Author:
Gabrielle Dowling
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Date Posted: 04:00:11 08/16/09 Sun
I started school at Easter 1965 at the age of 4 and a half. We did not have KG classes or nursery schools in those days and whilst I'm sure my parents and grandparents read stories to me, school would have been my introduction to education of any kind. We were taught to read using mainly the sight method. We had Janet and John books using repeated words such as 'This is Janet. This is John.' 'Run, Janet, run. Run, John, run.' The stories were not particularly exciting but they were about children the same age as us. The children came from a 'normal' family with 2 children, a mum, a dad and a dog. The books followed the children's life, from eating breakfast, playing, going to school, to going to bed. Along with the sight words, we were taught using what was possibly the first phonics programme: ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet). There were over 40 'signs' that represented letter sounds. For example 'oo' as in moon was like a rounded 'w' with a loop in the middle, while 'oo' as in wood did not have the loop. A for angel was an a and e together 'æ'. The main difference between ITA and today's phonic programmes is that we had to relearn how to spell at the age of about 7. The inventor of ITA, Sir James Pitman, believed that as children became fluent in the programme, they would become aware of conventional spelling and move seamlessly into the normal alphabet. This did not always happen! A child learning to read using Jolly Phonics or Letterland, for example, is taught correct spelling right from the beginning.
From what I can remember, we did not have worksheets (remember that we did not have photocopiers so any worksheets had to be typed and drawn onto a skin and manually printed on a drum printer – very time consuming and expensive), we were taught by copying from posters or from the blackboard into our exercise books. My grandfather, who was a primary school teacher, made flashcards to help me but these were the only other props that I had. Rather boring and confusing. ITA has left with me poor spelling, even after 44 years, and being an English teacher.
It is not just the teaching of reading that has changed over the years – the whole attitude to learning is different. Small children are taught in brightly coloured classrooms and learning through play has been proven to work, rather than teaching children 'parrot-fashion'. Teaching a child phonic sounds and giving them the knowledge to make and read words very early on gives a child confidence and keeps their interest. Teaching them songs to help remember the sounds, having pictures to colour and draw using those sounds, and giving them worksheets to complete that they cannot get wrong (to start with) can only be encouraging and helpful. Once a child can read even just a few words, there are many reading schemes to follow. My favourite is the Oxford Reading Tree. The stories are wonderful, the children can relate to the characters and the children love to read them. They start at a very easy level and progress at the child's own speed. The books are colourful and have wonderful illustrations. There are worksheets that help with the phonics work, progressing to comprehension. Everything works together.
This seems to be the way that most of the better known and proven phonics programmes work and work well. They teach quickly enabling a child to be able to read quickly, and write, keeping the child interested and his/her confidence high. I wish they had been around when I learnt to read.
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Learning to read, then and now.