Recommended links for student teachers and NQTs X

It is still unusual for nearly all of a primary school's children to regularly finish year 6 able to decode and encode at a level that allows them to deal confidently with the reading and spelling demands of the secondary curriculum. However, some schools (examples below) are managing to rectify this deplorable and needless state of affairs...

''It is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education'' (Ofsted School Inspection Handbook 2019)

Elmhurst primary school is in Newham, east London, an area of high deprivation. Synthetic phonics (Read Write Inc) is used to teach children to read at the school. The headteacher, Shahed Ahmed, says, “More than 90 per cent of our pupils speak English as an additional language and we have 20 per cent mobility. The school ''has 1,000 pupils and not one of them leaves unable to read'' (TES. Lightfoot. 12/08/11) Furthermore, ''No child has been identified as having dyslexia since we adopted the [synthetic phonics] programme in 2004'' http://goo.gl/g4rJzQ

Curwen primary school is also in Newham, east London. A teacher at the school says, ''Ten years ago 40% of our children left us not able to read properly. Now all of them leave us reading well...There are more EAL and economically deprived children in the school than there were 10 years ago. So, how come reading results are better?..The difference is purely down to the change in teaching methodology. We teach reading solely by using synthetic phonics [Read Write Inc]. It works''.

Another primary school which, through teaching the linguistic phonics programme Sounds-Write ''with fidelity'', has superb reading and spelling results, is St Thomas Aquinas in Milton Keynes.
https://theliteracyblog.com/2016/03/23/st-thomas-aquinass-remarkable-results/

St George's is a small primary school in Battersea, London. Half of its pupils have English as an additional language and over half are eligible for free school meals (a measure of deprivation). The school uses Sounds-Write to teach reading and spelling. All its Y1 children reached the required standard in the phonics decoding check 6 years in a row and all the children in Y1 and Y2 (2018) can spell at chronological age or better; good evidence that high quality linguistic phonics teaching in the early years actively prevents 'phonemic deafness' or 'dyslexia' developing.
https://theliteracyblog.com/2018/08/08/a-class-act-st-georges-church-of-england-primary-school/

Christchurch primary school is in Chelsea, London. It is graded Outstanding by Ofsted and its reading and writing progress scores are well above average. For the last 10 years it has been using a linguistic phonics programme, the Sound Reading System http://soundreadingsystem.co.uk/
YouTube clip: whole-class use of SRS at Christchurch PS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eCRnDr1n0U

The Simple View of Reading (SVoR): Reading ability is based on two major, essential, interacting but different components: phonics decoding ability x language comprehension. Whilst both components are essential, neither is sufficient on its own.

SVoR: Why it is Essential to Teach High Quality Phonics in the Early Years:

Many educationalists believe that ''most students will learn to read regardless of whichever approach is employed'' (Elliott 2020) Certainly, there has always been a small percentage of children who learn how to decode fluently despite receiving very little in the way of phonics teaching. It's also true that most children who receive the low quality phonics teaching that is still common in primary schools, do manage to memorise the most common words by sight and devise a range of partial guessing strategies to read the longer, trickier words in the leveled reading scheme or 'real' books. Sadly, a significant percentage of these seemingly successful readers, will have had a more difficult time learning to read than is necessary and will remain weak spellers. In addition, when they get to secondary school, many will struggle to fluently decode the many novel and complex words found in secondary level literature (school English books contain around 88,500 different words (D.McGuinness ERI p216), and texts for other subjects. The insidious effects of flawed word reading approaches create a regular cohort of 'dyslexics', generate high numbers of students who dislike reading and writing and cause large numbers of teenagers to stall in their studies at the secondary stage.

Delaying or providing poor quality phonics decoding instruction in the early years, thereby compelling children to devise their own word reading strategies, proved, perhaps surprisingly, to be most detrimental to those children who had the richest vocabulary, despite them having equivalent PA abilities to those who managed to discover for themselves how to decode efficiently using phonics.
Decoding strategies as predictors of reading skill:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11881-997-0023-9
''Children who stayed with the most inefficient [decoding] strategies had significantly higher vocabulary scores and equivalent phonemic processing ability when compared to readers with more efficient decoding strategies.''

X Is phonics a ‘method’ for teaching reading?
https://howtoteachreading.org.uk/is-phonics-a-method-for-teaching-reading/

''Multi-syllable problems are decoding problems! The point that I have to make all the time is that if students can't read multi syllable words well, we aren't finished with decoding instruction'' (Sara Peden. Twitter)

https://heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/reading-failure-what-reading-failure/
Reading failure? What reading failure?

The importance of early phonics improvements for predicting later reading comprehension
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3559

Fluent and accurate word decoding aids reading comprehension by reducing cognitive load:

Cognitive load theory: Research that teachers really need to understand
https://www.cese.nsw.gov.au//images/stories/PDF/cognitive-load-theory-VR_AA3.pdf

http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/CogSci.pdf
Prof. Willingham: Decoding, knowledge and reading comprehension.

https://theliteracyblog.com/2014/05/28/why-cant-children-read-dickens/
Why can’t children read… Dickens?

SVoR: Language / Vocabulary / Reading Comprehension:

The end-of-KS2 Reading comprehension test is not curriculum-based and, unlike the Y1 phonics decoding check, ''the KS2 assessments are designed to produce a normal distribution of abilities and not all children are statistically able to ‘pass’' (David Didau)

To increase the probability of performing well in the Reading test, pupils require an extensive, knowledge-rich (English) vocabulary, drawn from a wide variety of different subjects, especially the humanities and sciences (Christine Counsell). Schools in areas of deprivation, especially those with a high pupil turnover (these schools often have Y6 cohorts that are mostly different children to the original Y1 cohort), can find filling the knowledge-rich vocabulary gap an enormous challenge. Schools that draw the majority of their pupils from stable, middle-class areas, find it much easier to achieve high scores in the Reading test.

''But as cognitive scientists have discovered, the key factor in comprehension isn’t skill; it’s subject-specific knowledge and vocabulary'' (Natalie Wexler)

Teacher Tarjinder Gill closely examined the KS2 Reading test's construction. She concluded that, ''By ignoring the role knowledge plays in comprehension and focusing so heavily on measuring reading comprehension skills it does not provide valuable or useful information about the targets or reading''
http://www.teach-well.com/is-the-reading-sat-testing-reading/

''(O)nly curriculum-based [reading] tests can be fair and educationally productive'' (Hirsch 2006 p108)

https://prospect.org/special-report/thing-reading-test/
Hirsch: There's No Such Thing as a Reading Test

''The average socioeconomic status (SES) of the student body of the school...strongly predicts the average reading achievement of the school's students'' (Dr. Hollis Scarborough. underline in original)

''Vocabulary size is the outward and visible sign of an inward acquisition of knowledge. It is also a reliable correlate to social class.'' (Christine Counsell)

In the early grades, U.S. schools value reading-comprehension skills over knowledge. The results are devastating, especially for poor kids.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-radical-case-for-teaching-kids-stuff/592765

X Reading comprehension: a new approach
https://medium.com/solomonkingsnorth/reading-comprehension-a-new-approach-570d39ffac79
“A child’s inference cannot exceed their ‘mental models’, background knowledge or vocabulary. These are the things that poor comprehenders lack and no amount of comprehension-strategy practice can fill this gap.”

''It appears that literacy, as a skill, is not constant, but is relative to subject matter domain, and it depends upon the extent of the reader’s background knowledge in that subject'' https://www.academia.edu/22148312/The_New_Literacy_caveat_emptor

''All reading comprehension tests are really “knowledge tests in disguise.” (Prof. Willingham)

''(R)eform standardised reading tests so that they are based on a specific body of knowledge taught in the preceding years rather than knowledge selected at random'' (Greg Ashman. Quillette 08/08/19)
 -see 'Louisiana's remarkable reading test'
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/louisianas-remarkable-reading-test

Reading and Mental Health / Crime:

The ability to read and write well is a major key to a happy and successful passage through life in our society. Professor MacDonald wrote, ''My own research on the psychology of adult illiteracy has amply demonstrated that the ability to read is probably the most significant factor (out of many) in determining a person's sense of autonomy and self-worth''. Intellectual independence also relies on good reading skills. ''Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself.'' (Gatto p56)

''The Centre for Social Justice found there are significant literacy and numeracy problems in 50-75% of children who are permanently excluded from school. Many children were found to “display challenging behaviour to hide the fact they cannot read.” (DfE.Evidence paper p1)

''Reading is likely the single most important skill acquired through formal schooling, an essential foundation for educational progress and mastery. In today’s world, a basic level of reading proficiency is no longer sufficient for the demands of the workplace (Vaughn et al., 2003). Reading failure contributes to a host of long-term negative outcomes, including frustration leading to more generalized academic and behavior problems, high rates of suspension, and limited access to employment opportunities in adulthood (Brunner, 1993). Youth with pronounced reading difficulties are vulnerable to marginalization in their schools and communities and lifelong risk of involvement in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.''
(Leone, Krezmien, Mason, & Meisel, 2005 p95)

''Struggling readers are more likely to report feeling sad, lonely, angry, anxious and depressed.2 Their poor reading skills make it hard for them to keep up in other subject areas. They’re more likely to have behavior problems, to drop out of school and to end up in the criminal justice system''
(APM Reports. What the Words Say)

Can Reading Problems Affect Mental Health?
https://thinkingreadingwritings.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/can-reading-problems-affect-mental-health/

''Reading failure correlates with aggressive, anti-social behaviour more strongly than any social or economic indicator''
(Turner/ Burkard p13)

https://www.corelearn.com/trauma-and-reading/
Trauma and Reading: “...the single most powerful predictor of their ability to overcome the trauma and survive their circumstances is the ability to read.”

The Reading Wars:

You do not have to delve far into the world of educational academia to discover the 'Reading Wars'. This is a very long running and acrimonious debate between those who say that high quality phonics is the most efficient and effective way to teach decoding and spelling, according to all the available scientific evidence, and those who insist that reading words in context using a range of strategies along with memorised sight words, a so-called 'balanced approach', works well. The controversy extends into the progressive education community. Many of its members hold the more extreme belief that nearly all children, given an environment full of books with helpful, literate adults on hand, can teach themselves how to read, just as they learnt to walk and talk.

''The essential constructivist principle is that teachers should teach nothing directly, but rather function as coaches while their students basically teach themselves''. American Professor Stephen Krashen, ''a self-described 'staunch defender'' of whole-language, believes that, "(A)ny child exposed to comprehensible print will learn to read, barring severe neurological or emotional problems...Kids learn to read by reading'' (Charlotte Allen)

Another of the major exponents of whole language, the late Margaret Meek, famously said that children learn to read, "when there is something they want to read and an adult who takes time and trouble to help them". Whole language enthusiasts suggest that structured teaching to develop reading skills is not only unnecessary, it may be positively harmful'' (Palmer. TES. 10/11/95)  Australian children's book author Mem Fox also believes that, ''all children will learn to read if they are exposed to enough books, words, stories..''

Fact and fiction with Mem Fox
https://www.spelfabet.com.au/2018/11/fact-and-fiction-with-mem-fox/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2017.1346660
The home literacy environment: ''Storybook exposure was not a significant predictor of children’s outcomes. In contrast, direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of reading / spelling skills."

For an idea of the difficulty involved in learning to read using an opaque alphabet code, look at this re-coded, first line of a well-known nursery rhyme and work out what it says: ytoxto hruxsz ub ldyyuos xtmo (answer at the base of this page): ''This example provides the adult reader with some idea of the child's first experience with print. If you stared at this passage for years, you wouldn't have the slightest idea how to decode it. Why then should we expect a child to decipher the English alphabet code, one of the most complex ever designed, without direct instruction?'' (D.McGuinness WCCR p17)

Multi-Sensory Teaching in Decoding and Spelling Lessons:

Advice, commonly given, that the way to teach word decoding and spelling should depend on a child's particular learning or thinking style, is incorrect. Although this advice sounds, on the face of it, sensible and reasonable, it does pupils no favours. ''Excluding students identified as “visual/kinesthetic” learners from effective phonics instruction is a bad instructional practice—bad because it is not only not research based, it is actually contradicted by research''
(Stanovich p30 http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/Stanovich_Color.pdf)

''Be careful with interpreting the term “multi-sensory” – it doesn’t mean shaving cream and sand.” (Dr. Jan Wasowicz)

For true multi-sensory teaching, lessons should provide multiple tasks that reinforce all possible sensory and motor systems in tandem: listening (phoneme analysis), looking (discriminate letter shapes/learn spelling patterns, visual tracking), writing (kinesthetic movement), and speaking (speech-motor system, auditory feedback) to anchor the spelling code in memory as quickly as possible.

Diane McGuinness explains multi-sensory teaching:  
''The cognitive systems of the brain rely on cross-modal processing to form what are known as "routines" or "subroutines" -- which are carried out in the dendrites in "neural circuits." In a complex act, various subroutines/circuits are linked up in the brain (via neural pathways), because each one of them occurs in a different region. Thus, if you teach phonemes linked to letters, and reinforce this via writing, you have connected up the auditory cortex language areas of the medial left hemisphere, (phonemic analysis and synthesis already in place because of language), with something NEW - i.e. visual symbols (not ordinarily part of language processing) which engage the posterior occipital regions of the brain responsible for visual pattern analysis, and then link both to a kinesthetic response by writing what you hear and see, which engages the fine motor processing systems governed by the motor cortex (usually left hemisphere superior motor gyrus). When you link all three as you process text (or generate text via writing), these three systems of the brain "cooperate" and reinforce one another, and this doubles the speed of learning. You have three different parts of the brain (plus their subsidiary regions) acting in tandem''

Beginning Reading Instruction Around Europe:

On the best age to start teaching children to decode and spell English, in school, using high quality phonics, the 2006 Rose review gave the following advice: ''(F)or most children, it is highly worthwhile and appropriate to begin a systematic programme of phonic work by the age of five, if not before for some children'' (Rose review 2006. para89)  Ofsted's new Schools Inspection Handbook indicates that inspectors will expect to see that, ''(R)eading, including the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics, is taught from the beginning of Reception'' (Note that Letters and Sounds Phase 1 is not synthetic phonics teaching). An Ofsted spokesperson added ''We do not expect to see phonic lessons in pre-reception settings''

''When living in a print-saturated environment, many children attempt to read at a very early age. Letting them drift along using their invented strategies, without intervention, may harm them for life'' (D.McGuinness WCCR p153)

As evidence of the benefits of waiting until children are aged seven to start direct teaching of reading, the Early Years lobbyists can be relied on to flag up Finland, where all children become accurate word decoders within weeks of starting formal school - aged seven. What they don't tell you is that Finland has a very transparent alphabet code and many Finnish parents teach their children to read pre-school as it's so easy to do.

''One-third of Finnish children can already read simple text when they begin school''
(https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2018/10/34-1-joseph-buckingham.pdf)

''Currently, the most vehement opponents of synthetic phonics are the Early Years lobbyists. Their belief system has it that teaching five-year olds to read is detrimental to their physical and mental well-being. They quote Finland where children do not begin ‘formal teaching’ until much later and learn to read easily to bolster their case...But there is nothing ‘formal’ about synthetic phonics teaching. It is multi-sensory and fun and can be achieved in 30 minutes a day, leaving several hours to be filled by child-initiated play, sand, water, painting, outdoor play, you name it.'' (Shadwell. issue 88. 2006)

''(O)ur alphabetic system is not transparent as it is in Finnish, where there is only one way to spell each sound in the main. Our code needs to be introduced carefully from the simple to the more complex by teachers who understand it themselves. Left until six, our children will already have developed look and stare strategies, along with guessing and be well on the way to making a dog’s dinner of understanding the code.'' (Shadwell. issue 88. 2006)

The Early Years lobbyists consistently fail to mention the evidence from Denmark, possibly because it doesn't suit their agenda. ''Danish shares with English the features of a deep orthography and a complex syllable structure. In Denmark children do not enter primary school until they are 7 years old. Despite this 2-year age advantage, they experience difficulties in acquiring the logographic [sic] and alphabetic foundation processes which are comparable to those observed in English, although less extreme'' (Seymour/Aro/Erskine)

English, Danish, Portuguese and French are, in that order, the European languages with the most opaque alphabet spelling codes. English and Danish also have a complex syllable structure. Greek, Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch are much easier to learn as they have a majority one sound / one spelling correspondence.

''English is just as phonetic as Spanish and Italian, just far less transparent'' (John Walker. Twitter)

http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/05/reading-instruction-across-countries.html
X 2003. Map of Europe showing % of errors in word decoding at the end of first year of formal school by country.
The UK children in the study lived in Scotland. At that time, nearly all children throughout the UK were taught using a range of word reading approaches.
2019 update: England (but not the rest of the UK) introduced synthetic phonics teaching after the 2006 Rose review. After a slow start, all of England's state primary schools now teach a daily, discrete phonics lesson, starting in the first term of Reception year. At the end of year 1, after nearly two years of phonics lessons, all children are examined on their word decoding accuracy using the DfE's phonics screening check (PSC). In 2019, 82%achieved the 'expected standard' score in the PSC. England's phonics checks' results provide a modicum of evidence of a rise in children's alphabet code knowledge and phonics skills since its introduction in 2012, when nearly half (42%) failed to achieve the 'expected standard' score.
Caution: despite the steady rise in the national PSC results (presently stagnated), the code knowledge and phonics skills of many Y1 children remains  insecure because they've received inadequate phonics instruction and lack sufficient practice. In addition, unlike in European countries with transparent spelling codes, much of the advanced English spelling code remains still to be taught at the end of year 1; because of its timing, only 85 of the 176 common GPCs are usable in the check.

Comprehensive information on England's phonics screening check
http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/assessments.htm

Two cultural factors hugely influence the speed and ease of learning to decode and encode an alphabetic writing system fluently and accurately: the degree of transparency of the language's spelling code and the way it is taught.

Children in many European countries learn to decode words accurately in just a few weeks once formal instruction commences because their spoken languages are written using transparent spelling codes. European countries with transparent alphabetic codes teach decoding using phonics, ''Phonics is the only rational method with a transparent orthography'' (Uta Frith. NYTimes) , and children are not taught letter names pre-school, or as part of reading instruction, or asked to memorise any words by sight. The combination of a transparent alphabetic code and phonics as the sole decoding method, means that, ''(P)oor readers (children who can't decode) are rare to nonexistent in many European countries'' (D.McGuinness GRB p240)

''In the initial teaching of reading in languages with highly consistent orthographies (e.g.,Spanish and especially Finnish), phonics is used without comment or dispute as the obvious way to give children who are not yet reading the most effective method of ‘word attack’, identifying unfamiliar printed words'' (Torgerson et al 2018)

X A Brief Analysis of The English Alphabet Code by Prof. McGuinness:
http://www.phonicsinternational.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=543&sid=e9cdbf1c76a2a43328f837bacb3aee88
''Think how bad the English people would be at mathematics, if the written code had multiple alternative symbols for the same number, and each symbol could represent more than one quantity''

''In countries with a straightforward alphabet writing system, where each sound is represented by only one symbol, learning to 'crack the code' takes about twelve weeks for all children'' (D.McGuinness GRB p9)

http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2995
X Prof. McGuinness responds to Usha Goswami's TES article 'The Language Barrier':
McGuinness points out that, ''Language is a biological imperative. Reading is not''.
 
It is important to differentiate between reading and spelling problems which are due to a range of severe perceptual and cognitive deficits (less than 5% of children in all countries), and the extremely common problem (20->30+% of children in English-speaking countries) of slow and inaccurate single word decoding and spelling. Evidence from European countries with transparent alphabetic codes and from England's schools that teach decoding  using a high quality phonics programme with fidelity, strongly indicates that the latter problem occurs almost entirely as a result of inadequate phonics instruction and not because large numbers of English-speaking children have inherited a neurodevelopmental defect 'dyslexia'.
All written languages (spelling codes) are human inventions and have to be taught. Some spelling codes, such as Finnish and Georgian, are really quick and easy to teach as they are very transparent. English has one of the most complex (opaque) spelling codes in the world and it requires around three years of expert teaching, using a high quality phonics programme, if it is to be learnt successfully by all but a tiny percentage of pupils.

''(C)hildren with general language delays, weak auditory or verbal short-term memory, or other perceptual and cognitive deficits could have problems learning to read and spell.  But these are language and memory problems, not ''reading disorder'' problems. These children are few and far between, constituting less than 5% of the population'' (underline added. D.McGuinness)

Sounds-Write's longitudinal study of 1607 pupils indicates that virtually all mainstream pupils can be taught to decode and spell by the end of primary, if they have teachers who use a high quality phonics programme with fidelity - see p17 only 2.6% were still severely struggling with decoding at end of KS1. 
https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/sites/soundswrite/uploads/files/42-sounds_write_research_report_2009.pdf

https://eab.com/research/district-leadership/study/narrowing-the-third-grade-reading-gap-research-brief/
'Narrowing the Third-Grade Reading Gap' Research Brief:
''The National Institute of Health (NIH) indicates that nearly all children have the cognitive capacity to learn to read, estimating that only 5% of young readers have severe cognitive impairments that would make acquiring reading skills extremely difficult'' (underline added)  

''Reading, writing and spelling is biologically unnatural. It requires specific instruction” (Prof. Pamela Snow)

https://theliteracyblog.com/2019/07/18/what-the-georgian-alphabet-can-teach-us-about-teaching-reading-and-writing/
What the Georgian alphabet can teach us about teaching reading and writing: ''The relatively easy thing about learning the Georgian script is that it has thirty-three letters, most of which represent a single sound. In other words, the writing system is very transparent''

''If language development really played a causal role in learning to read one would expect to find the same incidence of reading problems everywhere, because human language is a biological trait''. (D.McGuinness. LDLR p206)

https://theliteracyblog.com/2018/01/19/what-to-do-about-the-boy-who-hates-writing/
''The other important thing to tell kids is that their difficulty in learning to write is not their fault. Aside from a tiny percentage (2%?) of children with very special needs, the reason why kids struggle with getting stuff down on paper is that the process of linking sounds to spellings has not been automatised in the early years and that’s the fault of poor pedagogy''

https://theliteracyblog.com/2018/06/14/learning-to-read-primary-and-secondary-knowledge/
Learning to read: primary and secondary knowledge

''All humans have the same brain architecture, and therefore how we learn is the same in all countries'' (Prof.Stanislas Dehaene)

Phonics in the Early Years:

The statutory Early Learning Goals guidance says that, by the end of the early years foundation stage (Reception year), children should be able to, ''use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately'' and, ''use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds''. Further guidance from the DfE notes that ''Most phonics programmes encourage the teaching of at least one grapheme for all 40-plus phonemes [a simple/basic code] by the end of Reception, alongside the skill of blending sounds together to read words'' (DfE)

X Explicit Instruction in the Reception Classroom
https://beginwithlittleones.wordpress.com/2020/11/21/begin-with-little-ones/

Prof.Daniel Muijs: Bold beginnings and the importance of reception
https://researched.org.uk/bold-beginnings-and-the-importance-of-reception/

X Literacy in the early years: Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings report on Reception teaching was controversial, but it may ultimately serve to open some eyes and minds, writes Debbie Hepplewhite
https://senmagazine.co.uk/home/articles/senarticles-2/literacy-in-the-early-years

https://johnkennyweb.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/young-children-only-stand-to-benefit-from-explicit-instruction/
Young children only stand to benefit from explicit instruction

https://www.tes.com/news/if-we-truly-want-all-children-thrive-reading-we-need-introduce-phonics-early-years
''If we truly want all children to thrive in reading, we need to introduce phonics in early years''

The most important socialising force for a child is their peer-group. Their influence is especially strong during middle-childhood (6-12 yrs) (Harris p226). This factor needs to be considered in the reading equation. A child, whose everyday companions, in school or out, consist of other children who think that reading is boring or unpleasant, will copy those attitudes, ignoring those held by parents, carers or other significant adults. This is another important reason for most children to begin a systematic synthetic phonics programme by the age of five (Rose Report 2006. para89), before any anti-reading, peer-group influence takes hold.

Parents may be concerned that their children will be damaged if they start to teach them to read pre-school using synthetic / linguistic phonics, having heard that it is dangerous to impose anything 'developmentally inappropriate' on young children. There is no scientific basis to this belief.

''Endless, unstructured play until they are 7 will not enable children to magically develop a readiness to read or write (these are biologically secondary). This kind of thinking, albeit loving, disadvantages the disadvantaged the most.'' (Quirky Teacher)

Many parents have successfully taught children much younger than five to read using a high quality phonics programme. If you are uncertain about how well the schools in your area teach early reading and spelling, then this isn't 'hot housing' but a wise precaution. 'Bright' children will also benefit from an early start. Chartered psychologist Professor Joan Freeman writes, ''In my practice I see several children a week who can read, write and make excellent conversation, and who are well under school age, some as young as 2. No parent or teacher can make a child do this if they are not capable. The children are otherwise normal and happy and keen to learn. The numbers of them that I can see could doubtless be multiplied by many hundreds around the country. The proposed prohibitions by the anti-early-literacy group to stop enthusiastic children from getting the basics of literacy at nursery would be a cruel blow to their lively searching minds'' (Guardian.letters. 25/07/08)

Dear Parents. Welcome to the confusing world of reading instruction.
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2019/08/dear-parents-welcome-to-confusing-world.html
''As parents, you buy a lottery ticket when your child starts school''

http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/teaching_reading_before_5yrs.htm
X Recommended resources for teaching pre-schoolers -> 6yrs old to read and spell.

''Once a child can read independently, the growth of many other skills is promoted'' (Research cited- Macmillan p7) ''Reading...opens some important doors...it gives the young learner a degree of autonomy and independence...also gives a child access to the whole culture of literacy. Reading makes it possible... to have access to vast quantities of stored knowledge'' (Howe '97 p154) ''The increased reading experiences of children who crack the spelling-to-sound code early..have important positive feedback effects. Such feedback effects appear to be potent sources of individual differences in academic achievement'' (Stanovich. Matthew Effects p364)

Delaying the start of direct instruction can be detrimental, especially for boys: ''(D)elaying the start of school for a year has no benefits and is likely to lead to a substantial drop in IQ...the largest reading [comprehension] ability sex differences in the world occur in countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden where children don't start school until age 7'' (RRF 51 Macmillan)

''(W)hy do we insist on waiting for children to be ‘ready’, only to then label them SEN when they don’t miraculously discover or do what everyone’s waiting for?'' (Quirky Teacher. Twitter 26/07/18)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/youngest-kid-smartest-kid.html
''(A)t age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less. A separate study, of the entire Swedish population born between 1935 and 1984, came to a similar conclusion''

What reading does for the mind: Cunningham&Stanovich
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/springsummer1998/cunningham.pdf

Teaching ‘advanced academic content,’ in the early years ‘'associated not only with improved math and English/language arts achievement but also with improved social-emotional outcomes''
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831218813913

Death of a dogma? ''The dubious concept of developmental appropriateness has had its day''
https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/death-of-a-dogma/

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/willingham_1.pdf
Prof. Willingham examines Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.
''(R)apid acquisition of reading ability might well help develop the lifetime habit of reading''
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9383616

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3117/abstract
Research: Impact of a play-based curriculum in the first two years of primary school: literacy and numeracy outcomes over seven years. ''It appears that no extra positive effect can be found for the play-based approach on reading and maths outcomes, and that perhaps a slight negative effect is evident''.

2018. Effectiveness of Preschool-Wide Teacher-Implemented Phoneme Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge Instruction on Code-Based School-Entry Reading Readiness
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1525740118789061
''Overall, preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused PA and LSK instruction can support code-based reading readiness skills for children with SLD and TD''

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood and chair of Upstart Scotland, is one of those who tars the teaching of early reading using synthetic phonics, with the 'formal and risky' brush, once describing advocates as, ''(A) rabble of back to basics diehards'' (Palmer. TES 10/11/95). More recently she opined that it was ''cruel and mad'' to expect the majority of five year olds to be able to write simple sentences (NurseryWorld 11/1/12). But, as Sir Jim Rose said, ''The term ‘formal’ in the pejorative sense in which phonic work is sometimes perceived in early education is by no means a fair reflection of the active, multi-sensory practice seen and advocated by the review for starting young children on the road to reading'' (Rose Review.2006 Summary p3)

https://theliteracyblog.com/2012/01/15/sue-palmer-too-much-too-often/
''I can’t help thinking that Sue Palmer, the literacy consultant and author of Toxic Childhood, doth protest too much, too often. This time she’s complaining about the government’s new EYFS writing target''

http://www.thelearningzoo.co.uk/2016/09/18/why-upstart-is-a-nonstarter/
X Why Upstart is a non-starter. ''Upstart Scotland is actively campaigning to introduce a Nordic-style kindergarten system between the ages of three and seven, with learning being undertaken through ‘creative play’ rather than ‘formal’ learning''

Steiner / Waldorf Education and Teaching Phonics in the Early Years:

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/11/what-every-parent-should-know-about-steiner-waldorf-schools.html
''Steiner was very clear about why delayed reading was a good idea – not because older children can learn to read better, but because memorising and reading interfered with the incarnation of the etheric body. It could damage a spiritual protective sheath around the child leading to illness and spiritual degeneration. 'Developmental needs’ in the Steiner world are to do with the incarnation of spiritual entities. Only after adult teeth have appeared is a child spiritually ready to learn to read''

Dr. Richard House is a Steiner-trained teacher, a former university lecturer in Early Childhood and an author of books on education including 'Too Much, Too Soon?'. He was a leading figure in the Open EYE anti-early-years-schooling campaign, organising three press open letters in 2006, 2007 (both with Sue Palmer -see above) and in 2011. On the subject of children starting 'formal schooling' before the age of six, Dr. House says, ''(T)he evidence is now quite overwhelming that such an early introduction to institutional learning is not only quite unnecessary for the vast majority of children, but can actually cause major developmental harm, and at worst a shortened life-span....Young children's "runaway" intellect actually needs to be slowed down in the early years if they are not to risk growing up in an intellectually unbalanced way, with possible life-long negative health effects" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18084204

The following ''non-experimental'' study is commonly quoted by those who suggest that it's unnecessary, even detrimental, for children to begin to be taught how to read around the age of five, as we do in England, and we should wait until the age of seven (when children's adult teeth usually appear). The main author, Dr.Suggate, is a strong supporter of Rudolf Steiner's theories about education.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229433053_Children_learning_to_read_later_catch_up_to_children_reading_earlier#pfe
In the following RRF messageboard thread, educational psychologist John Noble and Simon Webb, an author and blogger, comment on the Suggate study. http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4328

Written Word Processing and the Brain:

Evidence suggests that many of those who have learnt how to read mainly through whole word memorisation, along with multiple word guessing strategies, are handicapped by their lack of phonemic awareness ability, their limited knowledge of the advanced alphabet code and an embedded guessing habit. As a result, they have difficulties accurately decoding unfamiliar words (especially multi-syllable ones) and with spelling.

Individual spelling-sound correspondence processing is necessary because many words differ from another by only one or two letters - sad/said, diary/dairy, four/floor/flour, quit/quite/quiet... If, during reading, many words are guessed at and misread, it can completely change the sense of the text, making it a meaningless, confidence-sapping exercise.

People interpret the meaning of the term 'sight word' in different ways. The most common understanding is that sight words are common words (HFWs) with ''tricky'' spellings, which have to be visually memorised as whole units (customarily using 'look-say' flash cards) as ''they can't be sounded out''. This is advocated by infant teachers who have a poor understanding of phonics teaching. The HFWs, they believe, are mostly ''non-phonetic'' or ''too irregular'' to be decoded using phonics. Additionally, they believe that if their pupils get off to a rapid start 'reading' the school's leveled scheme books (made possible by using sight-memorised HFWs and multi-cue word-guessing strategies) this will be confidence-boosting. Yet, as researchers Ashby and Rayner point out, ''(O)ne could argue that these children are only pretending to read, as the inherent magic of reading rests on the reader's independence'' (Ashby/Rayner.p60)

Synthetic / linguistic phonics practitioners say that a 'sight word' is any word, real or nonsense, that the reader has consciously and accurately decoded using phonics, a number of times before. As a consequence, whenever the reader subsequently encounters that particular word in text, they decode it extremely rapidly, but now below conscious awareness, making it seem as though it is being read instantly without any phonological decoding taking place.

''As a competent reader becomes more fluent, their automaticity masks their dependence on phonics''
(Monique Nowers. Twitter)

''The ability to sound out words is, in fact, a major underpinning that allows rapid recognition of words. (This recognition is so fast that some people mistakenly believe it is happening “by sight.”)'' (Dr. Louisa Moats)

Prof. McGuinness points out, ''One should never think that just because "it seems like" we read instantly, this is, in fact, what we do. Our brain processes millions of bits of information all the time that we are not consciously aware of, because the processing speed far outstrips our ability to be conscious of it. An efficient reader has "automatized" or "speeded up" the decoding process to the point where it runs off outside conscious awareness'' 

Highly skilled readers may feel that they are bypassing phonological decoding but, in addition to lacking a credible research base, the Dual Route / Late Sight Word theory was challenged convincingly by Glushko back in 1979. He argued that the brain automatically processes ALL the information available about the input signal from each word in parallel, processing multiple modalities simultaneously (much of which does not reach consciousness) and processing is not carried out along two separate routes or pathways (D. McGuinness ERI p289)

Modern eye-movement studies confirm that skilled readers, even when reading silently, process every word, and this processing includes the word's phonological information. Researchers Ashby and Rayner explain: ''The word-superiority effect demonstrates that skilled readers process all of the letters when identifying a word'' and ''represent complex aspects of a word's phonological form, including syllable and stress information'' (italics added. Ashby/Rayner p57/p58), but this is done at a subconscious level. Only when the skilled reader comes to a previously unencountered word do the skills of phonological decoding come back into consciousness.

''There is abundant proof that we automatically access speech sounds while we read''
(Prof. Dehaene. Reading in the Brain)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Lyxgk3cF6B4C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
X Handbook of early literacy research Vol.2 -see Ch.4 by Ashby and Rayner on eye movement research.

Diane McGuinness discusses Dual Route in 'Early Reading Instruction' p287-> including Glushko's insights.

http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2013/01/23/silent-reading-isnt-so-silent-at-least-not-to-your-brain/
Silent reading isn't so silent, at least, not to your brain

''(R)ecent brain studies show that the primary motor cortex is active during reading, presumably because it is involved with mouth movements used in reading aloud. The process of mentally sounding out words is an integral part of silent reading, even for the highly skilled''
(p90 www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/reading.pdf)

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4.full.pdf?ijkey=0GSjhNaccRKTY&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi
Literature review on eye movement & word identification: ''(R)eaders naturally access the sounds of words while reading silently'' p16

''For skilled readers, phonological coding may be consciously experienced as inner speech, or the voice they hear in their head during reading'' (Ashby/Rayner p54)

''We have known for about a century that inner speech is accompanied by tiny muscular movements in the larynx, detectable by a technique known as electromyography. In the 1990s, neuroscientists used functional neuroimaging to demonstrate that areas such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area), which are active when we speak out loud, are also active during inner speech. Furthermore, disrupting the activity of this region using brain stimulation techniques can interrupt both “outer” and inner speech'' (http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech)

Read the following (real) book title to examine your own phonemic decoding skills. As an expert reader who implicitly understands how the Alphabet Code works (whether through direct phonics instruction or deduced over time) you'll find yourself tracking through the unusual words slowly left to right, segmenting one GPC at a time, mentally sounding out as you go, then blending (synthesising) the sounds as you proceed. 'Nonscience and the Pseudotransmogrificationalific Egocentrified Reorientational Proclivities Inherently Intracorporated In Expertistical Cerebrointellectualised Redeploymentation with Special Reference to Quasi-Notional Fashionistic Normativity, The Indoctrinationalistic Methodological Modalities and Scalar Socio-Economic Promulgationary Improvementalisationalism Predelineated Positotaxically Toward Individualistified Mass-Acceptance Gratificationalistic Securipermanentalisationary Professionism, or 'How To Rule The World'. Brian J. Ford (Wikipedia. Nonscience)

Do fluent, adult readers read whole words as 'sight words'?
https://theliteracyblog.com/2015/10/22/do-fluent-adult-readers-read-whole-words-as-sight-words-nooooooooooooo/
''(W)hat the proponents of [Dual Route/Late Sight Word] theory fail to recognise is that the tests conducted by Cattell could just as easily have to do with the speed of motor processing or the rate of speech output NOT the speed of processing visual input''

X 3 Reasons why segmenting is the mother of all skills in learning to read and spell
https://theliteracyblog.com/2018/01/10/3-reasons-why-segmenting-is-the-mother-of-all-skills-in-learning-to-read-and-spell/
''As a literate adult, you may not realise that when you are reading, you are segmenting words into their constituent sounds and then blending them to form words''

http://tinyurl.com/zba3jvv
Prof. Share: On the Anglocentricities of Current Reading Research and Practice. Includes extensive discussion of the late stage sight word theory.

Reading, Decoding and Intelligence:

There is a, ''widespread and pervasive misunderstanding that poor decoders are, in some way, intellectually inferior'' but, ''we can make no judgements about an individual's intellect based upon their decoding skills'' (Elliott. LDA Bulletin p13). Alexander Faludy, described as ''so severely dyslexic that he can barely write'', won a place at Cambridge University at the age of 14. (Times 17/01/98) Another high IQ 'dyslexic' (he has the spelling ability of an 8 year old), Ben Way, was a multi-millionaire businessman by the age of 20 (Telegraph 10/01/00)

Children with hyperlexia are self-taught, fluent word readers (they are not necessarily phonemically aware -see below) from an extremely early age, but when hyperlexia is accompanied by an intellectual disability (it is commonly linked to autism) reading comprehension suffers. A parent on Mumsnet reported that her son with hyperlexia could read the Financial Times at age three. She also said that he was badly handicapped by a lack of phonics knowledge as he progressed through school and this resulted in him being unable to spell: ''What happened with my son was that because he was an exceptional reader he was never taught phonics and in Y6 he was still not writing anything! His teachers and numerous Ed Psychs were totally fooled by his apparent fluent reading (if only the PSC had been around) and dismissed his difficulties because of this''

Children with serious intellectual disabilities can be taught decoding mechanics. Mona McNee, founder of the UK Reading Reform Foundation, taught her own son to read using synthetic phonics despite the fact that he has Down's syndrome (McNee p8). The researchers Cossu, Rossini and Marshall found that Italian children with Down's syndrome could decode quite competently, having been taught the transparent sound-symbol correspondences of the Italian alphabet code, but they lacked comprehension of what they read.

''Reading is really a very basic process. And it turns out that even children who might have really quite severe learning difficulties can nonetheless learn to read well. But when I say that, what I mean by 'learn to read well' is that they learn to decode well'' (Prof. Snowling. The Dyslexia Myth)

Canadian SEN teacher Susan S. notes that, ''You find the phenomenon of children who decode very well but understand almost nothing in only two populations: children with intellectual disabilities and children with very limited English'' (Kitchentablemath blog 30/12/08)

''We need to be honest that for some students our aim is not be to 'read novels' but to become functionally literate in order to be independent in adult life''  (Ann Sullivan. SEN phonics tutor)

Can children with intellectual disabilities learn to read?
http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2014/07/can-children-with-intellectual-disabilities-learn-to-read/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12272/abstract
Does Learning to Read Improve Intelligence?
A Longitudinal Multivariate Analysis in Identical Twins From Age 7 to 16

Word Calling / Barking at Print:

There is a widely circulated myth that too much emphasis on decoding through phonics causes children to 'bark at print' aka ''Ron Burgundy Syndrome'' (see link below) but, as Prof. Stanovich explains, ''There is no research evidence indicating that decoding a known word into a phonological form often takes place without meaning extraction. To the contrary, a substantial body of evidence indicates that even for young children, word recognition automatically leads to meaning activation..when the meaning of the word is adequately established in memory''(RRF 50 Stanovich p8)

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/3-ways-phonics-denialists-will-try-to-fool-you/
Ron Burgundy Syndrome ('Old Andrew')

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ldrp.12024/full
Specific Reading Comprehension Disability: Major Problem, Myth, or Misnomer?
''Although poor reading comprehension certainly qualifies as a major problem rather than a myth, the term specific reading comprehension disability is a misnomer: Individuals with problems in reading comprehension that are not attributable to poor word recognition have comprehension problems that are general to language comprehension rather than specific to reading''

''Experienced practitioners and teachers point out that, in the course of phonics teaching, as children 'start to get the hang of it', they begin to self-teach and 'need to read a lot to consolidate their skills', that is, to develop effortless reading and focus more and more on comprehending the text. At this point, children may appear, some would say, to be 'barking at print' without fully understanding what they are reading. Although this is often levelled as a criticism of phonic work, such behaviour is usually transitional as children hone their phonic skills. Given that even skilled adult readers may find themselves 'barking at print' when they are faced at times with unfamiliar text, it is hardly surprising that children may do so in the early stages of reading'' (Rose Report para 49)

Parents, Poverty and Reading:

2019. Gill Jones, Ofsted's Deputy Director for Early Education, wrote about Ofsted's new 'deep dives' into schools' teaching of early reading: 
''Some schools in disadvantaged areas help all their children learn to read well from the start. Some schools have said that this gap in the PSC between poorer and more affluent children is because of the lower levels of cultural capital among disadvantaged children. However, as we know, the successful learning of systematic synthetic phonics is not dependent on cultural capital.''
https://educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/2019/11/04/early-reading-and-the-education-inspection-framework/

''When teachers don't teach, the education children receive from their parents becomes of paramount importance, and the children of ill-educated parents are at an overwhelming disadvantage'' (Burkard.2007.p30)

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/psychology/can-learn-evolutionary-psychology/
Education isn't natural - that's why it's hard. ''Schools exist to teach the hard stuff that children are unlikely to just pick up from their environments''

https://heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/schools-shouldnt-be-relying-on-parents-to-teach-reading/
''Most schools rely on parents to teach children to read..''

''I still can’t help but be concerned about the fact that only 44% of disadvantaged, white working class males achieve an acceptable outcome by the end of reception year'' (Quirky Teacher. Twitter 06/03/18)

https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/article/analysis-can-only-literacy-guarantee-a-sure-start
Both Head Start in the USA and Sure Start in England are problematic: Can only literacy guarantee a Sure Start?
Initiatives like Sure Start show no lasting effects on children's achievement, argued the late Tom Burkard.

https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/in-education-is-poverty-destiny/
In education, is poverty destiny?
''At an academic level, we should again focus on the agency of the school. An approach to early reading that places heavy emphasis on children taking lists of sight words home to learn is inequitable. So is an approach that hinges on practising reading at home. Instead, children need to be explicitly and systematically taught to read while they are in school''

''Avoid parent-blame. It is not the job of parents to teach children how to read.'' (Prof. Pamela Snow)

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Willingham.pdf
Why do wealthy kids usually do better in school than poor kids?

Why poor kids are more likely to be poor readers (and what we can do about it)
https://www.banterspeech.com.au/its-no-disgrace-to-be-poor-but-when-it-comes-to-reading-it-might-as-well-be-why-poor-kids-are-more-likely-to-be-poor-readers/

Answer: London Bridge is falling down

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