Phonics Fanatics? Definitely not!

We sometimes get misrepresented in the media or by others who seem to think that we are advocating for a phonics only approach or that we are somehow ramming down the throats of all children an approach that is only for dyslexic students.

So to set the record straight, Bronwyn Bayne on our Steering Committee wrote this post in response to one such claim to our Facebook page.

You will find we advocate for effective and evidence based reading and writing instruction that works for all children - not only those with learning difficulties.

Phonics is one crucial part of that instruction but so is vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. And what's wrong with phonics anyway? How else are kids, or adults, for that matter supposed to decode words they don't know? Our working memories have only so much capacity and our brains ability to recognise and store thousands of words and recall them almost instantaneously is the result of a process that has its origins in mapping sounds to letters (orthographic mapping) and not trying to decipher/decode/guess words from context and then trying to somehow memorize these thousands and thousands of words.

We would encourage you to do some more reading and open your mind to the possibility that we could improve our knowledge and practice in NZ.

The 80% of prisoners who are practically illiterate or the 40% of adult NZers with a level of literacy that is not good enough for them to participate in everyday life is a reality and if we are not open to re-examining our beliefs or our knowledge then we are not going to shift the dial on literacy outcomes in NZ.