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A little over a decade ago, a new government in the United Kingdom issued a report recommending that early reading instruction include phonics. What has been the impact of that change in approach to teaching r... Read more...
07 May 2018
A 2016 analysis by Stephen Machin and his colleagues at the London School of Economics found that the new phonics mandates were associated with only modest improvements in reading scores by the age of 5, and t... Read more...
12 January 2018
Sandra McNally from CEP comments on effectiveness of phonics as method of teaching literacy. ... Read more...
07 December 2017
Previously children were taught using a 'look and say' method, where they were shown words until they could regonise them. However, teaching reading using sounds rather than individual letters has been... Read more...
05 December 2017
Other structured programmes are also showing success with under-performing pupils. A large-scale study by the LSE on synthetic phonics lessons found that while they did not improve the reading score of the ave... Read more...
Evidence from a recent report by Stephen Machin and his colleagues at the London School of Economics, entitled “Teaching to Teach” Literacy, shows that synthetic phonics instruction has little to n... Read more...
04 October 2017
Recent research published by the London School of Economics also found that teaching phonics led to greater improvements in reading among disadvantaged children compared with students taught using other system... Read more...
09 September 2017
Research has shown that phonics can boost children’s reading age by an average of 28 months by the time they turn seven. Boys benefit the most from the back-to-basics system and actually overtake girls a... Read more...
06 March 2017
Learning to decipher the squiggles on the page well enough to pass the key stage 1 Sats does not make you a reader, says author Susan Elkin Teaching reading in itself is pointless. All the phonics, decoding skills ... Read more...
08 May 2016
Although phonics - breaking words down into their constituent parts - has been one of the main ways in which parents and teachers teach children to read for many years, new research from the London School of Economics ... Read more...
05 May 2016
SIR - I noted with interest the research from the London School of Economics into the use of synthetic phonics in schools. Phonics is a highly effective method of helping children who are behind with reading to catch... Read more...
26 April 2016
Here are two newspaper headlines from 25 April 2016: •The Guardian: Reading boosted by phonics, study says •The Daily Telegraph: Phonics test 'does not improve reading' If ever there was evidence needed... Read more...
Sandra McNally interviewed for the drivetime show, discussing recently published research on teaching reading with 'synthetic phonics'. This interview was broadcast by BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra programme on April... Read more...
Traditional teaching methods championed by Government do not improve children's reading skills, a landmark London School of Economics (LSE) study shows. Teaching children in a way in which words are broken down into ... Read more...
25 April 2016
An ''inexpensive trial'' policy improved all pupils' literacy in the early years and had long-term effects on children who struggle with reading, a major new study has found. The ''teaching to teach'' literacy study, whi... Read more...
Welcome to the latest issue of Best Evidence in Brief, brought to you by the Johns Hopkins School of Education's Center for Research and Reform in Education and the Institute for Effective Education at The University of ... Read more...
Using synthetic phonics to teach children how to read can have considerable long-term benefits for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who do not have English as a first language, according to a new study by ... Read more...