1. Phonics in the secondary classroom: does it have a place? Dr Gee Macrory 15 March 2016

2. Outline of talk 1. Policy context 2. Phonology and literacy: what is the relationship? 3. How does this help me in a secondary school?

3. 1. Policy context International comparisons: - PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment): reading of 15 year olds down from 7 th in 2000 to 17 th in 2006, 23 rd in 2009 and 25 th in 2012 - PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study): literacy among 10 year olds,– England down from 3 rd out of 36 in 2001 to 15 th out of 40 in 2006 and then 11 th out of 45

4. What is the UK government saying? White Paper, The Importance of Teaching: ‘learning to read is the first and most important activity that a child undertakes at school’ (2010:43) Michael Wilshaw (Jan 2012) ‘improving standards of literacy must be a priority for all our schools’ Aspects of literacy in all 5 key judgements made in a school inspection(Ofsted, 2011, 2014)

5. Expectations ? Recent guidance (Ofsted 2014: 18-19) suggests that ‘there may be occasions when inspectors need to hear lower-attaining pupils read in Years 7 and 8 in secondary schools. This is to find out how effectively the school is teaching reading to its weakest readers and to assess whether the pupils are equipped with the phonic strategies needed to tackle unfamiliar words’.

6. Some background National Curriculum 1988 National Literacy Strategy 1998 – ‘searchlights’ model of reading (more anon) House of Commons report 2005: Teaching children to read Clackmannanshire study 2005 Rose Review: Independent review of the teaching of early reading, March 2006

7. Rose review Remit Recommendations Simple view of reading – word recognition and reading comprehension

8. Remit Aspect 1: best practice in teaching of early reading and synthetic phonics Aspect 2: relationship of this to birth to 5 framework Aspect 3: provision for children with literacy difficulties Aspect 4: leadership and management Aspect 5: value for money

9. Recommendations Aspect 1 Early Years Foundation Stage and PNS Framework should provide guidance on speaking and listening skills High quality systematic phonic work should be taught discretely – prime approach in learning to decode (read) and encode (spell) Broad and rich language curriculum Quality first teaching

10. Reconsideration of 1998 searchlights model Phonics Grammatical knowledge Word recognition and graphic knowledge Knowledge of context

11. Simple view of reading Word recognition Reading comprehension

12. Recommendations of best practice Systematic synthetic phonics Daily discrete sessions Incremental approach Multisensory work Fidelity to the programme Assessment and use of data

13. Key features of high quality phonic work – we should teach beginner readers Grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) in a clearly defined incremental way To apply the important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes in order, all through a word to read it To segment words into constituent phonemes to spell That blending and segmenting are reversible processes Useful guidance: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0002/3523/Sa mple_section_secondary_phonics_guide.pdf http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0002/3523/Sa mple_section_secondary_phonics_guide.pdf

14. 2. Phonology and literacy: what is the relationship? Phonology - Stress and intonation - Phonemes Relationship between the spoken and the written language = complex

15. Read this! 5 + 5 = 10

16. Cinq et cinq font dix Funf und funf machen zehn

17. Chinese: morphemic Morphemic writing system Based on meaning Advantages and disadvantages

18. Three kinds of writing system Morphemic (Chinese, cf. above) Syllabic Alphabetic

19. Syllabic Eg Japanese CV structure of syllables: consonant – vowel One symbol per syllable

20. Alphabetic writing system Based on phonemes Phonemes: smallest meaningful units of sound in a language How many alphabets? Eg Greek, Roman, Cyrillic…. Phonics: relationship between phonemes and graphemes Phoneme-grapheme correspondences

21. Over to you How many phonemes in English ? How many consonant phonemes? How many vowel phonemes?

22. And the answer is….. 44 phonemes 24 consonants and 20 vowels 3 kinds of vowels: short, long, dipthong

23. And the relationship with the alphabet? How many letters? What is a grapheme?

24. How necessary is phonic knowledge? This is a kitten. He is very fluffy.

25. World knowledge Text type Text cohesion Sentence structure Word level Phoneme- grapheme correspondences (phonics)

26. So how good are we? How many phonemes are there in (and what are they): - Fox - Thick - Day - Forward - Glasses - Nine - Looked - Straw

27. f o k s (4) th i ck (3) d ay (2) f or w ar d (5) g l a ss e s (6) n i ne (3) l oo k ed (4) s t r aw (4)

28. The alphabetic principle: advantages and challenges Key advantage = economical Some challenges: - Sounds in context - Words in context - Some particularities of English

29. Sounds in context Example: Phoneme /t/ Different realisations: tap stop cat

30. Words in context What’s a horsisan? The glass – the empty glass To present – a present

31. Particularities of English Stress timing – police – cp the police / la police (Fr) Stress vs syllable timing

32. The eyes have it…learning to read by eye and by ear

33. Morphophonemic nature of English writing system: - Grammar preserved eg cats/dogs; liked/nagged - Morphology/meaning preserved eg critic/criticise; photograph/photography/photographic

34. Oops! …the children learned a new sound and how to form the letter ‘s’, before reading words with the sound /s/ (is, sat), using their previous letter- sound knowledge and blending skills. Then they made up a sentence, orally, with the word ‘is’, before segmenting ‘sit’ into separate phonemes. (Rose Review, p64) The word ‘is’ is of course /iz/…………….!

35. And more… - Homophones eg Be/bee So/sow In/inn By/bye

36. 3. How does this help me in a secondary school? Understanding and responding to error Language analysis as part of planning Not just phonics, even at word level - morphology and etymology

37. Task – in pairs, work out what these mean and give examples Belli Cent Derm Fract Loc Mal http://www.prefixsuffi x.com/rootchart.php Omni Ped Phon Quad Spec Tele

38. sub–: subdivide, subheading, submarine, submerge inter–: interact, intercity, international, interrelated super–: supermarket, superman, superstar anti–: antiseptic, anti-clockwise, antisocial auto–: autobiography, autograph Where are these from?

39. Some activities http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110809091832/http ://teachingandlearningresources.org.uk/collection/35326 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110809091832/http ://teachingandlearningresources.org.uk/collection/35326 Eg sort into families electricelectricityelectrical assistassistantassistance proveapprovaldisapprove

40. And finally…a place for phonics? A part of literacy A planning and teaching tool, especially for struggling and beginner readers Other strategies may be needed Importance of morphology and etymology

41. The last word… Who emphasised the importance of this: ‘a broad and rich language curriculum’…..? Not just for the early years, but for all years!