Hello Friends!
A couple of my previous posts have dealt with the vital nature of robust phonics/decoding instruction. There is, of course, endless research support for such instruction. However, this recent study from England was called to my attention, and I thought that it was worth sharing. The abstract does a good job of summarizing the basic findings, so I have pasted it in here. What I find particularly noteworthy is the documentation of long-term effects - the impact that developing/not developing proficiency in decoding has on kids' reading comprehension four years down the line. Connie Juel reported similar long-term effects resulting from proficient/lack of proficient decoding back in the 80's. Hopefully, schools will hear this message better in 2020 than they did back then!
Kit S. Double, Joshua A. McGrane, Jamie C. Stiff & Therese N.
Hopfenbeck. (2019). The importance of early phonics improvements for
predicting later reading comprehension. British Educational Research
Journal,45(6), 1220–1234.
The role of phonics instruction in early reading development has been
the subject of significant conjecture. Recently, England implemented a
phonics screening check to assess the phonetic decoding of 6-year-old
students, to ensure that all students master this foundational literacy
skill and attain adequate phonemic awareness in the early years of
primary schooling. Students who fail this check are obliged to retake
the assessment the following year. In this article, we compare the
performance of students who initially pass this check (pass) and
students who fail the original assessment but pass the retaken
assessment (fail–pass), with students who fail both the original and
retaken assessments (fail–fail). Using data from the Key Stage 1
assessment of reading and the Progress in International Reading Literacy
Study (PIRLS), we examined the reading comprehension performance of
these students approximately 1 and 4 years after their first phonics
screening. The results suggested that fail–pass students performed
substantially better than fail–fail students, even after performance on
the initial phonics check was controlled for. While fail–pass students
do not appear to entirely catch up with pass students in reading
comprehension, their relatively better performance underscores the
importance of intervening for those students who are identified as
having problems with phonetic decoding to increase their likelihood of
success at reading comprehension in later schooling.
