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Materials.: 1 Introducing Systematic Synthetic Phonics
Materials.: 1 Introducing Systematic Synthetic Phonics
materials.
2. Blending of phonemes for reading, starting after the first few GPCs
have been taught and working with more GPCs as they are taught.
3. Segmenting for spelling, again starting after the first few GPCs have
been taught and working with more GPCs as they are taught.
Why is it more difficult to learn to read and write in English than in other
languages?
One reason for the complexity of the English alphabetic code is that changes
in pronunciation over the centuries have not always been accompanied by
changes in spelling. Another reason is that English has absorbed many words
from other languages, often retaining their original spellings.
most sounds can be spelt in more than one way – for example the
vowel sound in heat is also commonly spelt as in he, see, chief and
complete;
Some very common words contain grapheme-phoneme
correspondences that occur in few if any other words – for example
one, two, are, said, great, people, laugh.
In spite of the complexity and the exceptions, however, it is still very important
to teach children how the alphabetic code works in English. Without this
teaching, many children start thinking that all words have to be individually
learnt; this is an impossible task, and once children get the idea that they
have to ‘learn words’ in order to be able to read, this mindset can take over at
the expense of a decoding mindset. There is very much less learning to do if
children are taught how the alphabetic code works and can understand the
underlying logic which underpins all word-reading (see Paragraphs 55 and 56
of Appendix 1 in Jim Rose’s Independent Review of the Teaching of Early
Reading, 2006).
In practice, many children start to self-teach long before all GPCs have been
explicitly taught. A good programme, if followed carefully, will ensure that the
teaching is sound, even if the programme differs in some respects from other
programmes.