Criticism
Jolly Phonics has attracted much controversy over the years. At one point, it was being used in 68% of UK primary schools when government policy advocated the opposite method of 'whole word' learning, indicating that support to retain (which?) previous policy had been lost. A research project in Clackmannanshire also demonstrated a large difference in pupils' learning (how?).
Critics have argued that not all children benefit from the synthetic phonics method. Some people's views (whose?) are that more time should be spent teaching children how to write whole words and say the alphabet in the traditional manner instead of breaking words down into letter sounds then blending them to read.
One of the major concerns regarding synthetic phonics is that it is taught in isolation and is boring for students. However, within effective literacy instruction, neither of these assumptions is true. Phonics instruction is part of a balanced literacy approach (which is very different from whole language) and should never be taught exclusive of meaningful connections to text. In addition, many teachers find that the interactive premise behind Jolly Phonics makes it fun for kids.
Read more about this topic: Jolly Phonics
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)