Timesonline.co.uk | Farmyard sounds 'will help children to read and spell'

'Children are to be encouraged to moo like a cow, ee-aw like a donkey and to make banging noises with sticks and pots, under a revival of back-to-basics literacy teaching.
Government guidance on the teaching of synthetic phonics published yesterday suggests that children learn to read and write best if they are taught first to distinguish between the 44 different phonemes or sounds of the English language before reading whole words.
But the 208-page document, to be made available to all state primary schools in England, was described as insulting by Britain’s biggest teaching union, which criticised it as another attempt to micro-manage classroom practice. [...]'

Times article by Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
published 20 June 2007