Why we teach Systematic Synthetic Phonics…
Our mission at Northern Christian School is to provide the highest quality Christ-centred education that prepares and equips students for life. How we look at our teaching and learning is shaped by current research and high-impact teaching strategies, which are then delivered through a biblical framework that invites students to see and understand the world through the perspective of God’s truth.
Recently, we have had parents enquire further about our evidence-based practices in the way we approach the teaching and learning of reading and spelling. You may have thought, “Why does my child come home talking about graphemes, diagraphs and phonemes?” As early as Prep, students are able to describe different graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds). Like many of you, I was not introduced to graphemes or phonemes when I was at school. Likely, you were also taught reading and spelling using Analytic Phonics.
Analytic Phonics involves getting a child to analyse a whole word’s pronunciation, using cues such as looking at the picture, thinking about the context, thinking about what makes sense, and looking at the first letter. This is called a ‘top-down’ approach. You may also have heard it referred to as a ‘whole-language’ approach. This approach works well for some students, but many fail to succeed at reading at their appropriate level using this approach.
Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) is the high-impact and evidence-based approach we use at Northern. This approach encourages a child to use a word’s graphemes (letters) to determine its phonemes (sounds) using grapheme-phoneme rules and then synthesising the word’s pronunciation. The child does not have to already know the word to work it out. They analyse the graphemes and blend them together to make the word. This is called a ‘bottom-up’ model. You will have seen your child successfully sounding out unknown words by analysing the graphemes and blending them together to read the word.
How useful is it to be able to sound out words?
50% of words are highly predictable based on phoneme/grapheme constituents, eg bat and back
34% are predictable apart from one inconsistency e.g. soup and flood
12% are predictable if students are taught word origins - cello and chef
only 4% of words are irregular – yacht and one (Hanna, Hanna, Hodges and Rudorf, 1966)
So why have we decided to use SSP at Northern? There has been a lot of research in recent years analysing many different approaches to teaching reading and spelling. This particular research strongly shows that SSP is an essential, fast and effective method for developing students’ reading and spelling proficiency. Also, the Australian Government’s National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy report recommends that teachers provide systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency.
Sound Waves is our whole-school SSP and word-study online program that we use to develop reading, spelling and writing skills from Prep through to Year 6. The program provides resources and guidance to assist teachers explicitly implement SSP. Sound Waves also goes way beyond phonics to include other essential knowledge students need to read and spell. As the years progress, a significant portion of teaching is dedicated to word study, including morphology (prefixes, suffixes and Greek and Latin roots), etymology (word origins) and language concepts like homophones and homographs.
If you’re interested in learning more about the evidence-based approach to reading and spelling that we use at Northern (SSP), I encourage you to contact your child’s teacher, and they will happily and eagerly share more information about our approach.
Bethany Armstrong - Principal
