The Pivotal Role of Orthographic Knowledge when Learning to Read and Spell. Evidence from Research and the Implications for Practice - Dr Sharon McMurray

Since the government made systematic synthetic phonics compulsory in England there has been a growing emphasis on phonics teaching at phoneme level only, in the wider UK. This is not problematic, except in cases where phoneme level intervention is seen as an alternative to, or in opposition with, coarse grain level sounds, in particular patterns and sequences at the intra-syllabic (onset and rime) level. Onset and rime patterns facilitate the development of orthographic knowledge. They also reduce the working memory demands of short-term temporary storage in complex processing tasks such as decoding and encoding. Without this teaching, children who have orthographic processing and/or working memory difficulties are seriously disadvantaged.