Once More With Meaning Stuart Sco1 Judith Evans www.collabora;velearning.org www.collabora;velearning.org/naldic.html judith.evans@collabora;velearning.org stuart.sco1@collabora;velearning.org The aim of the workshop was to provide a
range of strategies for moving comprehension
forward for pupils who had become efficient
decoders, but were in danger of not making
further progress and slipping through the net
by appearing to be fluent readers. We shared
reading activities that shift these pupils off
their plateaus and onward and upward to
become reflective and critical readers.
Currently the government is insisting on
phonics ‘first, fast and only’ for teaching
reading. All experienced teachers of reading
know that phonics alone does not work. Rose
suggested than once decoding was developed
enough to be performed rapidly, comprehension
would follow, but in the early development of
his review he indicated that bilingual learners
might not be able to take this route to reading.
Yr 1 Phonics Screening The nonsense words EAL learners Na8onal 58% EAL learners 58 % Are we happy? Are we doing well? Should we stop? We looked at the data set of the Year 1 phonics
screening which shows that across the country
bilingual learners are performing as well as
learners as a whole. In some authorities they
are doing better. This is not necessarily cause
for celebration, since succeeding on this test
requires decoding words which have no meaning
in English.
An example of this is the word ‘strom’ which
was read as ‘storm’ by many children who are
fortunate enough to have become effective
readers, and also by many teachers on their
first look at the test. If more bilingual learners
are saying ‘strom’ during the test this is not
indicative of greater success in reading for the
rest of their school career. In fact it
probably shows that they will need significant
intervention to move from level 2 to 3.
In 1997 the government began to tell us how
to teach as well as what to teach. Teachers
who trained before that date are more likely
have a greater repertoire of strategies to teach
reading. These are still evident in actual day to
day practice. For example we have seen schools
where ‘Breakthrough to Literacy’ methods are
still being used and shared with younger
teachers because they work effectively.
We are therefore in a cleft stick, a vicious
circle, a catch 22 and between a rock and a
hard place. Those teachers who use a wide
range of strategies in Foundation and Key Stage
1 e.g. rhyme and analogy, whole word
recognition, storyprops and storytelling,
prediction, breakthrough to literacy et al are
producing readers who will thrive later at
levels 3 and 4. However these teachers’
successes are being attributed solely to their
work in phonics.
Remember….. just as the dog and the turkey are……. so reading development is for all subjects and not just for literacy A visual metaphor for phonics?
The difficulty is: do we, as professionals keep
quiet about this and just carry on or do we
speak out and risk censure or even lose our
jobs. One thing is certain; that if we continue
to perpetuate the myth that phonics works
alone, then inexperienced teachers may well
only use phonics. The consequence will be an
increasing demand for skilled interventions to
develop reading and writing skills in older
children. Bilingual learners are even more
vulnerable. They need extra teaching around
context and syntax to enable them to take all
possible meanings from a text. The emphasis
on phonics may mean that this need is not
recognised until much later. Much later can
mean too late for many bilingual learners.
Looking on the bright side; even though it is
getting harder to teach reading with
comprehension during literacy time slots, we do
have the rest of the curriculum at our
disposal. There are lots of ways in which
content can drive reading development, and
provide the direct practice that bilingual
pupils require. The remainder of the workshop
explored these content driven strategies and
participants were able to test out a variety of
games and paired activities. All these strategies
and the powerpoint can be accessed via the
dedicated webpage:
www. collaborativelearning.org/naldic.html