For years it has been debated whether reading should be taught
through a phonics approach or a sight word approach. Science has provided us
the answer to this highly debated question. It appears the phonics approach has
greater benefits.
There is no question that young children can memorize
approximately 90 words for rapid recall and appear to be readers. When they
begin to be exposed to multisyllabic words some are able to use their knowledge
of vocabulary and context clues to read the word but the majority hit a wall
and have know idea where to start in order to decode larger words. They often
struggle with spelling, especially with multisyllabic words. Many times this
has been called the “second grade wall.” This is because by the middle of
second grade the students are being exposed to larger passages and also
unfamiliar words.
Our language is made of sounds, which are represented by symbols
making it a linguistic language. The word “phonics” came from the instructional
approach in the mid- 1960’s through the process of teaching young students to
read through word parts (Chall, 1967). The National Reading Panel in 2000 chose
not to use the word phonics and instead separated the broad category into two
different skills, phonological awareness and alphabetical principle which were
once taught together. Their reasoning was that we needed to be able to
distinguish and hear the sounds in our language before starting to attach
symbols. There is no question many students are able to learn these skills
simultaneously without difficulty, but for those students who struggle it has
been found they need the scaffolding which the phonological awareness provides
(Moats & Tolman, 2009).
Possibly one of the major stumbling blocks with phonics is that
you must to know all the graphemes (groups of letters which represent a single
sound) along with the rule behind them (Hempenstall, ND). There are linguistic
rules which represent the sounds those sets of letters make, yet we do not
require our teacher to fully understand these for the language they are
teaching. Then assumptions are made. Noa
Webster, known for his dictionaries, published one of the first spelling books
used in American classrooms in 1829 modeled from The American Spelling Book (1804),
providing the rules for our English language.
This document will provide you with a complete understanding of phonics and what your students need to understand to be successful readers and spellers.
References:
Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language
Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS): The Speech Sounds of
English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Boston: Sopris
West.
Potter, D. (2008) http://donpotter.net/pdf/websterspellingbookmethod.pdf)
