The pupils who can spell 'poo at the zoo' before they're taught their abc

8:29am Tuesday 24th June 2008

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‘‘IMAYD sum jinjurbred biscits with migh mum”. No I haven’t suddenly lost the ability to spell, and this is not text talk. If you’re a parent of a four or five-year-old, this may look familiar to you. Because this is phonics, one of the most widely debated methods of teaching young children to read and write.

In 2005, the Government commissioned a review of reading, which was carried out by Sir Jim Rose, who emphasised the need for a rigorous and systematic use of phonics from the earliest years.

You might think that learning the letters of the alphabet was essential to being able to spell – but a system called phonics is teaching children to form words in a different way

Following that, all schools are now expected to teach phonics, and according to a recent report from education watchdog Ofsted, children are now making better progress as a result.

Synthetic phonics involves learning to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) associated with letters “in isolation”. These individual sounds, once learnt, are then blended together (synthesised) to form words.

For example, children learn that the letter ‘m’ makes an ‘mmm’ sound; an ‘a’ is as in apple; and ‘d’ is as in dinosaur. Put together, children can learn to read ‘mad’.

Many parents will now be thinking ‘this is nothing new, I remember teaching my child the alphabet, phonetically, years ago’. But the method of teaching it has evolved.

At King’s Hawford School, near Worcester, where they use the Ruth Miskin method of phonics, letters are taught, not in the order of the alphabet, but in groups, making it easier for children to start making words earlier on.

The first group of letters children are taught is m, a, s, d, t.

Once they have learned the individual sounds of each letter, they then begin to make words, such as mat, sad, and sat.

When this group of letters is ingrained in their minds, they move on to another group of letters, and so on.

Sound over-complicated? It actually makes a lot more sense in practice.

Gill Riley, reception class teacher at King’s Hawford, said: “We have always taught phonics in some form, but the method has evolved, making it easier for children.

“Children used to be taught the alphabet using characters for each letter, such as Bouncing Ben, or Sammy Snake. But this doesn’t actually allow the children to recognise the sound of that particular letter, and they then find it difficult to join letters together and start making words.

“This method takes each individual letter separately first of all, and then they can go on to make words more easily and sooner than they would have done having to learn the whole alphabet first.”

Each letter corresponds to a picture, shaped in the form of that letter, ie a snake in the shape of an s, or Maisy standing by two mountains for m, which is used to allow children to actually write down the letter.

Mrs Riley said: “When the children are writing their letters, they may miss the stalk at the beginning of m, so I would say, you have forgotten Maisy. Gradually we move away from the pictures and they start remembering the letter’s shape.”

Mrs Riley said they also used magnetic letters on a board to allow children to start making words as early as possible, even if they cannot yet write the letters down.

Once the basics are in place, children begin to learn groups of letters, such as ‘oo’, ‘igh’ and ‘nk’, as well as what Mrs Riley calls “tricky words”, such as ‘I’ and ‘the’, which are not phonetically so easy to learn.

“Once we get into double and triple letter groups we start making little sayings, such as ‘I think I stink’, and ‘the poo at the zoo’, which the children find particularly funny.

“In my opinion it is crucial to make phonetics fun wherever possible, because it can otherwise become tedious.”

When children are learning phonics it is acceptable for them to write words as they hear them, so if you’re a parent and your child has written “I mayd sum jinjurbred biscits with migh mum”, don’t try to correct them just yet.

“Phonics gives children the confidence to start reading and writing a lot earlier,” Mrs Riley said.

“They don’t need to worry about how to spell words, which can cause children to keep stopping, and therefore hinder them.”

Although I could see the benefit of phonics in the early years, I wondered whether this method actually ended up confusing children later on in their school life when they have to start learning to spell. But apparently not.

“Gradually they do have to start learning to spell words properly, and learn what context different spellings go in,” Mrs Riley said.

“For example, plane and plain. With phonics teaching I would expect the child to write playn, and this is fine. But of course when they progress through school, they have to learn the correct spellings.

“However, phonics gives them the confidence early on to read and write, and once they have this confidence they seem able to grasp spelling a lot easier later on.

“It also allows them to start being more creative earlier, making up stories etc.”