The older I get, the more I realise that there is never one simple easy answer. Duality or multiplicity is built into the fabric of life.

Yin/Yang, Left/Right, Relativity/Quantum theory. All systems work happily enough, but each needs the other to make sense of the whole.

So it is with learning to read.

The mechanistic approach to reading of phonics is great – breaking down the language into its composite parts to create building blocks.

I’m a great advocate of this axiomatic approach. Start with the very basic truth or fact about the subject that everyone can agree on, then build upon that foundation, step by step, block by block.

You may have read my book, Euclid, the man who invented geometry. Euclid is the classic, axiomatic approach to learning geometry. But geometry is boring, boring, boring if you never have the chance to see the angles being created, or to stab yourself with a compass and bleed on your exercise book or feel the exhilaration of drawing a perfect circle. There has to be fun and there has to be a reason to it all.

When it comes to reading, you can fill a child full of phonics, but you can’t make them read. Phonics won’t make them want to read. Phonics are mechanical, they have nothing to offer, no fun, no reason.

Phonics only make sense in conjunction with stories. Stories are what captivate a child’s imagination, not phonics.

Phonics are meaningless to a child unless they begin to see a connection between the mechanics and the prize. The prize is the story. Why else should they bother learning phonics?

There are no more magical words to a child than, “Shall I tell you a story?” Say them and you’ll have their immediate and rapt attention. It’s an extraordinary power. You don’t even have to be good at telling stories, just choose a good book, open it and off you go. Trust the author and the editor who put their life’s experience into getting the story just right, so you can be a hero to the children you read to.

This works with adults too. Try it!

For every minute spent on phonics an equal minute needs to be spent on story time, otherwise phonics don’t make sense. Phonics and grammar and structure and spelling only make sense when you know what it is that they all add up to… the prize, the story.