The Importance of Phonics in Literacy

When you start with phonics, you basically produce word callers and kids who don't really understand what they're reading. The selling point for me in terms of seeing it work is that for some kids, this opportunity to learn how the speech system maps with the orthography or the spelling system of English is the only way that they're going to become fluent readers. Other kids, maybe the top 50 or top 40% will learn either way. And they're actually not going to read any less well. They might have always been a great reader but we've got a whole generation of kids that aren't great spellers because they've taken to reading like water.