Synthetic Phonics
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Synthetic Phonics for teachers and parents
| Australian states back phonics push, but it's not the only answer
MOST state governments yesterday embraced Brendan Nelson's national action plan to promote back-to-basics teaching based on phonics, but insisted the method was not the only answer to improving literacy. Some states said they already taught phonics - based on the traditional relationship between letters and sounds - or were moving towards the method. Queensland, however, broke from the other states, claiming teaching phonics alone would limit children's literacy skills. The Queensland Teachers Union also criticised the federal Education Minister's push for a greater emphasis on phonics, saying the recommendations in the Teaching Reading report would not help children with learning difficulties and would not improve literacy. The report, prepared by parents, teachers and academics including Ken Rowe, is being reviewed by Education Queensland. Children in Queensland are taught to read using phonics and a whole-language approach, where a child relies on memory and visual cues to learn words. A spokesman for the department said teaching phonics alone "would limit children's literacy skills, particularly in the modern world with a raft of new symbols and images from computers, multimedia systems, electronic games and other IT materials". A spokesman for NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said for that state there was "nothing new" in Dr Nelson's report when it came to phonics. "Phonics is already an important component for learning to read as part of the NSW syllabus," he said. South Australian Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said the state was taking the lead with its "back to basics" approach to literacy improvement. "We have delivered a back-to-basics approach through our $35million early years literacy program and we will work with the federal Education Minister and share our successes with other states." In Western Australia, Education and Training Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich welcomed Dr Nelson's praise of the state's literacy and numeracy program. Dr Nelson, who has long criticised the state's education practices, said Ms Ravlich's Getting it Right program, which uses more than 300 literacy and numeracy teachers to help struggling students from kindergarten to Year 7, was "brilliant". Ms Ravlich said the state's $28million primary school program used phonics as well as a whole-language approach. Dr Nelson said national literacy levels were "unacceptable" and whole-language teaching methods were failing children. "Unfortunately, a lot of teachers have not been taught how to teach our children reading in the most scientific way," he said. "The end result of it is we've got about 30 per cent of Australian children leaving the school system functionally illiterate." However, Dr Nelson said simply replacing the whole-language approach to teaching with phonics was not the only solution. He said teaching methods had to be tailored to individual children. Under Dr Nelson's strategy, parents would be offered reading workshops to help their child develop literacy skills, and schools urged to embrace back-to-basics teaching based on phonics. The minister also signalled a shake-up of teacher training and accreditation, including intensive classes on teaching children to read, and tests for graduates covering basic literacy skills. Mem Fox, acclaimed author of the award-winning Possum Magic, warned that the shift back to "extreme phonics" raised concerns that academics and commentators leading the push wanted to make money by selling new phonics teaching programs. Samantha
Maiden and Cath Hart
With many thanks to the brilliant 'The Weekend Australian' website.
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