Christopher Such

This year's royalties for The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading have arrived (£5477.65). As promised, this money has been donated to Malaria Consortium. This brings the running total donated (with Gift Aid) to about £57,000 in four years. >>

Below is the receipt for this year's donation. Thank you again to everyone who bought a copy. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

Ultimately, I think that much of the profession hasn't fully come to terms with the reality that parents/carers are increasingly less likely to provide this scaffolded word recognition experience at home and that this is more than ever an essential part of teaching reading *in the classroom*.

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

The lack of application of the nascent decoding abilities initially learned via phonics is the obvious culprit for dysfluency. Or put more simply, in many primary schools there is precious little time spent in reading lessons with eyes on text working out what the words are and what they mean. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

If you believe that the balance between phonics and other elements of reading in primary schools is off, then I would argue that the issue isn't that too much time is devoted to phonics. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

One final thing: you might argue that the approximately 30 minutes a day of systematic phonics in most schools has squeezed out all other aspects of teaching reading that also support fluency, such as shared meaningful experiences with texts. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

So developing pupils' grasp of written language through meaningful experiences with texts and scaffolding experiences of reading fluency for dysfluent readers both matter hugely to developing fluency and, thus, comprehension. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

The former helps build pupils' grasp and appreciation of written language, which is intimately connected to spoken language but different in important ways. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

Of course, developing automatic word recognition isn't the only component of becoming a fluent reader. Pupils need to be able to convert the words they recognise into language by grouping words, phrases, clauses and sentences together into meaningful units. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

There are often calls for pupils to read text with less of a focus on consciously decoding unfamiliar words and more on a general sense of the meaning. But precisely what pupils require to become fluent is to accurately decode - and thus orthographically map - *a lot* of words. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

The whole point of phonics is to teach pupils the tools that will allow them to begin decoding text, the exact thing that they need to do to develop automatic word recognition. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

On the contrary, those who *can* automatically recognise words can do so because they have already orthographically mapped the words (i.e. decoded the words multiple times, connecting the spellings to pronunciation and meaning and allowing for later ease of recognition). >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

A misconceived conclusion that one could draw from this is that conscious effort in decoding words is the cause of the problem, so we need pupils to do more reading of texts in front them where they *aren't* consciously decoding unfamiliar words. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

However, the vast majority of dysfluent readers are dysfluent precisely because they do not recognise the words they encounter with requisite automaticity. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

Occasionally, there is the odd pupil who recognises words with ease but needs to be nudged via teaching to recognise that what they are reading is a form of language. Generally, these pupils read words with automaticity but lack prosody (i.e. the rhythm of speech) when reading aloud. >>

As with almost every article written about reading in the past few years, this one has inspired a few suggestions that the focus on phonics has caused problems. I'd like to explain why I disagree. >>

For a pupil to read *anything* with fluency, they must be able to recognise the words with automaticity. Fluency relies on other things too, but automatic word recognition is fundamental. >>