by Fay Tran     Learning to read and write is the most important skill a child needs to acquire - everything else they do in life depends on it, including their schooling, tertiary studies and future employment.  Soon, a vital component of the National Curriculum will be teaching literacy using phonics - an easy-to-follow sound and visual system that went out of fashion in the 1980s but is now back with a bang.

About 25 years ago, while other fields such as technology, medicine, and agriculture were making huge strides based on scientific research, the field of education took a giant step backwards and abandoned scientifically confirmed methods for the teaching of reading for one based on an idea which always was, and has now proven to be, quite false. 

The method relies on the myth that children can learn to read just as they learn language, by instinct interacting with immersion. The promoters of this method not only loudly proclaimed its benefits, but derided the old ways of teaching of phonics and spelling rules to the extent that they were virtually banned in classrooms across the country. 

For all of that 25 years I have been successfully teaching children to read using those out dated methods. Many of those children had come to my school with very low reading levels because their previous school had not taught them the basic skills, which are essential for the development of reading accuracy and fluency.

Karl was the son of a colleague. He was attending another school but was enrolled to start in year 3 at our school the following year. His mother was worried because he was refusing to read at home and asked me to assess his reading.  I found that Karl  did not have a learning difficulty but simply did not know how to read.  His guessing strategies were not working and he had decided that reading was just too hard.  Direct instruction in phonics skills did the trick and Karl is now studying architecture at university.

Some children do have a learning difficulty that makes reading quite a difficult skill to master. These difficulties, typically problems with language, attention or memory, are not related to intelligence and can all be overcome with a step-by step program which includes plenty of individual attention and practice.

Barry came to us in year 1, knowing hardly any letter names or sounds. He had great difficulty learning the sounds associated with letters and was prone to tears and stomach aches in the classroom.  Barry’s program had to be very slow paced with lots of practice and computer games to compensate for his memory problem, but gradually he overcame his difficulties and he has become an excellent reader.  Now in year 5 he is still working on his spelling, but I am sure he will master that also.

The main problem with the method currently used by most schools is that it teaches phonics only incidentally and encourages the children to use guessing from context as the first strategy for identifying unknown words. This is a most ineffective way to learn to read and fails between 10 and 20% of students.  Fortunately some schools have recently started to include phonics as part of their literacy program and with the introduction of the National Curriculum next year most should be looking seriously at how to improve their teaching of phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling and grammar.

My concern is that some schools will pay token attention to phonics and not teach it directly and systematically, so that children can apply the skills automatically to their reading and spelling. Daily oral and written practice of letter sound relationships such as ‘ar’ in ‘car’ are an essential part of direct instruction and this may seem to be too old fashioned for some teachers. However the children love the fast paced exercises and they really help to make the skills automatic.

Learning phonics skills is not very different from the way children learn football, tennis or piano skills and parents can help their children learn and practice reading skills just as they do with sport or music.

How can parents help?

• By practising the letter sounds rather than the letter names at home

• By encouraging their children to sound out new words as the first option

• By helping their children to recognise the very high frequency words like ‘they’ and ‘said’ automatically and these can be practised using cards or by learning to write them.

• Reading books at home should be at a very easy level so that the experience is enjoyable, practises words already known and develops fluency and comprehension.

• When a child reads a word incorrectly, the best approach is to ask them to have another attempt at it, with prompting to sound it out or break it up into syllables, if needed. 

• Children should always be given the chance to work a word out for themselves before being told what it says and should not be advised to look at the picture or guess the word from context.

Teaching Kids to Read is my attempt to inform parents and teachers of the facts about how children learn to read and spell, and how to teach them, using a method that works for all children and not just those that can figure it out for themselves. The book uses anecdotes and real children’s stories to explain the difficulties that might be encountered and how to overcome them. Technical terms are explained as they occur, and are listed in the glossary, but the only really technical chapter, on assessment, can be skipped and referred to later if preferred. 

About the author

Fay Tran is a specialist literacy teacher with over 25 years experience in helping children of all abilities with their learning difficulties.  Fay has just retired from one of Victoria's top schools, Geelong Grammar.  'Teaching Kids to Read' represents the fruit of a lifetime's passion for literacy. Link: Publisher

About the book:

Teaching Kids to Read is designed to have an impact on every school-age child in Australia - and their parents and teachers.  Fay Tran's book is the first book to explain how ordinary Australian parents with no teaching background themselves can use this method to teach their kids to read.

For more on this book, click here.

WIN a copy of 'Teaching Kids to Read'! Competition ends 26 November, 2010. Click here.

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