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Dr Seuss and Synthetic Phonics John Nissen, 5th January 2006 Of the Dr Seuss books I’ve seen, the following five seem most appropriate, and could be used in teaching synthetic phonics or in the reinforcement of that teaching: 1. Hop on Pop 2. The Cat in the Hat 3. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back 4. Wacky Wednesday 5. Green Eggs and Ham 6. Fox in Socks The “Hop on Pop” book is supposed to be “for sharing with your child”, whereas the other books are “for children just beginning to read on their own”. My feeling is the “Green Eggs and Ham” is most suited to shared reading, whereas “Hop on Pop” might be read by a child on its own, after having a good dose of synthetic phonics. I’ve also looked at: 1. Hop on Pop The main problem is the use of capital letters. But if you ignore these, and just read the text below the capitals, it is useful for learning the vowel sounds for various spellings. Vowel sounds used: Combined with consonant digraph: Then: More digraphs: Then blends: Use of ‘ll’ as in Will, hill and still. Finally, use of ‘th’ with /u/ and /ah/, as in other, brother and father. (MOTHER only appears in capitals.) In the middle of text the following “function words” appear: is, in, on, we, are, a, off, the, after, now, how, be, don’t, that, very, what, you, too, must, not, upside, where, with, does, this, me, but, if, and and it. The following “content words” appear: fish,
call, sit, good-by [spelt goodbye in the Discussion This book might be tackled at the end of the first term, preferably with the text in capitals masked out or papered over with lower case. The order of introduction of sounds and blending is not very suitable for use in day-to-day teaching of synthetic phonics. For example the use of short vowels is scattered through the book. The vowels and vowel sounds in the book are all introduced in the context of rhyme, so are followed by particular consonants and consonant sounds. This is in contrast to the synthetic phonics method, where the sounds of individual letters are taught, and decoding is done by blending the sounds of each of the letters in a word to produce the sound of the whole word. Thus if you can decode dog and bat, you can decode god, tab, dot, tag, etc. because they are made of the same sounds. On the positive side, the book has very few split digraphs (only upside and like), and the blending is simple. There are only a few sounds with alternative spellings: Conversely there are only a few letters that have alternative pronunciations, i.e. different sounds in different contexts: And there is good consistency: Conclusion There is a need to teach most vowel sounds before the pupil/student can read this book by themselves. But it is possible to read this book before reaching the stage of learning the alternative spelling of long vowel sounds, such as /long a/ in made, spelt using a “split digraph”. (This is sometimes called the “magic e” effect – the ‘e’ lengthens the vowel ‘a’ in made.) Teaching of this kind of spelling is usually left to the second term of synthetic phonics tuition. Also you do not need to teach /long a/, /long o/, /long u/ and /oo/ (except for you and too). The book avoids vowels with an ‘r’, except a few words ending ‘er’ (after, brother, father), plus are and where. Possibly the only words that need to be learnt individually are what, where, you, like, eat, read, one, little, word, ask, does and don’t. The only words with ‘gh’ end in ‘ight’. Thus Dr Seuss has done a lot to make for easy reading. All consonant sounds have been used in the book, with the notable exception of /z/ and /ch/. The /sh/ sound is only used in fish, and /j/ only in Jim. Only simple consonant blending is included. During the first term, the teacher can use individual pages of the book as an aid in teaching specific sounds and letter patterns. Then the book can be used during the second term of teaching synthetic phonics, for the pupil/student to read through by themselves, with little help from teacher (or parent). However, if capital letters have not been learnt, it is suggested that the text in capitals is blanked out, or overwritten with corresponding lower case text. 2. The Cat in
the Hat The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold wet day. So it starts with all monosyllabic words. Note the irregular was and all, the ‘oo’ in too and the ‘ou’ in house. In the second verse we have there, Sally, two, said, something and do. In the third we have too, out, ball and nothing. Verse 4 has could, was and little. Later on we have looked, saw, why, know, sunny, have, good and funny. And we have tricks (with ‘ck’), mother and mind. We have our (fish), want, should, here, about, when and out. Then we have fear, put, down, fall, high, book, look, hold, toy, tail, head, down, sank, shook, and new. With the second game we have: box, fox, hook, these, bow (with /ow/), one, bite, their, tame, kite, wall, hall, gown, pink, white, and “your mother is on her way home”, hear, find, fast, think, last, kind, away, gone, tall, playthings, another, what and asked: What would YOU do If your mother asked YOU? Consonants All the letters are used except ‘v’, ‘q’ and ‘z’, but ‘j’ is only used in jump and jumps. Words with ‘f’ have /f/ except for of with /v/. Words with ‘c’ have /k/, never /s/. An ‘x’ only occurs in box and fox. Consonant digraphs include ‘ck’, ‘ng’, ‘sh’, ‘th’ and ‘wh’, but not ‘ch’ or ‘ph’. The only word with ‘gh’ is high. Note there is ‘n’ in think and pink with /ng/. The ‘k’ is silent in asked (but not looked) and in know. There are no other words with silent consonants! There are many examples of consonant blends. Vowels Single vowels are treated as follows: Split digraphs of form ‘VCe’ (with vowel V and consonant C as single letters) generally produce a lengthening of the vowel V. Exceptions in this story include: one, come, some (and something), and have. The diphthong /air/ is produced in here and there. Note also that are has /ar/ rather than /long a/. Vowel digraphs include: Every word ending with ‘all’ has /au/ as in ball. Note that Sally has /a/. Considering the length of the story, there are relatively few words with diphthongs: Conclusion Again, Dr Seuss has done a lot to make for easy reading. Most graphemes (letters and digraphs) map to a single phoneme. About 20 mapping rules are required for single consonants, and about 5 for consonant digraphs. About 16 rules would need to be learnt for single vowels, about 12 for vowel digraphs. The only words with irregular spellings (not covered by these rules) would be about 20 common words which need to be learnt at an early stage. Assuming about five rules and two exceptions were learnt each week, it would take ten to twelve weeks to cover what is required for reading the book. These rules would be learnt in an order consistent with synthetic phonics practice. This book could thus be read with a little help by the end of the first term, or a pupil/student might tackle the book by themselves during the second term. As regards learning the rules and exceptions, this book is only slightly more difficult than “Hop on Pop”. This might seem surprising, but then neither book has been designed for synthetic phonics. 3. The Cat in
the Hat comes back Additional words compared to “The Cat in the Hat”, include: work (and working), done, deep, snow, town, somebody (and somebodies), clean, picked, near, laughed, my, right, good, eat (and eating), water, off, ink, ever, white, dress, mess, spots, wipe, news, shoes, use, whose, £7, about, never, yelled, next, don’t, picked, count, three, hard, bedroom, shook, crack, stood, hard, can’t, alone, today, helps, little, think, much, broom, comes, old, TV, cleaned, milk, blew, true, made, can’t, A B C D E F, clever, kill, those, does, more, your, take, yelp, took, G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V, jumped, pails, high, yard, stood, there, knew, would, close (near), W X Y Z, can’t, guess, voom, anything, boy and are. Additional letters are: Q, V and Z. Other characters are ‘£’ and ‘7’. An additional consonant digraph is ‘ch’ in much. Additional single vowel pronunciations: Split digraphs not producing normal lengthening: Additional digraphs or digraph pronunciations: Additional polysyllabic words are: working, somebody, eating, bedroom, alone, today, and anything. Words with ‘ed’ endings are: laughed, yelled, picked, cleaned and jumped. 4. Wacky
Wednesday This could be used for familiarisation of the numbers, one to twelve, and for learning to recognise one of the most difficult words in the English language: Wednesday. Otherwise it has a mixture of words, and requires most of the mapping rules in order to read it. So it is a good book to read, when most of these rules have been learnt, e.g. towards the end of the second term of synthetic phonics instruction. 5. Green Eggs and Ham On the back cover it explains that, once you have learnt to read the phrase “I do not like”, you will able to master a whole page by repeating the phrase with different rhyming objects. Having the rhymes is certainly helpful in guessing the pronunciation of words by splitting CVC words into “onset” (the start of the word) and “rime” (the rest of the word). And the pictures help in guessing the objects. However this kind of guesswork is considered harmful if you are keen to encourage the reader to decode each word. So I am not sure how valuable this book would be for children just beginning to read by themselves – its stated purpose. If one believes that repetition will help to cement the spellings of words, then reading through the book with the child would be useful, e.g. after the first term of synthetic phonics teaching. Certainly the strict adherence to monosyllabic words (except anywhere) is going to be helpful. 6. Fox in Socks This is excellent for teaching synthetic phonics when you come to particular problems: What is particularly good about this story is that most words occur at least twice in the book. Also the alternative spellings for certain sounds are concentrated together in a section of the story. “Thank you for a lot of fun, sir” | |
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