Phonics:

 

There are two different types of phonic systems: Synthetic Phonics and Analytic Phonics. Synthetic Phonics is the older approach and easier to explain. It is when the children are presented to 44 phonemes (letter’s sounds), they then will be able to recognise the letters at the start middle and end of the word. Once these are known they are taught to blend the letters into one word.

Analytic Phonics is more concentrated on the children’s experience of books. The way that it is taught is by looking at texts that children are familiar with then look at the initial letter then work to break down the rest of the word. Phonemes associated with particular graphemes are not pronounced alone. The children identify the common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the phoneme under study.

 

The article seems more pro synthetic phonics than analytic phonics. It seems like a very positive way of teaching, synthetic phonics, as they can learn up to 8 words in just over two weeks compared to analytic phonics which is one word in one week. Around 5,000 schools are teaching their children synthetic phonics. This is according to Thrass “(teaching handwriting, reading and spelling skills), that presents children as young as three or four with the 120 spelling choices in English via a system of grids, key images and chants.”

There are many advantages for synthetic phonics like: how fast paced it is means that it’s unlikely that the children will get bored and so will be able to read simple books about 11/12 weeks after starting to learn it. Another advantage is that they way that children are taught is by tracing and copy letters as they are learnt and they write correctly spelled words and phrases, will enable them to be more likely remembered. One more advantage is that children learn sounds that are represented by two letters at the same time as those written with one. So, they’re less likely to get confused when they see that individual letters sound different in different words. An example would be that they understand from an early age that an ‘e’ sounds different in ‘let’ than in ‘green’. They’ll also be able to read words like ‘mushroom’ with the same amount of ease as ‘cat’.

However there are some critics who say that even though phonics speeds up how fast a child can read words, it doesn’t help their understanding of what the words mean.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/the-sound-and-the-fury-of-the-phonic-boom-1096076.html

http://www.getreadingright.com.au/analytic-phonics-vs-synthetic-phonics/

http://www.childrens-books-and-reading.com/synthetic-phonics.html