Browsing by Author "Nenonen, Katja"

Achieving literacy is one of the most important tasks in primary education, and literacy plays an important role in a student's school success and coping in society. The aim of this study was to find out what methods and practices primary school teachers prefer to teach in the first year and why. The aim has also been to background teachers' thoughts about tasks and significance of teaching to read. Quite a few studies of similar choices in teaching practices can be found. With regard to international studies, it is noteworthy that they cannot be directly used as such in comparison, as the orthography and writing system of a language influence the practices and choices of the teaching method to be read. Finnish is a low-spelling language with an easy writing system. Due to its almost perfect letter-sound equivalence, Finnish is one of the easiest languages to learn to read. Thus, synthetic teaching methods would seem to be the most suitable for the Finnish language. The study is qualitative and was conducted with an electronic questionnaire with five open- ended questions. The form was emailed to approximately 90 first-year teachers. A total of 15 responses were received. Data-based content analysis was used as the method. In summary, the results of the study showed that teachers used mainly synthetic methods to teach, and in particular the KÄTS method or mixed methods derived from them. Analytical methods were not used much based on the study. The reasons for using the method were related to the fact that the existing learning materials supported their use and were good practices in the experience of teachers. It was also essential that the structure of the Finnish language supported the use of synthetic methods.