Posts Tagged synthetic phonics
The Butterfly Effect
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 19/12/2007
Our recently published children’s reading and writing course, The Butterfly Book by Irina Tyk, has become a hit in the run up to Christmas. In the wake of one Daily Mail report, the office telephones have been positively buzzing with calls from parents (and grandparents) eager to offer the gift of literacy to young members of their family. We have reported before on the efficacy of books like the Butterfly Book. Simplicity is at the heart of this successful method. It is called ‘synthetic phonics’ although that is just a new name for a traditional method that has long been used to teach children to read. All it involves is teaching the correspondence between the 44 sounds of the English language and the 26 letters of the alphabet. One course is enough to teach the vast majority of the underlying principles of our language, giving children a toolkit of skills that allow them to unlock literature for themselves.
Celebrate Children’s Book Week by teaching children to read
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 03/10/2007
Civitas has marked the start of Children’s Book Week (www.booktrusted.co.uk/cbw/) by making available for the first time in a commercial edition a phonics-based reading course that has achieved sensational results with children from all backgrounds, including the most deprived.
Irina Tyk wrote The Butterfly Book in 1993 to make available to other teachers and parents her method of teaching reading using phonics – a system that teaches children to read by recognising the 44 sounds that make up the English language.
Media Information: Read All About It
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 05/09/2007
Weak reading lies at the heart of the educational apartheid between the advantaged and disadvantaged, and England’s low social mobility. The inability to read properly is the single greatest handicap to progress both in school and adult life.
As of this week, all children in primary schools will be taught to read using ‘first and fast’ synthetic phonics. This means that children’s first experience in school of learning to read will be to learn 44 letter sounds which they will be taught to blend together – or ’synthesise’ – to form words.
Background: despite additional billions invested in education, a significant achievement gap between rich and poor persists. [p2] At the heart of this lie poor reading skills:
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Original ‘flagship’ National Literacy Strategy has failed to drive up reading standards
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Government policy was based on flawed methods touted for decades by ‘trendy’ academics
This government’s move to systematic synthetic phonics in the classroom brings new hope that children of all backgrounds will be taught to read properly, according to a report by the independent think-tank Civitas.