Refection on Phonics lesson

I found the lesson on phonics bewildering and complex. I don’t think my understanding is very thorough yet and I would need to do some more reading.

I knew that schools use phonics now and I had expected to find it a bit difficult because (like the rest of our group) I wasn’t taught to read by phonics at all – in fact I don’t remember breaking words down at all I leant to read by reiteration and recognition of whole words. I was surprised by just how convoluted the phonics system seemed to me, it seems very counter intuitive.

Initially I felt that the system I was taught to read with clearly worked for me, so surely it must work generally. However, if the government’s decision (through the Rose Report) that children should be taught with synthetic phonics must be based on findings. I want to understand how they came to their decision and I intend to read the Rose Report.

It occurred to me that I am not necessarily representative of all children – perhaps the way I was taught happened to suit me, but might not work for other children with different learning styles or perhaps with learning difficulties. I know that I learn and remember visually, so recognizing whole words is very easy for me, but if you learn aurally or kinesthetically perhaps the synthetic phonics system might work better for you.

It also occurred to me that although I am a fluent reader, when reading I sometimes read too fast without due care and have difficulty pronouncing unfamiliar names. Perhaps this is due to the lack of phonics in my education.

It may be that on average, the synthetic phonics method is more effective. I want to find out more and I have not decided yet whether I agree with the Government policy.

I totally see your point about synthetic phonics potentially being more useful for kinaesthetic and auditory learners. I am wondering if I would be a faster reader if I'd been taught synthetic phonics.

I am also a fast reader and I'm sure that I often misread sentences. You've given me food for thought about my own literacy ability and whether this is down to the way I was taught.