Phono-Graphix was the first reading method to describe the nature of the code and the skills needed to teach such a code. The approach described as, “The Antithesis of Phonics” by Daily Telegraph education editor John Clare (30 May, 1998) and “Revolutionary” by The Daily Mail education correspondent Dianna Appleyard (28 September, 1998) is simple and pure relying heavily on logic and knowledge of how children learn.

Phono-Graphix teaches:

The Skills Needed to Read

-segmenting

-blending

-phoneme manipulation

and the lessons for discovery of:

The Nature of the Code

-letters are pictures of sounds

-a sound can be represented with two or more letters

some sound-pictures can be represented with two or more letters

-there is variation in the code, more than one way to show most sounds

-there is overlap in the code, some sound pictures represent more than one sound

Also forwarded as fundamental to Phono-Graphix principles and practices is:

the understanding that children are motivated to learn through their own errors

a systematic scheme for correction of all errors made during lessons

lesson design that allows children to confirm information being told to them by the instructor

the inclusion of children’s literature throughout the instructional scheme

teacher flexibility within the framework of the scope and sequence of the programme

The method is widely recognised today as being the breakthrough approach to teaching segmenting, previously believed to be unteachable to young children (Bradley and Bryant, 1986), and being the first method to understand and lay out an instructional scheme for teaching the nature of the code to young children.

In 1998 Britain was ready for something new. Traditional Phonics instruction, sometimes in vogue but never the favourite of teachers, seemed stale in comparison. Real Books instruction was under serious scrutiny. Early numbers on onset and rime and word families were not promising. The timing was ripe for Phono-Graphix. Research on Phono-Graphix published in the Orton Annals of Dyslexia (McGuinness, C., et al, 1996) had recently rocked the literacy world. With standard score gains of 14 points in word reading and 19 points in word attack in just six to twelve hours of instruction, Phono-Graphix was now eight times faster than the next best literacy method available, Lindamood, and fourteen times faster than the tried and true old favourite Orton-Gillingham. In addition to the research to back it up, the developers of Phono-Graphix had in hand a parent how-to book, released in Britain by Penguin UK (1998) the year after the US FreePress edition was released. The method also came with the endorsement of Diane McGuinness, author of ‘Why Children Can’t Read’, touting Phono-Graphix as “the most powerful reading method, the purest and most efficient way to teach a child to read.” It was in this aura of excitement about the new Phono-Graphix method, that the developers of the scheme and authors of this article were invited to participate in the metamorphosis of Britain’s literacy instruction.

Britain’s answer to 30% of its nine-year-olds reading below competency came in the form of a mandate. The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was put into practice in 1998. It was meant as the definitive word on how literacy should be taught in English schools. In its design, the engineers of the NLS reached out to proponents of literature based instruction, traditional phonics instruction, more contemporary phonics instruction like onset and rime and word families, and they reached out to the new paradigm on the block, Phono-Graphix. Between 1998 and 2000 the authors consulted with the head of the NLS, Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted) chief inspector Jim Rose and head of Ofsted’s primary section Keith Lloyd, and various officers of what is now known as the Department of Education and Skills (DfES). Consultation included Mr. Rose and Mr. Lloyd’s visit to New Jersey schools to observe Phono-Graphix classroom instruction, six meetings in London, a dozen or so presentations of the principles and practices of Phono-Graphix to groups of Ofsted school inspectors around the country, and participation in the Conference on Phonics, March, 1999. During these consultations the authors forwarded the principles and practices of Phono-Graphix for inclusion in the National Literacy Strategy.

According to the engineers of the NLS the final document provided for a perfect blend of phonic and literature based instruction. From the perspective of the authors of this article the NLS contained enough of a description of the four concepts that comprise the nature of the code and the three skills needed to access such a code to allow a slow but steady revolution of thought. Also carefully written into the NLS was the teacher freedom needed to allow the spread of the principles and practices of Phono-Graphix. Indeed our principles and practices presentations to Ofsted inspectors in 1999 and 2000 and the observations of Ofsted inspectors in schools using Phono-Graphix resulted in these words appearing on Ofsted’s website in 2001 "The innovative Phono-Graphix method demystifies phonics by throwing out the rules and re-emphasising the nature of the code-sound to symbol. Phono-Graphix emphasises the representation of the sound as the children actually hear it. The progress for language and literacy is outstanding." We were very happy with the progression of events. As we have long heard from teachers trying to wedge Phono-Graphix into a fixed system, a little Phono-Graphix is better than a lot of anything else.

Unfortunately the other consultants to the NLS did not share the sentiment of the authors of this article regarding the amount of their particular choice of instructional approach that made its way into the final draft of the NLS. The glow of camaraderie that had existed during the information gathering stage of the NLS had long faded. After its official roll-out and a year or two of observation and closer analysis, considerable criticism of the NLS began to surface from both sides. According to proponents of literature based instruction the NLS contained far too much of a phonic element. According to traditional phonics proponents it contained far too much literature based instruction, as well as the wrong kind of phonic instruction, such as onset and rime and word families. The inevitable factions formed, which quickly fattened to lobby proportions. Tom Burkard of the Promethean Trust and the collaborative efforts of Mona McNee’s organisation, the Reading Reform Foundation represent the two lobby groups that have been most vocal in forwarding Synthetic Phonics.

Very quickly after the roll out of the National Literacy Strategy came the first of what has come to be know as ‘the Clackmannanshire papers’ distinguishing between Analytic and Synthetic Phonics and comparing the effects of each in classroom practice in Clackmannanshire Scotland. Now the two factions had a banner under which to stand. In the year 2000 in Britain, if you taught reading you were either Analytic Phonics or Synthetic Phonics. Phono-Graphix, you might say, got caught in the early cross-fire. The first Clackmannanshire paper looked very promising for Synthetic Phonics. The Analytic faction refined their arguments. In the light of history it might be said that the Synthetic faction got lazy at this point, resting on the name and the fame of Clackmannanshire. Phono-Graphix just kept on with the momentum we’d gained in the previous two years. With brilliant data coming in from field studies being run around the country, both the Analytic faction and the Synthetic faction had an eye to pull the fledgling paradigm under its banner. Within the two week period after the release of the first Clackmannanshire paper the authors of this article received phone calls or emails from every major paper in the country asking if we were Analytic or Synthetic Phonics. It was about this time that Trevor McDonald’s News Night ran a segment on the spread of Phono-Graphix in Britain. Our appearance on Trevor McDonald went a long way to maintain Phono-Graphix early momentum, but still the pressure was on to commit one’s soul and one’s data to one side or the other.

The question of analyisis or synthesis never seemed a serious one to these authors. No matter how deep we dug into the instructional practices of Synthetic Phonics, and no matter who we asked, we could not find anything about it that was new or different to the Phonics we had written about in our 1998 book ‘Reading Reflex’; the same Phonics that had left twenty to thirty per cent of our children illiterate during two historical rises to instructional prominence. We always believed that the rigour of Phono-Graphix and its pure logic would distinguish it from Synthetic Phonics. Surely anyone with an eye toward truth would not consider a method that taught three skills and the entire nature of the code, an equal to a method which held as its central premise- blend, blend, blend. If we were guilty of anything it was of not digging in our heels deeper still, not taking seriously the heat building around the debate, and the determination Synthetic Phonics lobbies held to place Phono-Graphix and its data under their banner. It was about this time that the authors began a three year process that was to result in the adoption into our family of two daughters from China. Lily joined our family in March of 2002 after a very stressful 15 month wait for her, in a period that saw new threats to international relations with the events of 911, US intelligence planes shot down on the South China coast and an international ban on travel to China with the SARS epidemic. After finally bringing Lily home we stopped long enough to host our Essential Education Conference in New Orleans, commence our member publications scheme resulting in a new product line, and launch our member eZine parenTeacher.net. Then in February of 2004 it was back to China for baby Rose. The authors confess that holding the Analytic and Synthetic demons at the gates was not the top priority on our minds at the time—though all the while we’d been clear in our communications with the lobby on both sides, that we did not consider Phono-Graphix to be Analytic or Synthetic, but rather a third paradigm entirely and the only one that addressed the four concepts that comprise the nature of the code, the skills needed to read and spell such a code, and did so in keeping with what we know about how children learn.

As 2005 came to a close, the Rose Interim Review was published. It lays out a brand of Synthetic Phonics quite different to what we have heard, seen, or read about to date from the two lobby groups forwarding it. It is important to the outcome that the distinction between Pre-Rose Review and Post-Rose Review Synthetic Phonics be drawn—important because this single document might be the greatest motion toward correcting phonic mislogic and misinstruction ever to have been accomplished. Indeed where Clackmannanshire has been called ‘the Holy Grail of literacy instruction’, the Rose Review might well be the Rosetta Stone. Quite literally Rose has translated Synthetic Phonics through the lens of the Phono-Graphix paradigm by including the three skills needed to read and spell and the four concepts that comprise the nature of the code, and specifying that these be taught in a literature rich environment. This, despite the fact that until his review, Synthetic Phonics instruction did not include two of these skills (segmenting and phoneme manipulation), or two of the concepts that comprise the nature of the code (variation in the code and overlap in the code), and specifically excluded children’s literature. This distinction between what Synthetic Phonics was and what Synthetic Phonics is (according to Rose) is like night and day; and if taken to heart by Synthetic Phonics practitioners, authors of textbooks, teacher trainers, and the like, will result in the difference between the 14-20% failure we have received to date from Synthetic Phonics, and the 2-3% failure we’ve been promised.

The purpose of this article is to:

1. Outline Synthetic Phonics theory and practice as established by the two lobby groups forwarding it prior to the Rose Interim Report. This section is presented in two parts:

What we can gather from the Promethean Trust

What we can gather from the Reading Reform Foundation.

2. Outline Synthetic Phonics theory and practice as described in the text of the Rose Interim Report published on 1 December, 2005.

3. Distinguish between these for historical record.

4. Illuminate the path forward, with no confusion between Pre- and Post Rose Review Synthetic Phonics.

5. Clarify for historical record, that Phono-Graphix never fitted into the Pre-Rose Report definition of Synthetic Phonics. Specifically we wish to avoid being discarded with Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics, should its proponents fail to adapt the method to the definition provided for in the Rose Interim Report.

In its position statement paper ‘The End of Illiteracy - the holy grail of Clackmanannanshire’ presented to the Centre for Policy Studies and the Conference on Phonics in March 1999, the Promethean Trust describes Synthetic Phonics in these words:

all of the letter sounds are taught very rapidly

the emphasis is on blending sounds

can be taught in a few months

Given the recent rather heated debate in Britain over the importance of Synthetic Phonics, it's tempting to think there must be more to it than speed, letter sounds and blending, but the paper’s author and the founder of the Promethean Trust, Tom Burkard confirms that indeed there is nothing more to it than that, on page 21 saying, "the central concept of synthetic phonics is that children should invariably sound out unknown words." Indeed if one took Burkard's Promethean Trust lead in 1999 one would assume that Synthetic Phonics is just a new name for the old and obvious practice of blending sounds together.

“So why the stew?” our readers might ask. “Blending is good, yes?” Indeed it is, but a reading method it is not, and to suggest that the baby, the bath water, the soap and indeed the towel be allowed to slide down the drain with forty years of research is a bit of a big lump to swallow. This in combination with Burkard’s courting of Phono-Graphix for a place under the Synthetic Phonics banner, earns the subject some space in this paper. Implying that Phono-Graphix is Synthetic Phonics is like saying that a rainbow is red. Yes, of course there is red in a rainbow, and blending in Phono-Graphix, but there is also the vast array of other colors in the spectrum. Phono-Graphix doesn’t stop at one of the three skills needed to read, nor does it stop at the skills alone, but indeed goes on to describe why we need these skills via the four concepts of the nature of the code.

There was a large body of research available at the time Burkard’s paper was released. The authors know that Burkard reached out to at least two researchers contributing to this. Between July 1998 and February 1999 Tom Burkard and the authors shared over fifty emails in which he was given explicit detail about the theories and procedures employed in Phono-Graphix (‘Phono-Graphix- a new method for remediating reading problems’, Orton Annals of Dyslexia, McGuinness, C., et al, 1996; ‘Reading Reflex’, McGuinness, C. and McGuinness, G., FreePress, 1998; Penguin 1999), In these emails we also firmly argued against Burkard’s notion that Phono-Graphix fell under the banner of Synthetic Phonics. In addition to our concerns about the absence of phonological training in Synthetic Phonics, ie segmenting and phoneme manipulation; another consideration in these email communications and in reading his subsequent paper, is the lack of operationalisation of the term 'letter sounds'. What exactly does Synthetic Phonics mean by letter sounds?

Despite these concerns, and many hours and months spent in communications, Tom Burkard did in fact include the above referenced study and three other Phono-Graphix studies in his position paper on Synthetic Phonics. In fact, four Phono-Graphix studies, five Jolly Phonics studies, and two other studies employing less well known methods, were the only studies mentioned as representative of Synthetic Phonics in Burkard’s paper. Might someone reading his paper and also familiar with Phono-Graphix, in the absence of anything but vague reference to blending and letter sounds, surmise that Synthetic Phonics includes instruction in the skills of segmenting and phoneme manipulation; and lessons in the four concepts comprising the nature of the code as described in the Phono-Graphix data?

- letters are pictures of sounds

- some sound pictures are represented with two or more letters

- there is variation in the code

- there is overlap in the code

Certainly not! Indeed if one read the full body of Burkard’s paper with prior knowledge of Phono-Graphix one would be left bemused as to why Phono-Graphix studies were included in such a vague and methodless dissertation—methodless but for teaching letter sounds and blending. These authors went to great lengths to help Mr. Burkard understand why the skills of segmenting and phoneme manipulation were also important to reading and spelling. In order to learn a sound symbol code one must be able to access the segmented sound. In able to use a code that contains overlap one must be able to pull sounds in and out of words, trying them until meaning is accomplished.

Bread is good with jam.

ea = ‘ee’ ‘ae’ ‘e’

Despite these efforts, on pages 29 and 30 Burkard goes to great lengths to explain to the reader why instruction in segmentation is, in his opinion, not needed: "The role of ‘phonemic awareness’ is frequently misunderstood," Burkard explains. He goes on to point to a 1991 Australian study ('Experimental Analysis of the Child’s Discovery of the Alphabetic Principle', Byrne; in C. Perfetti and L. Rieben (eds) Learning to Read, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991, p. 83.), and claims Perfetti and Rieben forwarded the idea that, "phonemic awareness by itself is not enough to produce alphabetic insights. That, "knowledge of phoneme identity [letter sounds] is a firmer foundation for discovering the alphabetic principle than is segmentation ability." Has Burkard successfully convinced the reader to cast aside segmenting as a requisite skill to reading? Unfortunately his organisation has helped keep the wool over the eyes of the majority of English parents who feel that blending is the single key element to successful reading.

But even a casual read of the reference reveals that his words are a gross misrepresentation of what Perfetti and Rieben actually said vis-a-vis Byrne. In fact Perfetti and Rieben’s reference (above) to Byrne's study contains no mention whatsoever of segmenting. Specifically what the authors say is, "Other laboratory studies with children have shown how difficult acquiring letter-sound correspondences can be in the absence of instruction. Byrne (1991) taught young children to read one-syllable words by pairing the words with their meanings; for example, fat was associated with a picture of a fat boy and bat was associated with a picture of a bat. Then, with the pictures withdrawn, the children demonstrated that they could read the words alone. One might think that the children had inferred that the f made the sound /f/, because the f was the only letter that distinguished fat from bat and the phoneme /f/ was the only sound that distinguished the spoken word “fat” from “bat.” But instead, the children were unable to demonstrate that they had learned this association. When they were asked to judge whether the printed word fun said “fun” or “bun,” their responses were incorrect about as often as they were correct. Thus, in at least some conditions, children do not spontaneously infer letter-sound correspondences on the basis of being able to read whole words. This finding reinforces the importance of teaching children directly what they need to learn.”

This misrepresentation of Petfetti and Rieben for the justification of teaching the sole skill of blending in the absence of segmenting is alarming. What Perfetti and Rieben actually say about segmenting appears further on in the paper in two passages:

1. “The phonological system is especially important for learning to read because, as we have observed, writing is a means representing speech. What are the child’s phonological abilities? An important part of the answer to this question is whereas the basics of speech perception are acquired rapidly, mental representations of abstract phonological structure undergo further refinement well into the period when children begin to be exposed to writing. Newborns can discriminate all the sounds (phonemes) that occur in spoken languages. Exposure to the sounds of one’s native language, however, appears to reduce this ability; by 12 months, infants readily discriminate only the sounds of their native language (Werker & Lalonde, 1988). Note, however, that completely reliable discrimination between words that differ by only a single speech segment do not develop until the beginning of age 5 (Gerken, 1994).”

2. “Treiman and Cassar’s findings reflect the difficulty of reliably segmenting syllables into phonemes and reinforce the conclusion that full awareness of phonemes is difficult to achieve prior to literacy. But the broader implication is that one underestimates the child’s potential grasp of the alphabetic principle—or at least the idea that speech sounds are associated with letters—if one considers only decoding. Spelling is the primary early indicator of this potential and can form the basis for later expression of the alphabetic principle in decoding."

What Mr. Burkard suggests in his misrepresentation of Perfetti and Rieben, when he says, "...knowledge of phoneme identity is a firmer foundation for discovering the alphabetic principle than is segmentation ability," takes the same logic of Analytic Phonics, ie, that you can teach blending with already blended phonemes as in onset and rime; and applies that logic to segmenting, ie you can teach segmenting in already segmented phonemes.

Burkard goes on to say, "The starting point of synthetic phonics is the fact that: the word recognition skills of the good reader are so rapid, automatic, and efficient that the skilled reader need not rely on contextual information. In fact, it is poor readers who guess from context – out of necessity because their decoding skills are so weak." For this he references researcher Keith Stanovich ('How Research might inform the Debate about Early Reading Acquisition'; Journal of Research in Reading 18:2, 1995). Burkard goes on to make this leap, "Since it is implausible that children can become good readers by encouraging them to use the skill of poor readers, synthetic phonics programmes begin by teaching children to recognise, articulate and blend the 42 to 44 basic sounds of English before they are introduced to books," lending his tortured logic to the Synthetic Phonics' practice of withholding books from young children until they can read, in the name of a researcher who neither said, nor implied any such thing.

Is this leap just sloppy logic, or is it an intentional attempt to mislead? One need look no further than Burkard’s own admission as to his devices in his words written about Keith Stanovich on the Reading Reform Foundation forum in December of 2005: "Although I agree that Stanovich, in common with most American psychologists, is working under some pretty fundamental misapprehension, we should never forget that he has been one of the most persuasive foes of Goodman, Smith, et al. I agree with Jenny [Chew]--he shouldn't be dismissed too lightly. I have cited him on a number of occasions."

And how long exactly does Burkard suggest we withhold books from children? He explains, "In the Clackmannanshire trials, pupils were first taught the sounds for the letters ‘s’, ‘a’, ‘t’, ‘p’, ‘i’, and ‘n’. They were then taught to blend these sounds into words (eg ‘pat’, ‘sit’, ‘nap’, ‘tin’) within a matter of a week or two," and goes on to suggest that all the one letter to one sound code can be learned in nine weeks, and says, "... their introduction to literature is not long delayed." But Mr. Burkard does not go on to tell us what children's literature contains only phonemes spelt with single letters? In fact these children would presumably be given the so called 'decodable reader' after nine weeks, and real children's literature would be withheld until the end of the following year when the entire code had been taught and some degree of fluency established.

Just how seriously do Synthetic Phonics teachers take the doctrine that children should not be exposed to books until they can read? We have interviewed two teachers and a parent volunteer from three different education authorities who have told us that they were directed not to show the pages when reading stories to the class for fear the children might remember whole words of text. Indeed there is some evidence that this practice is tightening. The Sound-Write method is an unauthorised copy of Phono-Graphix. Its training course and its teaching file read almost word for word like Phono-Graphix training and the Phono-Graphix Word Work manual. Despite the plagiarising of Phono-Graphix, there are distinct and glaring differences between the copy and the original. Phono-Graphix classroom practice puts children in real text from the start of instruction. Our Buddy Reading Lesson and particular error correction techinques employ real children’s books in discovery of the code. In stark contrast Sounds-Write withholds not only books but indeed any written words, until children can read. David Philpot, one of the organisers of the plagiarising of Phono-Graphix into Sounds-Write, wrote these very alarming words on the Reading Reform Foundation website in December 2005: “Children with good visual memories can sight memorize very rapidly after only one or two presentations. It's the obvious default strategy for learning to read if you don't know the alphabet code or are being taught it badly. This is why things like text in the environment are so awful, ie putting labels on things such as a card with door written on it in large letters pinned to the nursery door.” In our paper, ‘It’s all Greek to Me: a review of Sounds-Write data, comparison to Phono-Graphix data, and a discussion of what went wrong in the translation from the Phono-Graphix to the Synthetic Phonics paradigm’ (this issue) we discuss in detail what we believe to be the explanation for the lower gains gotten from application of the copy as opposed to the original Phono-Graphix.

On page 18 of his paper, Burkard says, "The key findings of the Clackmannanshire Study [the first paper] can be summarised as follows:

children who had been taught analytic phonics were reading one month behind their chronological age and spelling two to three months behind their chronological age. Children who had been taught synthetic phonics were reading seven months ahead of their chronological age and spelling seven months ahead of their chronological age"

In the fullness of time it turned out that these were not the "key findings" of what was to become a seven year longitudinal study (The Effects of Synthetic Phonics Teaching on Reading and Spelling Attainment- a seven year longitudinal study; Johnston and Watson, 2005). In the final paper the researchers report that by Primary 7 (eleven years of age) 14% of the students taught with Synthetic Phonics were two or more years behind in reading comprehension. This may well be the key finding of Clackmannanshire. Where a rigourous thinker would begin to reassess in the light of these findings—wondering if perhaps that key element of segmenting that is said to correlate so highly with comprehension BOTH read and heard, doesn’t deserve at least a second look—Burkard has instead established a solid disbelief in the existence of comprehension as anything separate to reading itself, and has, through his continued lobby and in the light of the Clackmannanshire results, brought this notion forward into the working model of Synthetic Phonics. The following were posted on the Reading Reform Foundation forum by Tom Burkard on 19 and 20 November, 2005.

"The concept of 'reading comprehension' is central to whole language mythology. If it is not possible to teach it as a decontextualised skill, then the whole house of cards falls to pieces...

Unfortunately, the notion that there is such a thing as reading comprehension has been so well engrained by a century's propaganda that it is difficult to fight it."

"As Kenneth Goodman once said, "We can define reading to be anything we choose". So I am all with Geraldine Rodgers in sticking with the definition that reading is decoding...

This is why I maintain that the concept of 'reading comprehension' is unhelpful and misleading...

In thinking of comprehension as a part of reading pedagogy, we are effectively ceding the argument to the whole language lobby. Decoding is what children should be taught in their first year of school. After that, you have another 11 years to teach them whatever you choose."

In his seminal work, 'Structure of Scientific Revolution' Thomas Kuhn addressed in detail the behaviour and thought processes of experts in a field in the light of important findings in their field, findings that are viewed by some as revolutionary in that they change the present course of thinking in the field. Kuhn’s words are strikingly relevant to Burkard’s maneuvering regarding comprehension. In chapter eight 'The Response to Crisis' Kuhn said that some experts in the field, "devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict," rather than rethinking their theories in the light of new findings. Burkard appears to have done just that when faced with the reality that at the end of seven years, 14% of the Clackmannanshire students were two or more years behind in comprehension, when on the Reading Reform Foundation forum Burkard recently wrote, "As I have said, I do not believe comprehension exists as a separate measure to reading itself."

The degree of seriousness the reader assigns to this twisting of research findings, might be heightened by the knowledge that Burkard recently claimed on the Reading Reform Foundation forum that he is writing a text book about Synthetic Phonics. This will presumably follow suit to his position paper with numerous reference to researchers who Burkard believes are, "working under some pretty fundamental misapprehensions," so long as he can twist their findings to fit Synthetic Phonics doctrine.

In his aforementioned 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, Thomas Kuhn lends extensive discussion to how Burkard style textbooks effectively interrupt the natural dissemination of new findings. In chapter eleven Kuhn said of text books, "A field's texts must be rewritten in the aftermath of a scientific revolution. Once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the existence and significance of the revolutions that produced them. The resulting textbooks truncate the scientist's sense of his discipline's history and supply a substitute for what they eliminate. More often than not, they contain very little history at all. In the rewrite, earlier scientists are represented as having worked on the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution and method has made seem scientific. Why dignify what science's best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard?"

In its May 2001 newsletter the Reading Reform Foundation made its debut to lobby status in the paper ‘The Reading Reform Foundation is calling for’. The paper was brief, listing eight demands. These might have escaped the notice of the authors of this article if not for another article in which the author Geraldine Carter claimed there are four main synthetic phonics programmes:

i. Accelerated Reading and Spelling with Synthetic Phonics  researched and developed by Dr. Joyce E. Watson and Dr. Rhona S. Johnston, School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews.

ii. Best Practice Phonics developed by Ruth Miskin, former headmistress of Kobi Nazrul School, Tower Hamlets.

iii. Phono-Graphix developed in Florida [1990-1992] by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness, introduced to the UK in 1998.  

iv. Jolly Phonics developed by Sue Lloyd and Sara Wernham

Given this renewed claim that Phono-Graphix fell under the Synthetic Phonics banner (now two years on from Tom Burkard’s claim and our thorough explanation to the contrary in numerous emails and at the Conference on Phonics; the article titled ‘Old Habits Die Hard’ had an eerie secondary meaning at Phono-Graphix headquarters. Why were the Synthetic Phonics lobbies so intent, once again, on claiming Phono-Graphix fit under their umbrella? In light of increased attention to Synthetic Phonics practice; its focus on blending to the exclusion of the other skills needed to read and spell, its instruction of only about 40% of the English sound symbol code, and the practice of withholding children’s literature from pre-literate children, the authors of this article were alarmed at the appearance of Phono-Graphix on a Reading Reform Foundation list of Synthetic Phonics programmes. A request for more information on this and several articles appearing in that same newsletter was submitted to the Reading Reform Foundation in the Winter of 2002. To this day, nearly four years on, we have not received a response to these questions, now restated many times and in many venues. Instead of answers the Reading Reform foundation deletes every post we, or any of our members, make to its forum.

In the same Spring 2001 newsletter in the article titled 'A comparison of the pace of Synthetic Phonics teaching and the DfEE directives', Sue Lloyd (the developer of Jolly Phonics) claims, "Synthetic phonics provides the necessary skills that enable the majority to read and write above their chronological age. The 20% of children who have literacy problems still have a good foundation of the basics and just need more time and input." We asked then, and the question remains unanswered today, if someone affiliated with the Reading Reform Foundation would explain by what determination they have come to the conclusion that, "The 20% of children who have literacy problems still have a good foundation of the basics and just need more time and input." In the final paper of the Clackmannanshire study, published in February of 2005 six years on the authors used an arbitrary assignment of “two or more years behind” to discuss “underachievers” and report that by Primary 7 14% of students were two or more years behind their peers in reading comprehension. The reader might ask, as the authors of this article have done, are these the same students who “just needed more time and input” after the first year of instruction and were then six moths behind? And by what determination the authors of the Clackmannanshire paper decided that six months behind should be used to determined “underachievement” at the end of Year 1 and two years behind should be used to determine “underachievement” in Primary 7. And if we applied the same criterion as a general distribution of scores on a standardised reading inventory, to the two groups, as opposed to arbitrary assignment of “two or more years behind”, the number “of underachievers” would still be somewhere in the region of 20%.

In that same paper the author lists these activities for 4-5 year old children:

"Learn letter sounds"

The reader might ask, as these authors did, what research backs the need for teaching children the sounds of their native language, or are you referring only to foreign speakers?

"Know the blending technique: If the short vowel does not work try the long one."

The reader might ask, as we did, what are "long vowel" and "short vowel"?

"Learn to recognise alternative sounds ay, a-e, ea, igh, y, i-e, ow, o-e, ew, u-e, oy, ir, ur"

The reader might ask, as the authors of this article did, what is meant by "alternative sounds" in the context of this teaching guideline? Are the Reading Reform Foundation suggesting that these digraphs each have multiple sounds associated to them?

"Learn 20 more irregular words."

The reader might ask, as we did, for examples of "irregular words" and ask by what criteria they are irregular?

"Know the principles of ‘soft c’ and ‘soft g’."

The readers might ask, as we did, for an explanation of "the principles of ‘soft c’ and ‘soft g’."?

In June of 2005 Reading Reform Foundation board member, Jenny Chew, presented a talk at the Phono-Graphix International Conference on Methods in London. We very much appreciate Jenny’s availability to us. The talk served to confirm three things about Synthetic Phonics practice:

1. In Synthetic Phonics practice children’s literature is withheld until such time as the individual child is reading with some degree of fluency.

Our specific concern about this is that presumably for most children fluency would not be established until well into Year 1 or possibly later.

2. In Synthetic Phonics practice children are never presented with blended words, the word is always built up from the letter to the sound.

Our specific concerns about this are:

a. A quite large percentage of 4-6 year old children do not understand the connection between sound, sound, sound... meaning. It is through the Phono-Graphix practice of ‘directed reading’, ie telling the child the word in advance of saying the discrete sound and blending them, that this population of children learn the connection, through experiencing the sounds as the prior known word unfolds.

b. If blended words are not presented, at no time does the child have an opportunity to practice the skill of segmenting requisite to good reading, spelling, and comprehension. We believe this accounts for the 14% of the population of the Clackmannanshire study whose comprehension was two or more years below age level by Primary 7 [eleven years]?

During the last week of November and first week of December 2005 the authors of this article posted over 120 contributions to the Times Education Supplement Staffroom forum in an attempt to elicit clarification of Synthetic Phonics practice from Debbie Hepplewhite of the Reading Reform Foundation who has been known to be active on that forum. Instead our questions were met with jeers and foul language from monikers common to the Reading Reform Foundation, and a staunch statement from Mrs. Hepplewhite refusing to engage in conversation with us. In the face of our steady professionalism we finally managed to inspire response from two Reading Reform Foundation board members, Geraldine Carter and Jenny Chew. The following represents the relevant information, vis-a-vis Synthetic Phonics practice, gathered from this internet discourse:

Jenny Chew said in response to our questions regarding the Synthetic Phonics practice of withholding children’s literature until children can read, "My understanding is that the early ability to identify printed words in a context-free way is a good predictor of later reading ability and that this ability continues to correlate well with reading skill even in older readers."

Our specific concern about this is that word reading tests are not criterion referenced, in other words context free word reading should not be taught so that children can perform well on context free reading tests.

In a second post regarding this Jenny said, “It would be a distortion of my meaning to say that ‘context-free word reading should be taught so that children can perform well on context-free reading tests’. I certainly want them to perform well on context-free reading tests by the end of reception, but not for the reason you suggest – rather, it’s because the early ability to read words out of context shows that children know how to apply the alphabetic code, and the evidence suggests that this is the best possible foundation for long-term reading (and spelling) success.”

Our specific concern about this is that science cannot possibly tell us that “the early ability to read words out of context shows that children know how to apply the alphabetic code’. Science does not work that way. All we can know is that there is a correlation between the ability to read isolated words and other measures of reading success. Specifically these measures are segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation. This is exactly why Phono-Graphix teaches segmenting and manipulation of sounds along side blending. Given the correlation, it would be reckless not to. And indeed it is precisely that recklessness that alarms us about Synthetic Phonics.

On 3 December, after release of the Rose Interim Report included segmenting and phoneme manipulation among those skills requisite to reading, Jenny replied to say, "But synthetic phonics teachers do teach segmenting for spelling and what you call manipulation of sounds which I call ‘tweaking’."

It should be noted that this is the first time any representative of Synthetic Phonics has presented to us that segmenting or phoneme manipulation is taught in Synthetic Phonics practice.

Our specific concerns about this are that what we've observed of tweaking does not teach segmenting or phoneme manipulation per the research definitions of these skills. In March 1999 at the Ofsted Conference on Phonics the authors observed Jenny’s demonstration of ‘tweaking’ the misreading of ‘said’ as ‘sade’. In her example the teacher would encourage the child to ‘tweak’ by asking, “Does that sound like a word you have heard before?” This does not, by any research definition with which we are familiar, in any way teach or even encourage segmenting or phoneme manipulation. In fact, in our opinion it encourages the aspiring reader to assume that written language is nonspecific at best and chaotic at worst.

It became clear to us in the days immediately following the release of the Rose Interim Report, that at least some proponents of Synthetic Phonics were prepared to scramble to throw together their explanation of how Synthetic Phonics has taught the skills of segmenting and phoneme manipulation all along. If 14% of Clackmannanshire’s eleven year olds reading two or more years below grade level were not so tragic, these comments posted to the Reading Reform Foundation forum in the three day period immediately following release of the Rose Interim Report (1 December and 3 December) debating whether or not Synthetic Phonics teaches segmenting (and how and why) would be funny.

"On page 28, Appendix 2, of his [Jim Rose] report, '...children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters...'. This is a really classic example of the misunderstandings that occur all the time in writings about phonics, causing almost everyone to become very confused. Segmenting has absolutely nothing to do with letters!!! The spoken word 'cat' can be segmented into it's component phonemes, 'c' 'a' and 't'. It's hard for me to envisage how anyone with a real understanding of phonics could have written that phrase."Dave Philpot (abridged)

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"I'm getting a bit lost off with this. Have I been getting it wrong all this time? In my understanding, with SP, when you are learning to read you don't start with a word at all, but with sounds (and their graphemes), which are blended together. So how can you 'take a word apart' when you can't yet read it?"

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"I agree- I thought that was where the 'synthesising' came in."

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"Are we confused about the stage of learning to read? I was thinking in terms of seeing the word 'cat', looking at each letter in turn, voicing it, then blending those phonemes to become /cat/. 'Word' being the term for the letter string you are trying to lift from the page."

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"The children ARE or CAN BE taught their letter shapes in isolation with the corresponding sounds and how these can be 'built up' to make a word. But when reading a whole word, the process is to sound out and blend the sounds from left to right - and I was describing how one could peel back to the level of saying that the printed word is segmented or taken apart before it is sounded out and blended, in the sense that the reader mentally looks to see if any of the letters are likely to be needed to be sounded out as digraphs or one-letter-one-sound. I DO think we can get hung up forever over this different start. This is just another way of introducing the 'correspondences' in the beginning stages but without an elaborate mnemonic system. The whole word itself IS the mnemonic in effect! Which method is the most effective in the early stages of beginning to read has not yet been properly compared between our well-known effective commercial programmes. The point is that the elements of these various programmes have so much in common (what they do and what they don't do) that surely we can place them under the umbrella of 'synthetic phonics'. Debbie Hepplewhite (abridged)

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"Sounds reasonable. How the hell did we get into this petty mess? You learn the sound of each letter, or combination of same with other(s), recognise these in a word and put 'em together (synthesise 'em) and see/hear what you get. What's all the fuss about?"

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"And at least we're not all going to fall out over it."

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"To be honest, I hope that we are leading the way, showing how we are trying to unpick what people write or say to make sure that we understand one another. The issue is, when do differences in the approaches matter and when do they not matter." Debbie Hepplewhite

At the close of her 2001 Spring article ‘Old Habits Die Hard’ Reading Reform Foundation board member Geraldine Carter said, “Instead of up to 30% of children experiencing reading difficulties at age 7-8, only around 2% - 5% of the most severely ‘dyslexic’ children would require specialist help after the introduction of synthetic phonics in nursery and reception classes.”

If this were true Debbie Hepplewhite’s words above, “The issue is, when do differences in the approaches matter and when do they not matter," might resonate. But in fact, 20% of the children were six or more months behind after having been taught with Synthetic Phonics in their first year at school in Clackmannanshire, and despite additional literacy support, 14% where two or more years behind by age eleven.

Based in the Clackmannanshire studies as well as the words and actions of the two lobby organisations one can safely say about Synthetic Phonics that what you see is what you get.

The central principles of Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

That children should be taught the sound-symbol relationship of the one sound to one letter correspondence of the code, plus twelve common digraphs (what is referred to as “the 42 sounds”) very quickly

That children should be encouraged to blend (or ‘synthesise’) sounds when reading.

That children’s books and even words in the environment should be withheld from children until they are fairly fluent at blending sounds.

That reading in text should proceed from simple ‘decodable’ readers, working toward real children’s books, though these are never described as being used in instruction.

The working practices of Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

Teach ‘letter sounds’. The language of these lessons makes it clear that teachers are to teach children the pronunciation of the sounds of their language. This is done in isolation through gestures relating to each of the sounds and used as mnemonics. For example:

(oo) (oo) - Move head back and forth as if it is the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock,

saying u, oo; u, oo for little and long oo (from the Jolly Phonics teaching manual)

Teach “the principles of ‘long and short vowels’"

Teach “the principles of ‘soft c’ and ‘soft g’"

Teach “the principles of ‘silent e’"

Teach “the blending technique: If the short vowel does not work try the long one."

Teach” the alternative sounds ay, a-e, ea, igh, y, i-e, ow, o-e, ew, u-e, oy, ir, ur"

Poor reading should be improved with “more time and practice”.

Teach “the difference between a blend (such as st) and a digraph (such as sh). In a blend the two sounds, s and t can each be heard. In a digraph this is not so”. (from the Jolly Phonics manual)

Some of the remaining 70% of the code, not taught in the instruction of “the 42 sounds” is taught as “tricky words” or “imprecise pronunciation”.

‘Imprecise pronunciation’ such as reading bread as ‘breed’ is corrected with a procedure called “tweaking, ie asking the child to think of a word that sounds rather like one which he has heard before.”

“‘Tricky words’ such as ‘said’ and ‘was’ cannot (according to the Jolly Phonics manual) be read by blending. The procedure for learning ‘tricky words’ is to ask the child to try writing the word in the air saying the letters names. Then cover the word and see if the child can write it correctly on paper.”

Specific DON’Ts of Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

Never tell a child the word ahead of him blending it as it takes the practice element out of the blending.

Never teach similarly formed letter shapes in the same lesson to avoid confusion.

NO GUESSING!

No children’s books or words labeling the environment until the child is fairly fluent.

As we said in the opening pages of this article, we were very pleased with the language of the National Curriculum (circa 1998), believing that through our careful consultation, and the attention paid to it by Jim Rose, Keith Lloyd, and John Stannard, it had led to a framework that included the three skills needed to read and spell - segmenting, blending, and phoneme manipulation, and the four concepts that comprise the nature of the code - letters are pictures of sounds, some sound-pictures can be represented with two or more letters, there is variation in the code (more than one way to show most sounds), there is overlap in the code (some sound pictures represent more than one sound); and that it made provision for these to be taught both in and out of children’s literature.

It was with deep concern that a large part of this would be swept away in lieu of an over-focus on the single skill of blending and letter-sound correspondence alone rather than the full nature of the code, and in the absence of children’s books. It was with the greatest relief, and a tad bit of shame for having doubted him, that we read Jim Rose’s interim review at our home/office in Orlando, Florida in the early hours of December 1st.

In the introductory section Rose discusses in overview the existing National Curriculum saying, in

(14) “Primary schools are required to teach phonics, the content of which is prescribed as knowledge, skills and understanding in the statutory National Curriculum programmes of study for English, to pupils from the age of five. The programme of study for reading includes work on 'phonemic awareness and phonic knowledge'. During Key Stage 1 pupils should be taught to:

hear, identify, segment and blend phonemes in words

sound and name the letters of the alphabet

link sound and letter patterns, exploring rhyme, alliteration and other sound patterns

identify syllables in words

recognise that the same sounds may have different spellings and that the same spellings may relate to different sounds.”

Rose summarises in (15) to say, “In other words, the National Curriculum treats phonic work as essential subject content, not a method of teaching. How schools should teach that content is a matter of choice, which may, or may not, be guided by the non-statutory Framework for teaching and any other materials that the Primary National Strategy publishes. Many schools also choose to use commercial programmes for phonic work. Some use them in place of the NLS materials; others, simply to complement the NLS, particularly in teaching letter-sound correspondences.”

That said, Rose quickly moves to the path ahead, a greater focus on phonic instruction, no more mixing of strategies. The books can stay but the onset and rime and the whole word instruction have to go. Blending is great, but you also have to teach segmenting and phoneme manipulation. Letter-sound correspondence is lovely, but you must also teach the rest of the ‘alphabetic principle’.

In (26) Rose quickly dispels any notion that phonic work in isolation to children’s books is acceptable when he says,”...the teaching of phonic work must teach beginner readers to process all the letters in words and 'read words in and out of text'.”. He expands Synthetic Phonics to include the ‘alphabetic principle’ not stopping at letter-sound correspondence alone. He reminds us that blending is not the only skill needed to read and spell when he says phonic work should:

teach grapheme/phoneme correspondences and the alphabetic principle in a clearly defined, incremental sequence

teach children to apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes in order, all through a word to read

teach children to apply the skill of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell

to understand that blending and segmenting are reversible processes

In (37) Rose says, “Ensuring that children master the alphabetic code is at the heart of phonic work.” Then goes on to remind us again that literature will not be kept from the hands of English school children when he says, “However, daily systematic phonics teaching does not mean that children are not exposed to the wealth of good literature and favourite books.” Rose shares that, “It is evident from visits to some schools that these two elements (i.e. systematic teaching of phonic work and the development of positive attitudes) of teaching reading are sometimes seen as incompatible,” and insists that, “This is absolutely not the case.”

In (38-40) Rose says that, “...listening and speaking are the roots of reading and writing.” And offers some specific direction saying, “Settings and schools should therefore give a high priority to the development of children's speaking and listening skills, both because they are intrinsically valuable and because they provide the foundations for the systematic teaching and learning of phonics, and higher order reading and writing skills.”

The word ‘blend’ is used 16 times in the body of the Rose Interim Review. The word ‘segment’ is used 11 times. There are 7 references to ‘the alphabetic principle’, and ‘letter-sound correspondence’ is mentioned 7 times.

But will teachers, teacher trainers, textbook writers, and researchers appreciate this or will they see the Rose Interim Review as 11 entries on blending and 7 entries on letter sounds?... disregarding the rest of the skills and information needed in order to deliver to their students the sort of success to which they’ve been paying lip service for coming on ten years.

A very wise Chinese civil servant in the adoption affairs office at Changsha once told me, “Any good policy document contains one thing - freedom.” The National Literacy Strategy, as it exists, contains that. And it contains the language to direct teachers regarding what they are free to do. I believe there are several things accounting for its failure to accomplish better literacy scores:

1. The government sponsored ‘free’ materials ARE TERRIBLE and net about a 30% failure rate.

2. Nearly all of the commercially available materials ARE TERRIBLE and net about a 20% failure rate.

3. Phono-Graphix initial momentum in Britain received a sock in the belly when the authors began adopting children instead of tending to business and at least three groups of practitioners began the process of copying (in many cases word for word) the Phono-Graphix materials and lessons, making mirror image methods with the addition of some Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics principles—principles like teaching sounds in isolation, no books until you can read, no guessing, no telling the child the word in advance of him reading it, and adherence to a systemitised sequence and timeline in which teachers have no freedom. This in effect served to water-down Phono-Graphix good name. These materials net about a 12% failure rate.

4. Phono-Graphix trainers were systematically picked off or demoralised out of practice by the three groups mentioned above, leaving a training vacuum resulting in schools and LEA’s choosing other, more accessible teacher training.

5. The aforementioned commercially available TERRIBLE programmes began dabbling in Phono-Graphix language and practice, doing a TERRIBLE job of it, further watering-down Phono-Graphix good name. These materials net about a 15% failure rate.

All of this may be just water under the bridge to those of us who worked so hard to make NLS-I a success. The question now before us is: What heed will be paid, by existing teachers, teacher trainers, textbook writers, researchers, and the like, to the fine points of the Rose Interim Review?

Its language is clear. If it is taken seriously Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics is dead and will be replaced with some rigour. Jim Rose’s Interim Review in effect says, Yes to Synthetic Phonics and then proceeds to redefine it taking into account the forty years of research that the lobby groups seem to have forgotten, or intentionally misrepresented. In comparison to the ‘Principles and Practices of Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics’ we laid out on a previous page, the ‘Principles and Practices of Post-Rose Synthetic Phonics’ would look like this:

The central principles of Post-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

That a high priority should be given to the development of children's speaking and listening skills as the roots of literacy development.

That children should be taught the alphabetic principle so that they can learn the entire sound-symbol code.

That children should be taught to segment, blend and manipulate phonemes.

That there should be an abundance of children’s books available to children in schools.

That reading in text should proceed from simple to more difficult.

The working practices of Post-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

Not yet established. As the Review says, (29) “Unfortunately, to determine in detail what constitutes best practice in synthetic phonics is by no means clear cut. Perhaps the most telling example of this is that, while its authors and advocates claim that the NLS Framework and related publications on phonics are emphatically 'synthetic', a considerable body of opinion, including the authors of several popular commercial 'synthetic' phonic programmes, just as emphatically deny this. Therefore, a prime irritant for practitioners and teachers is what they see as a wrangle in which advocates of phonic work are unable to agree definitions. Furthermore, these disputes often occur within their own camps.”

Specific DON’Ts of Pre-Rose Synthetic Phonics are:

As of right now, the only DON’T the authors can find is DON’T forget to include children’s literature in the plan.

And that is a very big relief indeed!

But will teachers, teacher trainers, textbook writers, and researchers appreciate this or will they see the Rose Interim Review as 11 entries on blending and 7 entries on letter sounds?... disregarding the rest of the skills and information needed in order to deliver to their students the sort of success to which they’ve been paying lip service for coming on ten years.

The path forward is by no means apparent. The Rose Interim Report makes clear what Mr. Rose would like to see in literacy instruction, but we don’t know what the process of achieving this might look like. That Phono-Graphix is the only literacy programme in Britain to meet the description of Synthetic Phonics per the language of the Rose Interim Report is staggeringly obvious. Based on this these authors have reached out to Jim Rose with an offer to provide a non-commercial government owned Department of Education and Skills based online teacher training course of the calibre of Phono-Graphix existing online course launched in 2003, and a materials kit for classroom application, both at no profit to the authors. Once prepared and available as a government owned programme, such an online training course and kit would serve to provide a blueprint for commercial programmes wishing to follow suit. Whether this offer will be taken up remains to be seen.

One thing is very clear at this point. The path forward looks nothing like the path forward in March of 1999 when factions were invited to sit down at conference tables in London (Conference on Phonics). Indeed this course would lead to ruin through debate over meaning and mitigation of the intention of the Rose Report. If commercial programmes wish to present their argument that they address the language spelt out in the Rose Report, fair enough. Let the evidence decide. But an embittered debate over what Rose really said and meant is irrelevant to the times, and would serve to cast us back seven years.

Obviously research and development may also be on the path forward. The Rose Interim Report lays out those skills and concepts to be taught, and specifies that they should be taught in a literature rich environment, but it doesn’t say how they should be taught. Surely there are other ways to teach the skills and concepts and discovery of the code that have not been discovered by the developers of Phono-Graphix. Maybe something entirely new and different will arise out of Jim Rose’s guidance. It is possible to be both right and open to others who are also right. Earlier this year these authors launched a scheme for blueprinting products and programmes based on our original ideas. The government might consider a similar plan, by endorsing or approving in some way those schemes that address what Rose has put forward.

Wherever the path forward takes us, these authors will continue to champion professional respect of teachers. We were and remain alarmed by the Reading Reform Foundations’s demand in spring of 2001 for, "...the dissemination of literacy teaching information by the DfEE and the LEAs regarding the results of reputable scientific assessment." Science is a self regulating system.The ‘reputability’ of research is determined by peer review, not by Departments of the government, and certainly not by lobby organisations.

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