We are not in disagreement on the importance of phonemic awareness, and using 44 phonemes. As we’ve discussed before, we differ oh whether the phoneme-grapheme correspondences should be taught all at once, or a bit at a time. https://twitter.com/narellelynch1/status/1259945425525551104

Your issue with starting with a small number of graphemes and moving to more examples from there appears to be that we are somehow confusing children by teaching them that <a> makes an /æ/ in some CVC words for example.

Your stated approach it seems is to teach all the possible graphemes for the sound /æ/ for example, and all the possible pronunciations.

As #cognitiveloadtheory would you predict, the concern with this approach is that children won’t be able to consolidate and receive feedback on also those 10s-100s of representations you are presenting at once.

Instead—purely because of the constraints of working memory, and the limits on the capacity to convert all these exposures into long term memory—students orthographic knowledge will be patchy and inconsistent.

That is why a systematic, and stepped approach to phonics teaching is most effective, especially for students whose engagement in incidental literacy experiences at home is not guaranteed

The best research evidence and theory supports this approach, as do the success stories in an increasing number of schools in Australia and the US.

At the end of the day, we are on the same page. We want children to become proficient, confident, and engaged readers and writers.

We won’t get there if are approaches don’t take into account the limits of human attention, memory, and executive skills.

Don’t throw children straight into a football match and say good luck! Give them the meaningful, prerequisite experiences and practice in the skills that equip them to engage. Set them up for success! #DontLeaveReadingToChance