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Synthetic phonics
Pascal invented synthetic phonics. His approach referred to the teaching of reading in which phonemes associated with particular graphemes are pronounced in isolation and then blended together -
Noah Webster's "Blue Backed" Speller
Noah Webster's "Blue Backed" Speller used synthetic phonics to teach reading. Webster noticed there were inconsistencies and obstacles presented in the English spelling along with how all American schools used British textbooks. He then went on to reform schools by creating his own dictionary where he changed the -ce in words to -se, took out the silent "l" in verbs when forming the past tense, and dropped the "u" in certain words. -
Father of the American public education
Horace Mann's Seventh Report advocated the whole word methods for teaching reading. He was also an advocate for creating secular public education and created many normal schools for teachers. -
Leigh Print
Edwin Leigh spent 20 years designing and refining Initial Teaching Alphabet which allowed children to read much faster. He developed the "Leigh Print" which was first used in St. Louis schools but later removed from most schoolbooks for whole word methods. -
"The Problem of Learning to Read"
Meiklejohn publishes "The Problem of Learning to Read" which helped advocate teaching regularly spelled words first and introducing exceptions later. -
Dick and Jane
Thorndike's word list allows controlled vocabulary readers in upper grades as well, unlike earlier whole word methods where new words eventually had to be taught through diacritical markings or the teaching of phonics in upper grades through spelling. Using the whole word method, children began to recognize words by repeated exposure which meant repitition was important. The Dick and Jane books were highly encouraged. -
"Why Johnny Can't Read"
Rudolph Flesch published "Why Johnny Can't Read" which advocated the return to phonics. However even with positive public reviews, many educators disagreed with his findings because they were rhetorical and not based upon research. -
Learning to Read: The Great Debate
Jeanne S Chall evaluated the methods of teaching reading over a period of years. She found out that reading is a developmental process and that phonics is a more effective method than whole-word methods. After gathering data, she published her findings into the book, "Learning to Read: The Great Debate". -
The Hanna Study
Margaret Bishop published "The ABC's and All Their Tricks" which arranged the results of the Hanna Study in a user friendly format for people to read. The Hannah Study took the most common 17,000 words and revealed that English is more phonetically regular than assumed. -
Positive news for people that have dyslexia
A study found that people who had dyslexia and were taught spelling in a phonetic manner, actually improved their spelling. The study also found that teaching this kind of way could actually change their brains' activity patterns to better resemble the brains of normal spellers. -
Phonics in the future
In my classroom I will try to really utilize phonics in my classroom. I have noticed that when children actually sound words out phonetically, they begin to learn the word and understand it. A simple activity that I would do is to play bingo with sounds like -ma, -la, -ga, -pha until the children got a certain amount in a row. At first I would go over the sounds so that they hear them and know them beforehand.
