foreword.htm/21 DEC 2001

Foreword

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Who can benefit from “c-a-t = CAT”? :-

- Pre-school children

- Infants, reception class on

- Remedial teachers

- Adults

- Those learning English as a second language

- Dyslexics

Does it work?

Yes, for 999 people out of a thousand. Expectations in Britain at present are that 20% will fail, that about 800 per 1,000 will learn to read efficiently. However, you only have to try the first steps to see if it works for you.

How long does the course take?

The each day you spend on phonics, the faster the learning. Where a class is started on this at average age 4.6, in June then 9 months later they can be at least 9 months ahead of national average. IF the program were not “contaminated” with sight words and guessing those children would complete the course in 18 months.

Since this programme is used by all ages, the time taken varies widely. An adult could go through it in 2-3 months on say, an hour a day.

Do not attach too much importance to the overall time. If you have done a few steps and they are working then that is reason enough to continue.

Why does it work?

Learning the sounds of 100,000 words by rote is asking too much of anybody. Phonics asks them to learn 26 letters, blending, and about 50 letter-patterns, that covers nine tenths of the words. After that they seem to take the irregular words in their stride.

Sound/Phoneme: The sound associated with a specific letter or letter-group for the purpose of teaching reading by Mona McNee’s method. (The course uses the word sound for the jargon word phoneme.)

Phonics: A method of teaching people to read by training them to associate letters and specific letter-groups with specific sounds.

Phonics programme:

How to sound out letters.

How to blend sounds in a word.

How to sound out letter-groups

How to write letters.

How to join letters for ‘real writing’.

How to spell.

How to gain fluency.

Vowel: A long vowel “says its name”: ay ee I oh you, for a, e, i, o,u, and y as in “fly”.

A short vowel is the sound we learn first a e i o u as in pat pet pit pot put, and y as in “myth”.

I/Y is both a consonant and vowel. It is a consonant at the beginning of a syllable: yes, yo-yo, beyond, crayon. Elsewhere it is nearly always a vowel, on its own (cry. myth) or combined with a and o, as in ray (cf rain) and boy (cf boil).

You can teach your own child to read. Using this programme, teachers do not need training; they just need common sense and the will to TEACH (not to help, encourage, facilitate, but specifically to TEACH) reading bit by bit, and not think of guessing as playing any part. A phonic start is the ONLY way to start that is SAFE for ALL children. (See Dyslexia) Guessing is a terrible thing. Some children cannot get going until they stop guessing.

Teaching children, or adults, to read is simple and does not take long. You just need a structured phonic programme. You start at the beginning, with letters/sounds. The pupil learns how to sound out, how to blend three sounds in a word, how to make c.a.t into cat, then longer words. This is the most important part (yet Family Literacy projects specifically reject sounding out). When people can read words like comic, and hundred, this is the first third of learning to read. They know that THEY can get the word from the letters, not from the picture, and that THEY can do it; they do not need an adult to tell them what the words are. Both tutor and learner know exactly where they are up to, and what the next task is. There is fun in the games described in this programme, but the main incentive is success. It is exciting.

This programme is called phonics. (Phonetics uses a different set of symbols.) Instead of learning how to 'recognise' whole words first, the pupil learns the bits and how to put them together. The National Literacy Strategy now requires schools to teach phonics, but in it there is room for much improvement in the way phonics is taught. Schools' programmes are often designed to ENCOURAGE reading, not to TEACH it; they are sketchy, incomplete and too slow, expectations are too low, and attainment is seriously impaired by encouraging guessing. Children should learn to read in their first school year, either nursery or reception class.

The second third of learning to read is to learn those sounds for which we use two or more letters, sh as in fish, aw as in crawl, and so on. The final third is gaining fluency, and it is at this point that great benefit arises from reading, and practice. By this time, an element of self‑tutoring has developed.

Reading to and with children is a pleasant family activity, but it is not the same thing as teaching them HOW to read. Teaching reading starts with phonics. Many children just cannot start on whole words, whole books. Phonics gives them a chance. It does not confuse, it harms no‑one and even for those children who can read before they start school, phonics‑first will improve their spelling.

Starting this simple way, with letters and sounds, children are ready by their 4th birthday if not before. It is only with the whole‑word start that teachers think children are ‘not ready', that learning to read takes years and years, and that children who are dyslexic develop problems (needlessly). Phonics rescues dyslexics. Intensive, systematic phonics-first will schoolproof children against the post‑war, fashionable (Progressive) infant teaching. Teachers who have been accustomed to look‑and‑say will be surprised how fast and how young children can learn by phonics, and how failure shrinks to vanishing point. Instead of 1 in 7 failing, it will be nearer to 1 in 1,000.

We read from print, which is made up of letters, so the first aim is to learn the letters and their common sound. Learning letters from the dot‑to‑dot pages, the dots show where there should be a flowing line, not a slow dot by dot join. Where there are dashes, you go there‑and‑back, in two directions. Learn at least a letter a day, perhaps up to 4 letters a day. It does not matter what letters you start with, so long as you keep b to No. 24 and y and q to the last. I begin with cat and dog because they include 5 of the 6 letters that start with a backward circle. Explain to the pupil that you can have a real live cat, you have the spoken word CAT and by a wonderful invention ‑ letters ‑ we can write “cat” on paper.

Before you begin.

Read each day's programme through before you start, the day before, to make sure you have all the materials you need. If you are worried about doing something wrong, or that will conflict with the teaching in the school, read ‘The modern ideas are ‘dead wrong’’ before you begin.

The first task is to learn 26 letters, how to write each one, on a line, and its sound.

This book gives you ideas and a programme, but use your own ideas too. Throughout the whole programme, both you and the pupil should be enjoying yourselves. Pour out the praise endlessly.

If the pupil gets stuck or makes a mistake, avoid saying "No" or "That's wrong". See if any of it is right. Say, "Let's try again,", "Have another look" or perhaps "Slow down." Later on, in spelling, say, "You have got six letters right, in the right order, and now you need just one more letter to get it right. LISTEN to the word again .... Now ‑ where have you lost a sound? Where would you need to add a letter in your spelling? Which sound, which letter?" Comment on all the things that are right; do not praise without justification, but find something to praise. If it is “Just one of those days", LAUGH and say, "Well, tomorrow is another day."

Aim at about 30 minutes a day, but this is not rigid. Use your judgment. Some good days may allow an hour, other days ten minutes, but try to do a bit each day, even if it is only a game. Varied activity extends the span of attention, the lesson: handwriting, spelling, reading rules, Hangman, anagrams, story, etc.

Give the pupil as much time as he needs to puzzle out a word. (For convenience, I use 'he' for the pupil and 'she' for the tutor, but I have known some excellent father teachers.) For some children some steps may be slow. If you can see that there is a block, tell the word and go on, but telling the word is a last resort, a very rare event. We are trying to convince the pupil that he can read the words. Telling a word tells also that adults, readers, read words and not the learner. Telling a word may also give the impression that reading must be fast. In the end it will be, but someone learning HOW to read needs time. There is no hurry.

Letters/sounds

The pupil will learn to write each letter by going over the large letters, but you also need a large card, with the alphabet written in two lines in large black letters (a‑m n‑z). I underline the vowels in red. You can use letters cut from a printout of the cut letters web page. The first step is to give the pupil one of the cut out cards and see if he can find that shape among other letters, from the following:

i	g	c	w	l	x
m	s	f	o	e	d

Give him a W and see if he can find it among the 12 letters, then an s, an x, an i, and so on. If he can do this, and he is talking, he is ready to start learning to read. If he is 3 and not talking, teaching him to read by this method is a form of speech therapy and can help him to learn to talk at the same time. The programme can also correct speech in order to improve spelling, saying THINK instead of FINK, for instance. The sooner they start, the better. By school age, all children are ready, if you start with letters and sounds. It is trying to make them start with whole words, books, pictures, that makes them appear to be "not ready".

I make a big card, (15" or 40cm x 12" or 30 cm.)) with two straight lines of letters:

(If you set your printer to landscape then a print of this page may do the job.)

a b c d e f g h i j k l m

n o p q r s t u v w x y z

but some people prefer to arrange the letters in an arch like a rainbow, with a bottom‑left, m at the top and z bottom‑right.

At first, you will give the pupil just one letter to match up by its shape, then as he gets better at this, you can give him all the 9 or 12 letters for the first card. When he can do this easily, you can let him match them up on the big alphabet‑card. Seeing the 26 letters shows him that learning the letters is finite; he can see how many he has to learn altogether. One boy learning sight words asked his mother how many words there were, and when she replied, "Oh, I don't know ‑ thousands!" he gave up.

You can use these letters and the big card all through the programme. At some point, the pupil will learn the alphabet by singing it, but you will be surprised how quickly they learn the place for each letter. Indeed, most people are surprised how quickly people, especially children, can learn anything, once you teach them instead of hoping they will catch on just from being surrounded with materials and encouraged.

Tune for ABC

. a b c d e f g h i j k l m …………..

n o p q r s t u v w x y z…………

One letter per note. z: zed(British) zee (USA)

Ay bee see dee …………. These are the “words”

Using the small letters is a painless way to improve spelling. The pupil can pick out letters for sounds he can hear, and instead of red ink on mistakes, you just have to rearrange letters, or let him re‑arrange them, or take out wrong letters, and leave a space for a missing letter. He then has to listen to the word and hear how the spoken word does not match (Felicity Craig uses the word 'tally') the letters he has chosen, and to hear what letters he needs to provide the missing sounds. This is the best kind of phonological awareness, listening to the separate sounds in words, rather than the bigger units of onset and rime.(See The Myths Item 10)

WE READ WITH OUR EARS. WE SPELL WITH OUR EARS.

This programme is multi‑sensory, that is to say that while the pupil is looking at the letter with his eyes, he will sound it with his voice and thus hear it with his ears, and write it or go over it with his fingers using his muscles. This helps to prevent fidgeting, and helps concentration. By using all his senses (except smell and taste!) you never need to worry about his strengths and weaknesses.

The pupil will learn letters one at a time, and at the same time will write them, sound them out and learn to blend the sounds into words, and to break words down into sounds which he can then spell. I do not teach a then b then c,d,e because this makes b and d very close together. I present first (in cat, dog) four letters that start with the same action as c, and then o. Get d well learned, starting with up‑and‑back‑round..., b is left nearly to the end teaching it with the "|" letters h k..b, and this prevents b/d confusion. I leave q to the end because there is no simple 3‑letter word with a q.

How long will it take?

This programme is set out as Step 1, Step 2, but this is only a guide. While some children will go through it much faster than others, older children will not need to spend much time on the letters. Just make sure that they do know 26 letters, and the kw sounds for qu, that they get b/d right, p/q, and y. Adults may use this programme to brush up their spelling; they just go through it quickly until they come to some part where they hesitate. That is where they begin. But in general both for infants just learning, and adults with problems, we do need to raise expectations both for achievement and speed of learning.

Some schemes go on for years, but Gertrude Linnane said she taught young children to read in 28 hours. At half an hour a day, that would be 56 days. An untrained American parent wrote a book called "Teach your child to read in 60 days". Other American teachers talk of teaching reading "in a couple of months". I mention these examples to contrast what happens in most schools now, to show you what can happen, but all children should learn to read, write and spell regular and common words in two years or less.

Ready at their 4th birthday, children should be reading by their 6th birthday. For children older than 6, parents should not accept the advice, "Don't worry. He'll catch on. It's early days yet." It is the early learning that gives the automaticity we need when we want to read to learn. And world‑wide millions have failed to learn to read, for lack of early, systematic, simple phonics.

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