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My relationship with phonics, or the teaching of phonics (or is that phonetics??), is akin to one of those relationships. You know the one, where it is either in a state of pure blissfulness, or one of total despair. In this relationship, there never seems to be a happy medium, and every time I swear I won’t go back there, I’m drawn in again, by the giddy heights of perfection, of the promises of readers unlocking the mystery of reading, in 44 easy steps, only to come crashing back down.
And so, after shelving the whole phonics approach (synthetic phonics included), I decided to venture back into the fray. This time, I was taking things slowly – I was going to enjoy the courting stages, before embracing a full-on relationship; a ‘feel the romance, and let the love blossom’, kind of approach.
Shockingly, I have to admit, things were progressing nicely; slowly but surely. I had embarked on teaching sounds that could be combined to form words. We had the sounds of ‘c’, ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’ in isolation, down to perfection. So I thought, it’s time to take this relationship to the next level.
Every day, we practised the sliding of these sounds together to form the word ‘cat’ or ‘sat’. With guidance and encouragement, there seemed to be some progress. Now it was time for the test. Today, there would be no hints.
“Who can tell me, the word I am making?” I asked, as I slowly sounded out the following: c….a….t…. I looked around the faces, smiling encouragingly, and again slowly sounded out the word: c….a…t…. Then I put them together, a little faster.
When what seemed like an hour had passed, a little boy jumped to his feet, and started doing the ‘toilet dance’. (You know the one they do when they are super excited about something, or they just really, really, really need to go to the toilet. Fortunately, it was for the former.)
“I know, I know!” he shouted. “C..a…t.. is DOG! It makes DOG!!”
As the claps and cheers from his fellow classmates went up, I went through the entire tried and true break up phrases:
“It’s not you, it’s me. No really, it’s not me, it’s you. I need some more time to work on myself.”
Whatever, phonics and me, we’re done! Sight words, come back to me, our youngest readers need you!