how are children taught to read?

The method of the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s was the “look and say” approach. This is where the child would memorise the words that they were reading so that they would be say them next time that they would see that word. It identifies how they can remember but are they really reading with this method?

The order of Book Band colours is as follows

Please note this is a guideline only.

Reading schemes are carefully constructed by a group of people who are experts at teaching children to read.
The aim is to provide children with lots of small, achievable steps as they begin to read so they learn to read without any difficulty and enjoy the process.
Each new level or stage within the reading scheme introduces new things and practises the skills and knowledge learned in the previous levels.

Until the 1990s, each reading scheme had its own levels and stages that were entirely different from all the other reading schemes. Then reading experts at the University of London created 'Book Bands'.

 

All ‘phonics’ involves teaching letter-sound correspondences. The adjective ‘synthetic’ refers to the fact that children are taught to ‘synthesise’ (i.e. put together or build up) pronunciations for unfamiliar written words by translating letters into sounds and blending the sounds together (‘blending = ‘synthesising’). ‘Analytic’ phonics focuses more on the analysis of words after they have been identified in some other way – for example by being supplied by the teacher, recognised as 'sight-words' or guessed from pictures or context

The drive to establish “synthetic phonics” as the primary method of reading instruction in the first year of school has not been widely welcomed by teachers and academics. The phonics check has attracted particular criticism, much of it focused on the inclusion of pseudo-words without referential meaning: the purpose of these is to test children's ability to apply the grapheme-phoneme correspondences that they have learned. According to several respondents to a survey of schools conducted by Sheffield Hallam University on behalf of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, the non-words confuse children who have been taught (in the words of one teacher) “to try to make sense of what they read”. Arguing that "there is more to reading than just phonics", the UKLA report finds that the phonics check disadvantages successful readers; misidentifies pupils who are beyond this stage of development as readers; undermines pupils’ confidence as readers; and has negative implications for relationships with parents (UKLA 2012).



Bibliography:
http://www.syntheticphonics.com/synthetic_phonics.htm
Phonic Boom, By John Hodgson, NATE, Teaching English, Issue 4
http://www.mumsnet.com/learning/reading/what-are-reading-schemes