Ouch! Time for Phonics

Today in my tiny schoolhouse, my First through Fourth Graders took a look at a good old friend, phonics.

Like all old friends, phonics has a past.  And not all of it is friendly.

When I first started student teaching, whole language was all the rage.  Students were encouraged to look at the whole word, to move beyond memorization and rote and to embrace literature in its fullness, as a way of not only learning to read but learning to love reading.  Phonics was outmoded and not useful.

Whole language sounds great on paper.  Who doesn't want to teach children to love reading?  Who wouldn't love to dive right into a book instead of standing in front of the classroom making parrot sounds and drawing lists of letter pairs? 

But can a child really love reading before he or she can break it down enough to be able to replicate it idenpendently- when a page is full of words never learned?

Can students communicate the great ideas that books give them (books they are read and books they read on their own) if they can't write clearly, spell well and understand how words work?

And, as the education research group, Halcyon House recognizes, isn't memorizing whole words just as much rote memorization as drilling vowel and consonant pairs?

Phonics is staging a comeback and it's nice to see our old friend again.  It's important that we teachers understand, and explain to our students, that phonics facts are tools.  The parrot sounds we make, the hangman lines we draw, all of these images, sounds and ideas empower students to go on their own to discover, to read, to learn. 

Today we learned "ou" and "ow."  We saw comic book "Pows" and sat on the couch. 

Then they wrote in their writing journals about their weekends.  One of our Fourth Graders noticed that journal doesn't follow the "ou" sounds like "ouch" rule. 

There is an exception to every rule in our language.  There are many starts and stops on the road to a lifelong love of and facility with reading. 

My students are home working on "power pairs" and spelling words.  Tomorrow they will give speeches about their favorite books.

Together, our class will look at the whole of language- the sounds and symbols that make language work, and the ways we use language to capture the sounds and symbols in our minds and hearts.