Phonics in Early Years Teaching

Phonics in Early years plan line yarn is important and motivates savants to communicate and think critically and empowers them to perk a variety of lessons. Students in base schools be still weak and not interested in cultivation either English or Malay books. They fall short in exams as they have not mastered area sciences and if this helplessness is not rectified early, it will be disastrous for a student at secondary level. edition is a complicated process to a greater close accurately described as a number of cognitive processes happening at the same clockHjh. Hasnah Kula , the Senior District direction Officer ( Brunei III ) show how important watching ability in Brunei is and this ability necessarily to be cultivated from the early eld (Primary school) . Reading is about down the stairsstanding written texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two striked processes word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to ones intercommunicate language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of row, sentences and connected text. Readers typically make use of affirmground knowledge, vocabulary, well-formed knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand written text.Teaching struggling trainers to read takes time and patience. legion(predicate) teachers are concerned about the numbers of elementary children who struggle with interpret. Such concerns are warranted. Studies sign that when students get off to a poor start in interlingual rendition, they rarely catch up.Struggling readers determine negative consequences such as an assignment to special education classrooms or participation in long-term curative services. Further, as they progress through the grade levels, the academic distance from those who read well grows more pronounced (The Learning First Alliance, 1998 Ras hotte, Toregesen, Wagner, 1997 National Reading Panel, 1999 Torgesen, 1998). Why do some students struggle with reading and what can be done to increase their success? These questions plague teachers and parents and are ones that compelled them to search for answers.1.1 Background of the guideDecoding is the ability to apply the knowledge of letter- go away relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. concord these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to enroll out words they have not seen before. Although children may some times figure out some of these relationships on their own, near children benefit from explicit management in this area. Phonics is one lift to reading instruction that teaches students the principles of letter-sound relationships, how to sound out words, and exceptions to the principles.Therefore, appropriate early chair instruction seems to be the best medicine fo r reading problems. Reading is not developmental or natural, provided is learned. Reading disabilities reflect a persistent deficit, rather than a developmental lag in linguistic (phonological) skills and basic reading skills. Children who fall behind at an early age (K and grade 1) fall tho and further behind over time. Longitudinal studies show that of the children who are diagnosed as reading disabled in third grade, 74% remain disabled in ninth grade (Fletcher, et al., 1994 Shaywitz, Escobar, Shaywitz, Fletcher, Makuch, 1992 Stanovich, 1986 Stanovich Siegel, 1994). Lack of phonemic consciousness seems to be a major obstacle to learning to read (Vellutino Scanlon, 1987a Wagner Torgeson, 1987).However,in Brunei , it was only in course of study 2009 that the phonics burn down for program line reading was introduced . It is one of the approaches that is included in the new educational system,known as the SPN21, where the phonics approach needs to be implemented in teachin g reading and writing to Preschool and Year 1 students . The action was similarly taken in response to a national report which indicates that about 76 percent of students in Year four and 44 percent of students in Year six had not learnt the basic literacy skills in Brunei ( National Study of Student Competencies in Mathematics and English , 2008).In an effort to introduce teachers to the phonics approach, the Ministry of Education had conducted workshops especially for the English language teachers which aims to provide them with the phonics approach knowledge and how it is taught .1.2 Statement of the ProblemHaving an strong teaching instruction such as the phonics approach to teach reading in a classroom would be a relief for any teachers who face problems with students who are unable to read . However, not all students could strive the same level of reading in a classroom even though the same approach was used and was found to be in force(p) with others. While well-nigh stu dents are ready to read on a higher level, effective classroom teachers magnate recognize that some students are lagging in reading skills. Those students who are not strong readers often are not as successful as they could be in a given content area. Their progress is slow without the help of an observant and effective teacher. This is where a curative reading program is needed to help these struggling readers to read . In most schools in Brunei, children who have problems in reading are placed in a healing(p) program through a pull-out system (students are taken to a special room during a fact lesson for a remedial posing ) which is run by a special education teacher . However, the remedial lessons were usually implemented for teaching reading in Bahasa Melayu and as a result the reading problem in the English language remains .As for the school in this study,the remedial reading seance was run on the initiative of the English language teacher during the English lesson itsel f. This was seen to be ineffective because this respective(prenominal) teacher found it difficult to provide extra time during the lessons to help these difficult readers because the teacher would besides need to deal with some other average students who might need help during the lesson . Therefore,the remedial reading sessions were not consistently done with these difficult readers.A successful remediation requires direct, intensive intervention with an effective program. Effective remediation is not teaching down to a lower level, helping the students learn ship canal to manage his reading difficulties, or continuing practice of impaired reading. Effective remediation directly builds demand skills so the students acquire the unavoidable skills and can advance. To read proficiently the student needs to convert ingrain to sound and develop phonologic processing pathways. After fundamental phonemic processing is established the student needs to build advanced skills. Effective reading remediation programs directly develop all skills necessary for proficient reading.Phonics could be useful to teach reading to difficult readers in the Primary school, especially in terms of getting them familiar with the sounds of each letter. Moreover, they need a program which can help them to read in a short period of time so that they might not fall back too far from other students of their levels. Ignoring them and hoping that somehow they would catch up and be able to read equivalent their fellow classmates is likely to create problems in the future.1.3 Purpose of the studyThis study aims at achieving the following objectives To explore the implementation of the remedial reading program using the phonics approach for difficult readers in a Year 4 class.To measure the reading achievement of these difficult readers within 3 weeks of daily remedial sessions (30 proceedings per day).To promote a suitable time (outside the classroom lesson) for the teacher to run a remed ial session with the difficult reading students.1.4 Research QuestionsHow is the remedial reading session in the school being conducted?How untold is the phonics knowledge being included in the program?What is the impact of a constant reading remedial session with difficult readers on their reading performance using a Synthetic phonics approach?To what extent would a morning session hours (before the classroom lesson) and recess hours could be spent for remedial reading session . How much could the students improve from these sessions?1.5 Significance of the studyOne of the major struggles of the primary school teachers is how to identify the most effective ways to teach their students how to read, especially with all the different learning styles among children. Children come to school with alter reading abilities and literacy experiences. All children have the ability to learn to read exclusively at different order and in different ways (International Reading Association, 2000 Moore Whitfield, 2009). It is essential for a teacher to have a blanket(prenominal) knowledge of the reading process, the ability to observe and assess a students strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to adapt ones teaching in response to the learning needs of the students (International Reading Association, 2000).It is the responsibility of the teachers to provide reading instruction that meets the needs of these diverse students. Teaching students to read is one of the most challenging things in teaching because teachers would need to be racy with their teaching approaches or instructions so that they meet each and every children needs in learning to read .And while many children follow a typical pattern while learning to read that allows their individual differences to be met with one program, those who do not follow that pattern often fall behind. Many remedial programs are simply a slower version of reading programs used for typical students, but these dont necessarily work for atypical learners. Thats why it might be more effective to develop remedial programs for specific students.Therefore, throughout this study, it was hoped that the result of the research can be beneficial for English teacher in structuring a remedial program for their difficult readers and to get them to reflect on their efforts in helping the these students to learn reading . It was also hoped that the results would be able to make the teachers, school administrator and the curriculum developers of the school under study to realize how important a synthetic phonic approach is to be included in the remedial program .1.6 Limitations of the StudyThis study however has its limitations . These include the length of research time , handsome samples used and also the different reading difficulties of the participants .The sessions were conducted over a three-week period only where the participants were taught five times in a week ( 2.5 hours in total) . The study only involved t wo students from a Year 4 class in a selected school in Brunei Muara District (small sample size) . The reading difficulties of the participants might be different from others because difficult readers might have so much difficulty in applying the phonics skills and then this might vary the instructional approach used in this study with other settings. Thus , the findings of the study should be interpreted with these limitations in mind .1.6 Definition of TermsThe terms below were used in this studyLetter- sound relationship Skills associated with sound-letter knowledgethe awareness of how spoken sound and written letters relate to each other in the English languagethe names of letters and the sounds associated with themthe ability to recognize words previously seenthe ability to apply knowledge of how sounds and letters are related to each other to figure out the pronunciation of words not seen before, which is known as decoding(Shedd, 2008)Phonemic AwarenessThis skill involves th e ability to manipulate and understand sounds, and the relationship between sounds and words. For example, children learn to recognize that two words sound alike (or rhyme), and can identify the first or last sound in a word. They are able to manipulate sounds in words to make up new words (eg might without the /t/ sound is my), and recognize that sentences are made up of separate words.(http//elr.com.au/phonological/design.htma03)Difficult ReadersStudents with the following reading problems difficulty in matching sounds and letters has trouble in reading and spelling phonetically trace in a very laboured mannerRemedial LessonsLessons conducted especially to help low achieving students which is intentional to help these students to improve and simplify their learning difficulties and to catch up with other fellows of the same levels.PhonicsTeaching reading by training the students to associate letters with their sound values.