Jonathan Solity

Delivering phonological and phonics training within whole-class teaching

BACKGROUND Early, intensive phonological awareness and phonics training is widely held to be beneficial for children with poor phonological awareness. However, most studies have delivered this training separately from childrens normal whole-class reading lessons. AIMS We examined whether integrating this training into whole class, mixed-ability reading lessons could impact on children with poor phonological awareness, whilst also benefiting normally developing readers. SAMPLE Teachers delivered the training within a broad reading programme to whole classes of children from Reception to the end of Year 1 (N=251). A comparison group of children received standard teaching methods (N=213). METHOD Childrens literacy was assessed at the beginning of Reception, and then at the end of each year until 1 year post-intervention. RESULTS The strategy significantly impacted on reading performance for normally developing readers and those with poor phonological awareness, vastly reducing the incidence of reading difficulties from 20% in comparison schools to 5% in intervention schools. CONCLUSIONS Phonological and phonics training is highly effective for children with poor phonological awareness, even when incorporated into whole-class teaching.

Real books vs reading schemes: a new perspective from instructional psychology

A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric‐driven, rather than research‐driven. This article provides a theoretical perspective derived from instructional psychology and explores the assumptions that have been made about the use of real books and reading schemes, which have tended to polarise arguments about their respective strengths and limitations. It analyses the structures of adult literature, children’s real books, and reading schemes, and examines the demands that they make on children’s sight vocabulary and phonic skills. The critical high‐frequency words and grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) are identified that will enable children to read the majority of phonically regular and irregular words that they encounter which, perhaps surprisingly, occur more often in real books than structured reading schemes. Learning additional sight words or GPCs is of limited value due to their relatively low occurrence in written English and, thus, potentially minimal impact on children’s reading. Finally, the implications of this research for teaching reading are considered, particularly the complementary roles of real books and teaching methods derived from instructional psychology. In the past they have been viewed as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.

The Effect of Instruction on Early Nonword Reading Strategies.

This paper reports the results of a study examining the role of early reading instruction on the nonword reading strategies employed by beginning readers. Three groups of children given different styles of reading instruction were asked to read a list of nonwords presented (a) in isolation and (b) using the clue word technique (Goswami, 1986, 1988). The three groups of children were following either (i) the Early Reading Research project (small units instruction), (ii) the National Literacy Project (instruction emphasising onset-rime and rhyme awareness), or (iii) usual classroom practice (combined large and small units instruction). Children given small units instruction (Early Reading Research) were found to make significant use of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and were more accurate than the other two groups of children at reading the nonword items. The National Literacy Project children demonstrated a preference for a rime-based strategy, once familiarity with the analogous words was controlled, and made significantly more use of this strategy than the Early Reading Research children. The results suggest that early reading instruction does have a significant impact on early reading strategies and should be taken into account in future studies of this type.

Raising Literacy Attainments in the Early Years: The Impact of Instructional Psychology.

Abstract The National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) aims to raise literacy standards by 2002. The expectation is that 80% of Year 6 children will achieve Level 4 or above within the National Curriculum. This is seen to represent ‘zero tolerance of failure’. However, another interpretation of ‘zero tolerance of failure’ is that all children, including the 20% who are predicted to experience difficulties, will reach ageand skill‐appropriate targets in reading. This is the goal adopted for the Early Reading Research (ERR) reported in this article. The aims of the ERR are to investigate: (i) whether overall reading standards can be improved and (ii) the extent to which reading difficulties can be prevented. Despite all the recent research into phonological awareness and its relationship to reading, there has been very little research into how phonological skills are taught within a broader literacy framework to enable children both to increase their attainments and to prevent the occurrence of problems in le...

Predicting dyslexia using prereading skills: the role of sensorimotor and cognitive abilities

Background It is well established that phonological awareness, print knowledge and rapid naming predict later reading difficulties. However, additional auditory, visual and motor difficulties have also been observed in dyslexic children. It is examined to what extent these difficulties can be used to predict later literacy difficulties. Method An unselected sample of 267 children at school entry completed a wide battery of tasks associated with dyslexia. Their reading was tested 2, 3 and 4 years later and poor readers were identified (n = 42). Logistic regression and multiple case study approaches were used to examine the predictive validity of different tasks. Results As expected, print knowledge, verbal short‐term memory, phonological awareness and rapid naming were good predictors of later poor reading. Deficits in visual search and in auditory processing were also present in a large minority of the poor readers. Almost all poor readers showed deficits in at least one area at school entry, but there was no single deficit that characterised the majority of poor readers. Conclusions Results are in line with Penningtons (2006) multiple deficits view of dyslexia. They indicate that the causes of poor reading outcome are multiple, interacting and probabilistic, rather than deterministic.

Discrepancy Definitions of Dyslexia

Summary Ashton (1996) mounts an argument in favour of maintaining discrepancy‐based definitions of dyslexia. His position is potentially quite pernicious since it promulgates practice for which there is no evidence but which will have the effect of denying poor readers, identified as having moderate learning difficulties, resources and provision which will be made available to poor readers defined as having dyslexia. This article examines the issues raised by Ashton and highlights problems with his analysis and interpretation of the literature. It concludes with the suggestion that curriculum‐based approaches, which demand systematic observation of how children learn and respond to teaching over time, are the most appropriate means of assessing childrens perceived difficulties in learning to read.

Separating the influences of prereading skills on early word and nonword reading

The essential first step for a beginning reader is to learn to match printed forms to phonological representations. For a new word, this is an effortful process where each grapheme must be translated individually (serial decoding). The role of phonological awareness in developing a decoding strategy is well known. We examined whether beginning readers recruit different skills depending on the nature of the words being read (familiar words vs. nonwords). Print knowledge, phoneme and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, auditory skills, and visual attention were measured in 392 prereaders 4 and 5 years of age. Word and nonword reading were measured 9 months later. We used structural equation modeling to examine the skills-reading relationship and modeled correlations between our two reading outcomes and among all prereading skills. We found that a broad range of skills were associated with reading outcomes: early print knowledge, phonological STM, phoneme awareness and RAN. Whereas all of these skills were directly predictive of nonword reading, early print knowledge was the only direct predictor of word reading. Our findings suggest that beginning readers draw most heavily on their existing print knowledge to read familiar words.

Psychology, Teachers and the Early Years Psychologie

Abstract Psychology is one of the disciplines that provides education with a theoretical basis from which to inform the teaching and learning processes. This article examines square the areas of psychology to which early years teachers are typically introduced square the implications of these psychological perspectives on classroom practice square alternative psychological perspectives and their implications for practice in the early years. The critical question addressed in this article is whether it is possible for early years teachers to achieve an understanding and appreciation of childrens behaviour and development without also having insights into their own behaviour and family background? It is argued that teachers must recognise the importance of their own background as a key factor in how they look at children, teaching and events in the classroom; that how they were treated as children has a bearing on the way they too, relate to the children in their care; and that there will be echoes of thei...

Differing Effects of Two Synthetic Phonics Programmes on Early Reading Development.

BACKGROUND Synthetic phonics is the widely accepted approach for teaching reading in English: Children are taught to sound out the letters in a word then blend these sounds together. AIMS We compared the impact of two synthetic phonics programmes on early reading. SAMPLE Children received Letters and Sounds (L&S; 7 schools) which teaches multiple letter-sound mappings or Early Reading Research (ERR; 10 schools) which teaches only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight. METHOD We measured phonological awareness (PA) and reading from school entry to the end of the second (all schools) or third school year (4 ERR, 3 L&S schools). RESULTS Phonological awareness was significantly related to all reading measures for the whole sample. However, there was a closer relationship between PA and exception word reading for children receiving the L&S programme. The programmes were equally effective overall, but their impact on reading significantly interacted with school-entry PA: Children with poor PA at school entry achieved higher reading attainments under ERR (significant group difference on exception word reading at the end of the first year), whereas children with good PA performed equally well under either programme. CONCLUSIONS The more intensive phonics programme (L&S) heightened the association between PA and exception word reading. Although the programmes were equally effective for most children, results indicate potential benefits of ERR for children with poor PA. We suggest that phonics programmes could be simplified to teach only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight.