Toe By
Toe (TBT) uses synthetic phonics and Keda has used the
Synthetic Phonics approach since the 70's. However, amusingly
enough, she had never even heard of the term 'synthetic
phonics' until a couple of years ago when all the current
fanfare began to appear in the media. Synthetic Phonics is
actually a very simple idea with a fancy name and it means
building words from individual sounds.
(plan) 'p' + 'l' form the
initial blend 'pl', then 'pl' + 'a' + 'n' = plan
To put
it another way, synthetic phonics simply means teaching
children the grapheme - phoneme relationships.
PHONEME = INDIVIDUAL UNIT OF
SOUND
GRAPHEME = WAY TO REPRESENT
(i.e. SPELL) THOSE SOUNDS
Suitable practice is then provided in synthesising (building
up) words using this basic knowledge.
This
should be done before a child learns to recognise words 'on
sight' (i.e. the 'shape' / picture of the whole word). This
is exactly what TBT does. However, the
TBT system differs
from this purist view of S.P. practice since we 'drip feed'
non-phonic words (i.e. words that do NOT look like they
sound) into the structure of the scheme. For example,
was /
so / come / why are introduced on Page 35.
Toe by
Toe introduces these words in a very systematic way so the
student can recognise and begin to read them at the most
appropriate point in the steady accumulation of their reading
skills. This allows children to read:
"Who put the pet dog in the
shed.?"
Note
that 'Who' is NOT phonic but the rest of the words are. (TBT
page 41) Since students can read coherent sentences like this
so early in the scheme, their confidence gets an important early boost.
This is
hardly ‘rocket science’ and it's no surprise that
non-specialists are wondering why such a common sense approach
has not always been used.
There is one other point we would like to make. In the
interest of brevity and simplicity Toe by Toe does not give an
exhaustive description of all the sounds in the English
language. TBT is highly simplified (the secret of its
success, perhaps...?) and we make no claims to cover all the
subtleties of sound. For example, FOR OUR PURPOSES, we
recognise and use only 10 vowel sounds:
The 'short' and the
'long' sounds of: a e i o u ( ă
/ ā, ě / ē, ...etc)
Simplicity has to be paramount and a simple dichotomy between
short and long vowel sounds is easy to teach.
Anyone, who has seen the Ruth Miskin approach (as presented on
BBC Newsnight, for example) will appreciate that the scheme
demands phonetically precise sounds from the children (a
sibilant hiss for "s"... etc). Again, we are not concerned
with such subtleties and expect the child to say the distinct
sound of the letter / blend ("a' for apple, "b" for bat...
etc). Keda realised early in her research that struggling readers need to
make a clear distinction between sounds and it is NOT a
problem for them to transfer those sounds to words later on.
