Case: Synthetic Phonics Reading

I'm not sure if you remember, but about 2 years ago there was quite a big news story on how a selection of children in Scotland were taking part in a study where they were being taught to read using the Synthetic Phonics approach, compared to the traditional Analytic Phonics approach.

The typical Analytic approach involves firstly teaching the children the sound of letters in their initial position and moving onto how the letters sounds in different positions and secondly teaching the children how to blend sounds.

The Synthetic approach involves teaching the children a few letter sounds a week and how to blend the sounds together to understand unfamiliar words.

The second approach has shown remarkable success, with children being able to spell words/read words seven months of those children taught the traditional method.

This may be important when deciding out how the words that are scanned are read out and also the types of games/tools we put on the PC software.

More can be found about the Synthetic Apprach on the old article on Hull's University website here.