evidence that for young children coming from language- impoverished environments and/or from homes with low socio-economic status, an early start is vital in our 'efforts to overcome persistent underperformance' (p.31). In fact, our data indicates that, when taught Sounds-Write from the start, children from low socio-economic catchments perform just as well as children from other economic categories.
Of course, we are in complete agreement with Rose in saying that the time to introduce phonic work 'should be a matter of principled, professional judgement based on careful observation and robust assessment' (p.30). Nevertheless, whenever it is decided to start children, we completely concur with Rose that phonics should be the method on which to begin. The report is unequivocal in averring that early phonic work is entirely consistent with 'giving young children access to the full range of learning and development opportunities in the Foundation stage' (p.31).
Rose begins the discussion by making clear that the 'great majority' of pupils ought to 'make a good start on systematic phonic work by the age of five' and that '[i]ndeed, for some, an earlier start may be possible and desirable' (p.3). This is because, as Sounds-Write has always argued, written language, whether in the form of single letters or combinations of letters, represents spoken language (p.18). It follows that pupils must be taught the skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation required to enable them to learn to read, write and spell effectively. Rose recommends that these essential skills, the conceptual understanding of the way in which the alphabet code works and code knowledge need to be taught in a 'well defined and systematic sequence' (p.18).
The alphabetic principle can most successfully be taught by engaging young learners with a vigorous, interactive, enjoyable programme of phonic work that is situated within a language rich curriculum. Such a programme should have pace, be multi-sensory and utilise an array of stimulating resources (p.16).
On training
As should be obvious to all practitioners and those responsible for training them, the ability to engage and motivate young children depends very much upon 'well trained adults who are skilled in observing and assessing children's learning…' (p.5). Furthermore, the 'quality of phonic work relies on the expertise, understanding and commitment of those who teach it' (p.9) and, again, a point made by the report many times, 'high quality phonic work is also one of the most effective ways to prevent reading difficulties …' in the first place (p.2).
Unsurprisingly then, 'the availability and quality of training are crucially important in overcoming these obstacles and establishing phonic work so that it is taught consistently and well in all settings and all schools. The principles underpinning high quality phonic work and how children learn to read must be fully understood by and embedded in the training of all those who teach beginning readers.' (p.2)
Unfortunately, this knowledge and understanding of how to teach phonics has, as the report points out, hitherto not been consistently provided within UK-based initial teacher training programmes. Our Sounds-Write training, however, does provide the comprehensive preparation needed by practitioners who are responsible for teaching a high quality phonics programme.
Three questions on best practice (p.15)
Is it replicable across the broad range of settings and schools?
The fact that Sounds-Write is now being used by nearly two thousand five hundred practitioners working in a range of schools and other educational settings from the Foundations stage all the way through to adult education institutions speaks for itself.
Can it be resourced and sustained at reasonable cost?
In Kent, Sounds-Write have trained a team of educational psychologists and support team staff to deliver the programme to staff working within the authority at a cost affordable to all educational settings. The same is now true of Bolton and Bedford local education authorities. For authorities without their own in-house Sounds-Write trainers, schools tell us in the questionnaires we ask our course participants to fill in at the end of every course that the cost of our courses is still very easily affordable. Not only do we teach the necessary underlying theory and practical teaching knowledge on our week-long training course, but we also provide ALL the resources needed to teach the programme.
What knowledge, skills and understanding are needed by practitioners, teachers and others responsible for securing it?
The Sounds-Write programme offers the class-room and special needs teacher an instructional method that works because, as Rose recommends, it is a structured, cumulative, sequential, explicit and code-oriented instructional programme for teaching all children to read and spell. In other words, it offers all practitioners, as Rose would have it, 'structure, simplicity and some flexibility' (p.15).
Planning and assessment
Rose takes the key elements of planning and assessment very seriously. Assessment needs to be 'targeted precisely [and] to provide relevant information' (p.22). For pupils who have already fallen behind, Sounds-Write equips practitioners, through the medium of some short, diagnostic criterion-referenced tests, to find out those pupils' existing strengths and weaknesses to ensure their immediate, efficient placement within the programme. In this regard, our means of assessment are 'simple, rigorous and purposeful' (p.18), as Rose demands. For the purposes of whole class teaching, Sounds-Write provides such high quality training that practitioners are able to use and apply dynamic assessment techniques during the course of their everyday teaching.
The 'Searchlights' Model
As Sounds-Write has always argued and the Rose Report now makes absolutely clear '…phonic work is a body of knowledge, skills and understanding that quite simply has to be taught and learned' (p.35). The report goes on to say that the 'searchlights' model 'does not best reflect how a beginning reader progresses to become a skilled reader' (p.36) and the point it makes to support this contention, which is well supported by the research, is that good readers use contextual strategies to support and confirm meaning, NOT to gain access to it in the first place.
On comprehension
The report is particularly to be welcomed for its clarification of the way in which reading, decoding and language comprehension processes work:
'In this context, word recognition is the process of using phonics to recognise
[i.e. read] words. Language comprehension is the process by which word
information, sentences and discourse are interpreted.' (p.38)
In other words, if the words read lie within the reader's vocabulary, they will normally understand what they are reading. However, for pupils to develop good comprehension skills, they need good teaching and exposure to a wide range of rich literary texts, all of which is 'wholly compatible with and dependent upon introducing a systematic programme of high quality phonic work…' (p.39).
Much later in the report (p.76), Rose makes the much disputed though rather obvious point that if you are not able to read the words which comprise the text, it is always going to be impossible to comprehend them!
Cost effectiveness
On this question, Rose states what is fairly obvious to all: 'that the most cost-effective strategy is to do as much as possible to prevent reading difficulties in the first place'. It goes on to reiterate that '[a]n early, systematic, high quality phonic programme within Wave 1 (quality first provision) almost certainly offers the best and most cost-effective way to achieve this' (p.42). Ideally, this kind of provision involves a 'blend of whole-class, group and individual work' (p.43), with beginning readers 'learning collectively from clear explanations, focused discussion, skilfully framed questions and planned activities provided by adults who teach them' (p.43). Moreover, in regard to pupils who have already fallen behind, Rose is unequivocal: '… it is nothing short of foolhardy to make enormous investments in remedial instruction and then return children to classroom instruction that will not serve to maintain the gains they made in the remedial program.' (quotation in Rose, footnote p.46 – Preventing reading difficulties in young children: report of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, (eds.), Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., Griffin, P., National Academy of Sciences, 1998)
Leadership in schools
As one might expect, Rose states explicitly that there is no doubt that improvements in teaching and learning are brought about most successfully when headteachers and senior staff in schools and other settings accept responsibility for the implementation and monitoring of new programmes. If a high quality phonics programme is to be successfully implemented, at least one member of the school management team needs to acquaint themselves thoroughly with how it works and to ensure and support the proper training of all members of staff responsible for its implementation, making sure that fidelity to the programme is maintained and that there is consistency across the school or setting.
How children learn
Finally, Rose acknowledges that if practitioners are to teach effectively, they also need to have a good understanding of how children learn. Sounds-Write is a mediated learning approach. What does this mean? It means that, in the area of literacy skills development, we believe that children are 'apprentices', whose learning is directed by, as well dependent on, the skills, expertise and knowledge of their teachers. It is teachers' accurate understanding of the learning processes, combined with their knowledge of how to intervene appropriately when pupils make errors that determines how effectively learning takes place. In addition, we regard the part played by intermediaries (practitioners) in the learning process as being of vital importance in structuring learning activities to incorporate the acquisition of all elements of conceptual and factual knowledge, as well as the skills needed to manipulate these two kinds of understanding effectively. In the Sounds-Write training manual, which is given to all course participants and in the training itself, we have much more to say about how children learn best.
Item Filed: 29/03/2006