19. Should I use 'Allographs' to support Phono-Graphix?

We don't use Allographs, nor do we recommend it. The following review of Allographs in our parenTeacher magazine explains why.

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Phono-Graphix was developed by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness between the years of 1990 and 1993. It was first copyright protected in the Summer of 1993. Read America was established by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness, that same year, to test their newly completed Phono-Graphix method. The results of that testing were published in 1996 in the Orton Annals of Dyslexia, the research journal of the International Dyslexia Society. Allographs was developed by Diane McGuinness during that same period. Although the authors of these two programmes took interest in one another's work, there was no collaboration on these projects.

Read America receives hundreds of calls reflecting confusion between the two programmes. Some confusion is inevitable because of the shared name. Confusion may be compounded because Diane McGuinness's book 'Why Children Can't Read' describes the tested theories and practices of Phono-Graphix and the untested theories and practices of Allographs without a clear explanation of which is which; and in chapter eleven describes Phono-Graphix 'Discovery Mapping' and 'Sound Search' lessons under the heading 'Allographs In Practice'.

We hope this review of Allographs also offers the reader an explanation of the methodological differences between Allographs and Phono-Graphix.

Allographs is a reading and spelling programme consisting of a dictionary, stories, worksheets and manual. The programme is based on Diane McGuinness's theory of probability structure. This is the idea that children must learn all the ways to show a sound in the order of the likelihood of their occurrence, and at every position in a word--beginning, middle and end. This is contrary to Phono-Graphix, the premise of which is that children must explicitly understand the sound picture nature of the code in order to have implicit use of the elements of the code. For instance, Read America's Phono-Graphix lesson Discovery Mapping (shown below), asks the child to organize words under the heading of the sound pictures. The order of likelihood is not explicitly taught in Phono-Graphix, and there is no separate instruction for sound pictures in various positions in words.

In contrast to this, Allographs categorizes according to where the sound occurs in the word, and the likelihood of occurrence for each spelling in each position in the word. This adds two variables to instruction;

1. position of sounds in words
2. order of occurrence of spelling.

The result in looks like this.

beginning	middle	end
1 oat	1 boat	1 throw
2 own	2 flown	2 toe
3 ode	3 note	3 though
4 only	4 most

In our pilot study of Allographs we found explicit instruction in these variables to be redundant information, over-explicit and developmentally unsound, turning a simple five sound picture into a messy eleven sound pictures.

Allographs goes on to teach the child what it calls an expectancy for the sound. As it turns out, expectancy is an alias for a phonics rule. So the expectancy for 'oe' is that 'oe' is spelled 1 o, 2 ow, 3 oa, 4 oe at the beginnings of words, 1 oa, 2 oe, 3 o, 4 ow at the middles of words, and 1 ow, 2 oe, 3 o, 4 ough at the ends of words.

More Redundancy

Having criticized the teaching of on-set and rime at length in Why Children Can't Read, Allographs teaches on-sets, aka blends, under the alias of the Allographs term clusters. Teaching blends or clusters is unnecessary. If a child knows f and r, there is no need to teach him fr. During pilot testing we found this practice to confuse the nature of the code, which is sound pictures (f and r) not sounds pictures (fr). In addition to this confusion, Allographs submits its clusters to the scrutiny of probability structure, teaching the ways to show 'fr' at the beginnings and ends of words. So where the child already knows f ph and r, he must also learn fr and phr, turning three things to remember into five, with no new information. The instructional goal of Allographs is that the beginning reader should recognize that this spelling of 'black' bleack is wrong, because he knows the expectancy which teaches that the cluster 'bl' is only spelled ble at the ends of words. In contrast, Phono-Graphix understands that children learn the subtlety of the code in practice. Once the child is reading he'll see and read black and other words containing the adjacent consonant sounds 'b' and 'l' lots of times and he'll see that bleack looks wrong.

A Few More Considerations

Despite the fact that Why Children Can't Read, spends a full chapter on criticism of phonics programmes that teach "from the letter to the sound", Allographs goes on to teach what it calls e controlled vowels. If "letters were invented to represent sounds" how could the letter e (or any letter) "control" a sound? Also troubling is that Allographs doesn't teach the phonological processing skills of segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation that are critical to good reading and spelling, despite the fact that the manual warns that "research has shown that at the end of first grade, 30% of children lack these skills." Perhaps the most worrying criticism of Allographs is the lack of research evidence. To quote Why Children Can't Read, "The Proof is in the Pudding".

In Summary

Allographs takes the 140 sound pictures of English and teaches them times three, dependent upon whether they occur at the beginnings, middles or ends of words, bringing the Allographs code to 420 characters. Add the 174 clusters at the beginnings and ends of words and you've got a code of 768 characters. In addition to this, the child is expected to remember the probability structure of each sound. In pilot testing we found that the sound picture nature of the code is obscured in all this. Our conclusion is that Allographs complicates the orthographic code, while ignoring phonological skills necessary for reading and spelling, setting aside at the classroom door what Why Children Can't Read preaches.

20. My child's blending is not getting better. What should I do?

Some children have more trouble learning to push sounds together into meaningful words than others. The following article from our parenTeacher magazine will help you determine why your child is having a blending problem and how to help him.

Sam is a five year old with a blending problem. The problem, Sam doesn't know that there's a relationship between the individual sounds he says, and the word he then forwards. It's just a party trick to Sam--sound... sound... sound... word. Sam could have been ten and been in the same shape, still harbouring the same misconception that saying sounds is some hoop that adults make you jump through before you can guess the word, or that you're supposed to know the word and then say the sounds and then say the word. In short, the sounds and the word are unrelated party tricks that adults require, much like washing hands and eating. What's to be done with Sam? Here's the ticket.

"Sam, this word is 'cat'. When you say the sounds, you'll hear the word happening. Let's give 'cat' a try." Listen as Sam says the sounds 'c' 'a' 't'. Then say, "'cat', well done. It sounded like 'cat' to me." Move on to another word, telling Sam the word each time. By hearing the sounds while listening for a word you already know to listen for, the relationship is learned!

Glenda is a nine year old with a long time reading problem. She's essentially a non-reader, with a sight word vocabulary getting her to about six years, one month. After saying the sounds in words she tends to guess any word that ends with the same two last sounds. Often the last sound is repeated at the front of the word. So for instance, 'm' 'o' 'p' is 'pop', and 's' 'a' 'd' is 'dad'. What's to be done with Glenda? Try this.

"If that's 'pop', there would be a 'p' here (pointing to the 'm'), and there isn't. Say the sounds again please." This time after she says the first two sounds say, "So far you've got 'mo'" then point to the 'p'. After doing some like this, lay down a word and ask her what she's got so far after she says the first two sounds. Once she's blended the first two sounds point to the last sound picture. Without this intervention Glenda might have ended up an eighteen year old in the same shape.

Joe is a seven year old with a reading problem. He's much improved over earlier this year. He knows a lot of the code and says the sounds as he reads, but often he gets frustrated after he says the sounds and can't generate a word. Sometimes he reverts to guessing. His guesses are often words that contain a sound in the word he's reading. So 'cat', might be read as 'cab' or 'cap'. What's the problem? Joe is not very good at word retrieval. He gets an inkling of the word and then it's gone. He doesn't know that he needs to reach for words once he's heard all the sounds. Here's what to do with Joe.

Lay out three pictures from the Phono-Graphix kit or from a magazine. Choose pictures of similar words like 'fat', 'cap' and 'cat'. Write one of the words or choose a word card from the Phono-Graphix kit, for instance 'cap'. Before you lay down the word say, "This word is going to be one of these 'fat', 'cap', or 'cat'. Listen to the sounds as you say them and try to tell which word you hear." This will give Joe the experience of word finding within appropriate confines.