SQE Policy On Teaching Children To Read

Schools should provide every child a learning-to-read program based on systematic phonics. Emphasis should at first be on sounds, letters and words, moving to meaning, comprehension and inference. Teachers should model and share the pleasure and utility of reading for communication, interest, discovery, excitement, fun and further learning.

Q: What is the difference between the SQE approach and the balanced approach used in most Canadian schools?

SQE: The balanced approach is not balanced; it only uses phonics either incidentally or, when a child has experienced failure, on a need basis. SQE advocates a sequential phonics program as a starting point. Large-scale research on instruction shows that a direct, teacher-centred approach to reading is best for most children. Children should also be read to, in school and at home, but a daily program of focused teaching is necessary. The best of several approaches to phonics is one where a beginning is made with sounds, moving to a sound-letter connection and then moving to words and simple sentences, e.g., synthetic phonics.

Q: When should instruction begin and when should children be able to read, to themselves and others, and understand simple sentences and paragraphs? 

SQE: There is no right time, but in Canada, where children are in kindergarten at age five, systematic instruction should begin then. It takes about six to eight months for most children to learn the basics of phonics and reading. All children should be able to read when they enter first grade. Extra help should be given immediately to those children who are struggling. If formal instruction is postponed until grade one, children should be reading by the end of the year. Phonics should be totally unnecessary by the end of grade two.

Q: This conjures up dreary pictures of children forced to sit still in rows as they endlessly recite meaningless sounds and words. Won't children get restless and bored?

SQE: No. The formal reading instruction typically takes 45 minutes a day. Most children want to learn to read and enjoy seeing concrete signs of progress. The words quickly become meaningful as they master the connection between sounds and the written words in stories, rhymes and songs. Children want to read. As they are rewarded by progress, they pay attention and try hard. Phonics can be presented in entertaining ways.

Q: Does phonics strangle creativity and spontaneity so that children will never enjoy reading?

SQE: No. The child-centred approaches dominant in in Canadian schools over many decades (whole language, balanced, look-say, and language experience) have not produced more voracious readers than there are in other countries or were in other times. Phonics takes a part of one of thirteen years of schooling, Competence is a prerequisite to enjoyment of any activity.

Q: Don't children learn better in small groups, where more advanced children can help others? What does direct instruction do for gifted children who can read before kindergarten, and others with leraning difficulties?

SQE: Learning in undirected, mixed small groups is ineffective. One learns to swim various strokes by sequential focused instruction. Rapid learners do not know how to teach others, thus both they and the slower students become frustrated. Genuinely gifted children may often be better off learning on their own, but an absence of phonetic skill may interfere with their spelling later on. Those with severe disabilities should be given special help as soon as the difficulty is identified.