Mar 10
28
The Internet enabled me to go back in time to when I learned to read.
I found the set of graded books called readers I learned to read with. I now have the full set of these, to me, precious books. The amazing thing is I can remember vividly much of their content.
Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd was the publisher. I believe these books were used in other Australian states at the time as well as in New Zealand. These books originated from New Zealand. It is interesting that New Zealand leads the world in reading research.
I attended primary school in Adelaide, South Australia and learned to read during the mid nineteen fifties. It was ten years after the end of World War 2 and there was not a lot of money around but there were plenty of children. The Baby Boom was well under way. Classes were big.
Later I trained as a primary school teacher in Victoria during the mid nineteen sixties.
I always knew the value of phonics knowledge. I never thought that this was the only strategy to use when teaching a child to read but without it reading can be very challenging.
My realistic view about the place of phonics in early reading instruction ensured I found the controversy around teaching phonics so unenlightened.
Thanks to the internet and online booksellers I have found the the teaching guide used by my teachers. It has a brown cardboard cover on it with illustrations from the readers in the colours black,red and blue. The title is ‘The Teaching of Reading to Infants’. The book has 64 pages and measures 12.5 by 18.5 centimeters.
This guide talks about the progressive method of teaching young children to read!
I have heard that term used over the years in a number of situations! Each generation likes to think they have made a great discovery instead of acknowledging that commonsense was all that was needed.
The author(s) talk about why the primers were developed. They were ‘an answer to an expressed need for a dual approach to reading – visual work and phonic work proceeding in parallel lines and each given due importance. From the beginning the child is reading for content. At first the idea is associated with a word and later a phrase or sentence.’
Before each child commenced the first book , ‘The Tiny Tots’ Primer’ they were prepared. Associated activities and ideas with the written symbol and spoken word were experienced.
Today it is acknowledged that phonemic awareness (knowledge of speech sounds) is a major precursor to reading success. It is not a new discovery.
The instructions given to ‘infant teachers’ in the 1950′s were:
‘Reading is the conveying of ideas not sounds. The child must read for content. Every printed word must convey an idea. Hence the necessity for beginning reading with visual work and giving practise in quick visualisation through all the preliminary stages of reading. As the child becomes more familiar with the look of words s/he will need the ‘phonic props’ only in attacking a new word. It is essential however that s/he can ‘sound out’ a new word accurately and quickly so that the idea contained in the sentence may not be lost. Hence the necessity for a thorough grounding in phonics.’
There has always been a resistance by some, often influential, people to phonics. It’s nothing new.
I will quote from my guide again.
‘The old objection to a phonic approach was that it mechanised the subject matter, making reading stilted and unreal. In the progressive primers this error has been avoided by building only those words which occur frequently in the child’s vocabulary. The sounds are presented in a definite order, taking into consideration-
- Ease
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