Phonics Reform England (PRE)

Morphology is a natural partner to word mapping of phonemes and graphemes, as is etymology where useful.

After mapping words into phonemes and graphemes, as expected within phonics, most Early Years teachers naturally extend the exploration to morphology.
 

So this can, and should, happen during Reception and Year 1 because we’re interested in the word as a whole and in modelling that interest with children.

I say this because I’m seeing various phonics vs morphology arguments all over social media (likely the algorithms trying to annoy me!), yet real teachers give children what they need, when they need it. So both!

When we ask children to look at the <ed> suffix here, it can be especially useful for those learning English because we’re linking the mapping, including morpheme mapping, to pronunciation. For example, the <ed> suffix in started, jumped and played looks the same but is pronounced differently.

Let’s think of word mapping as a way to embrace anything that’s useful in that moment. This includes the child’s own experiences.

And let’s move away from this ‘either/or’ thinking and towards, ‘What’s most helpful here for each individual?’

I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted by it all. We had the whole language vs phonics debate. Hopefully we’ve now moved towards, ‘How can we best support orthographic knowledge, and how much explicit phonics instruction does each individual in my class need?’

Let’s not start a phonics vs morphology war as well.

Emma Hartnell-Baker