"Hooked" on Phonics

So what is all the rave about Phonics?

As a non-U.S. born American, phonics for me are (or at least were) associated with the craze of American parents trying to get their very young children reading before they start school, or the magic pill to get them to be excellent readers -the best in their class if possible- in the early grades. Teachers and school as expected to make the phonics system the key cornerstone of early reading practices.

This week's reading enhanced that feeling initially. As I was going from page to page, chapter to chapter, I felt as if someone was trying to sell me their product, their product being Phonics!!! Now, on principle I dislike being presented with a one sided argument, idea, or approach to things, specially when in a learning context. I much rather be presented with the multiple pieces and options, their pros and cons and allowed to form my own judgement as to their individual merit. (Can you tell there were some emotions developing here at this point?). So I decided to educate myself on the topic outside of the mandatory readings. As a habit (perhaps from doing research) one of the first places I look up are the original sources used to create the document, in this case those chapters in our textbook.

One of the sources I found most enlightening for myself is the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read from 2006 available online at the National Institute of Health website. The report's findings and recommendations are primarily based on meta-analyses of original educational research relevant to each area addressed. Under the section "Findings and Determinations" the panel presents the impact results from multiple teaching approaches, among them phonics. And yes, "systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulty learning to read". They also note the need for caution "in giving a blanket endorsement" to all phonics instruction. The report remarks how phonics onto themselves are of little use; the key to their value as a teaching strategy lying in the student's ability to apply that knowledge successfully to their reading and writing.

The most fascinating point made by the report for me, is that phonemic awareness (PA), which is the ability to "focus on and manipulate phonemes in spoken syllables and words" not to be confused with phonics, was found to be "the cause of improvement in students' phonemic awareness, reading and spelling" after receiving PA training. In this case, causality can be attributed to PA training because these findings have been replicated numerous times, across time, in a variety of settings and while consistent improvements are seen in reading and spelling, no improvements were reported for areas of knowledge such as math. This pretty much discounts the possibility of the improvements in reading and spelling being due to simple growth and maturation from the students.

Another interesting note consists of the finding that guided oral reading has a positive impact in such areas like word recognition, fluency and comprehension, while independent silent reading practices, even those dedicating large amounts of time to the activity, have not yet provided "sufficient research evidence" to claim "that such efforts reliably increase how much students read or [ ] improved reading skills." They call for more carefully conducted research to be carried in this area, specially since so many programs do include fair amounts of time to silent reading.