Ashley and Donovan celebrate with a high five. Finally, something has clicked: they have both managed to spell correctly the list of words that has been baffling them for years.
What suddenly made a difference? The approach that has helped these 17-year-old health and care learners to overcome their spelling difficulties is perhaps not one you would expect to find in a further education classroom: phonics.
You might think of phonics as an approach reserved for younger learners who are just getting to grips with reading. However, phonics also has the potential to support older students like Ashley and Donovan, who lack confidence in their abilities and whose spelling has previously been hindered by a tendency to avoid situations in which they expected they might fail.
These particular students attend Redcar and Cleveland College, part of The Education Training Collective, which is based in Stockton - an area of social deprivation in the North East of England where academic achievement is lower than average. Like many FE learners, they struggle with literacy, and this stops them from making progress in their main subject specialism. Students often arrive at college with low self-belief, a history of underachievement and many barriers to learning.
How did we hit upon phonics as a way to support students like Ashley and Donovan? The new functional-skills curriculum places emphasis on phonics-based approaches, so we decided that it was worth a try. We knew that the first step was to train our staff in teaching phonics; we had support here from the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and the Outstanding Teaching, Learning and Assessment (OTLA) collaborative project Teaching English.
After initial phonics training by our OTLA mentor - Tricia Millar from That Reading Thing - a project team of English teachers and learning support assistants (LSAs) introduced phonics-based approaches into their practice, using many of the strategies from the Post-16 Phonics Approaches Toolkit (UCL Institute of Education and CC Consultancy, 2019). We met regularly to plan and prepare learning strategies, share findings, discuss the impact of the approaches and support each other in addressing challenges. Additionally, we developed a Padlet site with resources, activities and links to useful websites and publications.
The activities we used were multisensory. One particularly useful example was working with learners to break words into syllables through saying them aloud. The syllables were then written into separate word boxes of one grapheme per syllable. Learners pronounced the sounds as they wrote the syllables, helping them to develop recognition of sound-grapheme relationships.
Another approach was using sticky note grapheme tiles to support word building. This involved learners moving the tiles around to form whole words. This further reinforced sound-grapheme relationships as learners could see how seemingly complicated words are easier to spell when broken down into syllables. As the students began to recognise spelling patterns, letter sequences, words within words and useful word beginnings and endings - which helped to develop their word building - their confidence increased.
We focused on maths and science vocabulary because many of the terms in these subjects lend themselves well to looking at morphology: the meaning of words, rather than just the sounds. Once learners understand the meaning of hex- or -gon, for example, they can use that knowledge to broaden both their spelling and reading vocabularies fairly easily.
From here, we moved on to writing activities. We initially used mini whiteboards, which meant learners could easily correct spelling mistakes without “spoiling” their workbooks. We then discussed common spelling errors and shared ways of overcoming them, before introducing activities such as writing brief case studies or information leaflets, to allow learners to use their new skills.
We always encouraged learners to work out spellings themselves. Although this was time consuming and often frustrating, it was worth persevering with, as learners began to develop their own strategies instead of always relying on others for the answers.
These approaches might sound simple enough, but they were not without their challenges. One issue was making sure that every member of the staff team was confident, as most were teaching phonics for the first time. Ongoing phonics training, mentor support, collaborative resource sharing, support from more experienced team members and regular meetings helped here.
Another challenge was tackling learners’ entrenched spelling habits. These were, and still are, difficult to overcome.
We were initially apprehensive that learners would resist phonics, perhaps seeing the approach as childish. Many openly say they don’t want to do more English, often owing to previous poor educational experiences and lack of self-belief.
To help overcome this, we spent time discussing the usefulness of the activities with learners, helping them to see the benefits and encouraging their participation. One method we have used has been sharing our own spelling “nightmares” with them and explaining how we overcame them. This was reassuring for learners, as it helped them to realise that everyone struggles. We also tailored activities to fit learners’ needs, making sure words and texts were age and subject appropriate, and built in opportunities for them to succeed.
So, what improvement has there been? Overall, the project has been successful. Many learners have made significant progress, not only in literacy but also in their self-belief and willingness to “have a go”. This change in students’ mindset has been one of the main rewards for us; it’s helped to convince us that it is worthwhile to continue using phonics-based approaches.
And it isn’t only the students who have benefited. Phonics-based approaches have been helping staff, too.
After our initial success, we went on to involve vocational teaching staff in the project. Many of them stated that they lacked confidence in their own literacy skills and their ability to help learners to spell what is often complicated, specialist terminology. Despite this, Millar led an introductory session, and the project team provided support for vocational staff to embed phonics approaches into their teaching sessions, often as starter or plenary activities. LSAs from the project team supported these vocational sessions, ensuring continuity. This was important for our learners, who need to see clear links between curriculum areas.
One hairdressing lecturer remarked that although she had always hated spelling, she was enjoying the activities she was doing with her learners - and that she could see herself improving along with them.
This type of buy-in was essential. We needed learners to see the value and relevance of what they were doing, within the context of their specialist subjects. And what could be a clearer indication of the value of phonics than watching your teacher’s spelling improve right before your eyes?
This helped students to see that there is really nothing childish about phonics; in fact, there is no age limit on who it can help.
Catherine McPartland is a former project coordinator at The Education Training Collective in Stockton
This article originally appeared in the 3 July 2020 issue under the headline “I’m feeling super phonics, give me gin and tonic”
