d. Developing a sense of progression in children’s phonic learning
Student teachers need to have a clear understanding of how phonics works in English, and how children’s phonological awareness and knowledge of phonics can best be developed. They also need to understand the differences between Synthetic and Analytic phonics (see 3b. Phonics) and what each has to contribute. Insecurity with the terminology can be helped by some simple and succinct explanations. Dennis Brook in his booklet Approaches to the Teaching of Phonics (1999) provides a clear and helpful approach.
Examining and discussing patterns of progression at the beginning of their courses helps to raise awareness of the need to deal with phonics systematically and early in children's literacy development.
We still find it useful to refer to Circular no.10/97 (DfEE) ‘Requirements for courses of Initial Teacher Training’. This is based on the synthetic approach favoured by the DfEE and the Rose Report (Rose, 2006), and suggests that as part of all courses student teachers should be taught:
how to teach the essential core of phonic and graphic knowledge explicitly and systematically, first teaching:
- The alphabet and how the letters of the alphabet are used singly and in different combinations to make graphic representations of the sounds of English, e.g. digraphs – sh, ch,th and trigraphs;
then
- how to identify initial and dominant sounds in words, and how to identify and write the graphemes that represent them;
then
- starting with consonant -- vowel -- consonant words e.g. c-a-t, and moving on to words requiring more complex blending; how to read such words automatically; and how to split them into their constituent sounds, identifying each sound in order to spell the word;
then
- how sounds can be represented by different graphemes, including common ways to read and spell each of the long vowel sounds, ay,a-e,ea; y, igh, i-e; ur, er, ir, ou, ow, or, a, aw.
However, it is also useful to complement this synthetic approach with elements of a systematic analytic approach, drawing student teachers’ attention to progression in awareness and manipulation of onset and rime patterns, in ways that complement this synthetic progression. This is shown in the following table from the University of Brighton, which presents the expanded version of the progression shown above, as set out in Progression in Phonics (DfEE ,Standards and Effectiveness Unit 1999), but complemented with progression in onset and rime. Student teachers have found this to provide a useful framework for planning classroom activities.
Activity i
Student teachers are asked to map the steps set out in the table Complementing the Strategy: Progression in synthetic and analytic phonics to Frith’s phases of development in word recognition: Logographic, Alphabetic and Orthographic (as explained in 3b. Phonics).
Complementing the Strategy:
Progression in Synthetic and Analytic Phonics
| Step |
Skill |
Knowledge of letters |
1. |
Hearing and discriminating general sounds, speech sounds and patterns
including play with rhymes and tongue twisters, and counting syllables |
|
2. |
Hearing phonemes/s/, /m/, /k/, /t/, /g/, /h/ in initial position
+ hearing and discriminating simple rhymes e.g. s/at, m/at etc; m/ug, h/ug etc. |
s, m, c, t, g, h
+ rimes such as ‘at’ and ‘ug’
|
3. |
Hearing phonemes /s/, /m/, /k/, /t/, /g/ in final position
+ hearing and discriminating further simple rhymes e.g b/in, t/in; t/op, sh/op etc. |
ss, ck, l, n, d, k, sh, ch
+ rimes such as ‘in’ and op’
|
4. |
hearing phonemes /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ in medial position;
CVC blending and segmenting, reading and spelling;
+ extending repertoire of simple rhyme/rime pairings to include e.g. s/ing, th/ing; f/ill, h/ill etc. |
a, e, i, o, u,
f, qu, b, r, j, p, th, ng
+ rimes such as ‘ing’ and ill’
|
5. |
C(C)V(C)C blending and segmenting, reading and spelling;
+ extending repertoire of simple rhyme/rime pairings to include e.g. m/ake, c/ake etc; s/ay, d/ay etc. |
v, w, x, y, z
+ rimes such as ‘ake’ and ‘ay’
|
6. |
CVC blending and segmenting, reading and spelling
+ extending repertoire to include more complex onsets and rimes e.g. dr/eam, cr/eam; gr/ound, f/ound; str/ing, fl/ing; |
ai, ee, ie, oa, oo, or, ir, oi, ou
+ rimes such as ’eam’ and ‘ound’
onsets such as dr, gr and fl
|
7. |
CVC blending and segmenting, reading and spelling
+ extending repertoire to include more complex rhyme/rime pairings e.g. t/alk, w/alk; p/ark, d/ark etc. |
ay, a-e, ea, igh, y, I-e, ow, o-e, oe, ew, ue, u-e, oy,ow, er, ur,aw, air, ear, oo
+ rimes such as ‘alk’ and ‘ark’ |
8. |
Spotting ‘chunks’ in spoken and written words, including morphemes, e.g. seem/ed, want/ed, jump/ed, some/thing |
|
9. |
Spotting other spelling analogies, e.g. manage, damage etc; little, settle etc; table, noble etc. |
|
Source: University of Brighton
 
|
