SYNTHETIC PHONICS AND TOE BY TOE

Toe By Toe uses synthetic phonics and Keda has used the synthetic phonics approach since the 1970’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 Toe By Toe does. However, the Toe By Toe system differs from this purist view of synthetic phonics 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 (Toe By Toe page 41). Since students can read coherent sentences like this so early in the scheme, their confidence gets an important 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 words in the English language. Toe By Toe 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.

“I forget how I found out about Toe by Toe, but I am so thankful that I did. (I was probably looking up resources for dyslexia. It is not an official diagnosis but he has a lot of the markers). My son is actually able to sound out blends now. He is truly making progress. I have hope. I am stunned when I sit down with him and he is able to read through column after column of words. It is amazing to me that once he has read a word correct three times in a row (at least 24 hours between each try) it is in his long term memory. If you have a child with dyslexia or one that has trouble with blends, or just a struggling reader in general, I encourage you to try Toe by Toe. It has worked for my son when many other great reading curriculums didn't."
Quote Anchor White
‘Preacher Girl’, Amazon USA review, May 2015

SYNTHETIC PHONICS TEST

The Toe By Toe Phonic Test tests a student’s phonetic knowledge. Students who struggle to pronounce the sounds of the Toe By Toe nonsense words correctly is a clear indication that they need help in improving their reading skills.

There are many different causes and reasons why some people have difficulties in reading text. Low intelligence is seldom the reason some people struggle to read! Indeed, some of the brightest and most intelligent children and adults can experience reading difficulties.

Download The Phonics Test
Audio Phonic Test Answers

NB: The Phonic Test is a PDF file. To access it you need to have a PDF reader installed on your device.

We recommend using Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download and install it for FREE here.

PLEASE NOTE! Keda Publications is not responsible for any issues you encounter by downloading and installing Adobe Acrobat Reader, nor do we offer any support on using Adobe Acrobat Reader.