Sceptical about phonics, the test includes made up words.

[SueSuddio]

I've thought that phonics hasn't totally worked for my eldest because pretty much every other word over 3 letters in English is not phonetic.

I've just been given an email about an upcoming phonics test and this para stood out:

"It comprises of a list of 40 words that children read one-to-one with a teacher. The list is a combination of both real and made up, non-words which rely purely on using phonics to decode. The non-words are words that have been made up and will be shown with a picture of an imaginary creature to help them."

So the phonics test includes non words. I don't quite understand how if we want children to read English, we aren't using real words, so many of which have their own rules and pronunciations. We're not teaching them how to read Pokémon names surely?

It's s a shame because my DS is good at word recognition so he won't really get these non words.

My dyslexic daughter managed to pass the Y1 phonics test (just!). I honestly dont know how as she doesn't understand phonics at all. Its not a big deal to the kids, they just decode the alien word as they would any other word. Its to show the government that they understand how phonics work and not how well they read. Don't give it another thought. If they dont pass they redo it in Y2. Its not a big deal at all.

The phonics test is about whether they can do the phonics.
By using made up words they know the child hasn't come across them before and learned them.

If you know phonics you can read glap, rop, lut etc.

Phonics isn't testing all of literacy, just phonics decoding which is pretty much needed for reading words you haven't come across before.

This is precisely the point. Children who learn to recognise familiar words without phonics are going to struggle later on when they start learning new concepts along the road in their education. They then fall behind because they have to do catchup learning. If your son is great at recognising known words but struggles to decode novel "made up" words then it is a good thing for the phonics test to find this out now, so he can be given the extra help he needs and won't struggle so much later.

Don't worry about this. Getting a low mark at this stage doesn't count as any kind of detriment or judgement on your child. It just means that the school will put extra effort in to helping him. That is not something to be avoided or dismayed about.

They've been doing that test for about a decade now.
I remember when my daughter's class did it - half the children said (words to this effect) "it's so stupid because some of the words are made up words".
It's all about showing they know the phonic letter sounds and can blend them together.
My daughter mostly learned to read the "wrong" way (by sight not phonics) but she still got 40 out of 40.

you’re right that English is nowhere near as phonetic as languages like Spanish.

it does have phonetic rules though and the “alien” words (the kids are usually told that these are alien names) stick to them.

we’re talking year 1 here so not long words.

most of the words in the phonics test are real words. The alien ones is to spot children who have very good memory (like my DS) who can remember real words but might not have actually learnt phonics.

stuff like

lat, yat, dat, jat, zat, etc which are not English words but have a pretty obvious way to say them.

Why do you say words over 3 letters are mainly not phonetic?
The words in the sentence above are.

My ds went to a school back when the phonics test was pretty new. Many failed it in y1 but easily passed it in year 2. They all got their GCSEs, went to uni etc so it’s not a major problem if the child doesn’t “pass”

Of course you can make up words. They’ll be based on patterns found in real words that the kids have been working on in class.
Using made up words proves the kid the link the graphemes to the sounds, which is the whole point of phonics. I wouldn’t say that all or even most words over three letters are not pronounced phonetically in English, it’s just that the relationships between graphemes (letters and combos of letters) and sounds are complex and when you get to longer words, you start having multiple possible pronunciations or multiple possible special. Plus word stress messes with all the vowel sounds. Your kid’s made up words will be things like : Sam, am, ham, blam. Or fling, bring, thing, shing.
Blam and Shing would be shown as names of imaginary animals.

So the point is not to teach them a bunch of made up words. The point is to test whether they can associate graphemes and sounds even in words they’ve never seen before.

DS can’t do phonics at all. Age 25 and highly successful, but his only way to tackle a new word is by the meaning/context/sense or small words inside that he does know. His phonic attempts are funny.

We could have done with knowing that earlier so we could get his hearing/processing checked. Hey ho.

It is a test that does what it says on the tin - it is a phonics test. It’s not a reading test. If your child knows their phonic sounds, they will be able to decode the words in the test. If they don’t, they won’t. It’s like a times table test - it tests times tables, not the ability to ‘do Maths’.

And ultimately, if they read and comprehend age appropriate texts accurately (so not eg relying on limited repetitive vocabulary or on picture clues), then whether they have reached that point via phonics teaching or not is largely irrelevant, as long as their personal strategy is not limiting and can be applied to harder and harder texts as they get older.

Proper synthetic phonics teaching is shown to be the most effective way of teaching most children to read - and other methods like ‘whole word’ only worked, for most, because the child worked out the phonic code for themselves from what they knew - but it does not mean that some children won’t learn to read without it, nor that 100% of children will learn to read even when taught phonics very well.

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I wonder, re-reading OP’s post, whether they have not themselves understood eg digraphs, trigraphs, alternative graphemes etc? (Which may indicate lack of parental
outreach and / or poor ongoing phonics teaching in the school). There are still pockets of poor and outdated reading teaching in some schools, where they teach only the single letter sounds and then basically give up.

I tutor Year 5 children. They all had their Reception and Year 1 learning disrupted by COVID and school closures. Their reading, writing and spelling skills are all behind previous Year 5 cohorts. This has to be due to inconsistent phonics teaching and learning in those 2 significant years. Phonics may not work well for a small minority but it does work for the majority (when it is taught well).

The phonics check isn't about understanding the words or giving meaning to words, it's about saying what is on the page whether you know it or not.

When learning to read, inevitably unknown words or unfamiliar words will come up in the book. Knowledge of phonics gives kids a chance to decode an unknown word. Admittedly, there are many words that are not easily decoded in the English language, are there are some rules to learn as well. Broadly though, it gives a chance to attempt a word that is unknown.

This is similar to reading non-words in the phonics screening words.

All words until known may as well be non-words.

I have long been of the opinion that phonics is a load of cobblers, and this information has only served to reinforce that opinion.

I think it's more that you don't understand yourself how phonics works OP. For example the 'ph' in phonics is a grapheme which the children will learn to sound as 'f'. Made up words will include this grapheme to test whether the child has learned how to pronounce it.

Can you please elaborate on how no words over three letters are phonetic?

My DD was in the first cohort to do it. Failed massively. Failed again at the end of year 2. Only then did the school start taking me seriously when I said I thought she was dyslexic. She's got great GCSE and A level grades, but still has to use other strategies for new words, as for a PP's DS. I'm really glad she did this test so it gave us proper evidence she needed extra support.

Good example.

f, ff, ph, (and I suppose also gh)

fish
off
phone
cough

Phonics is a big subject op if your son gets phonics great.
However if he's a sight reader like many of us were from the 80s then keep going with that.
Many of us just got reading and didn't have any issues at all de coding previously unseen proper words.

With my two DC one got phonics and the other failed the test. We were made to feel something awful had happened and it's was bad but no other help or reading strategy was forthcoming.

Someone else showed me the light and explained how school is locked into a phonics test and how many children are leaving primary school unable to read.

Many DC with literacy issues are phonics blind.

Unfortunately they just get force fed more phonics.
Many children need a blend so in short just keep going with sight reading.

Phonics starts with learning the sound for each single letter.

Using C to represent consonants and V to represent vowels, phonics first teaches how to decode CVC words - those three letter words

Then CVCC will introduce graphmes with 2 consonants such as sh, ck

CCVCC would be words such as 'chick'

The aim is for the child to be able to both decode and blend those graphemes, even if they have never seen that word before.

The non words are there to see if the child is decoding - i.e. matching consonants and vowels to sounds, and able to do so in a way that shows the child has absorbed patterns or rules.
Example:
Lotto/ botto
Photo/ poto

Phonics is about decoding.

Consonants are not the problem in English.

Vowel sounds are the tripping points.

The OP is correct in her observation that English really does not lend itself to attack solely via phonics. A huge amount of the development of reading skills depends on size of vocabulary and strength of working memory.

In the US, my DCs learned to read before they were exposed to phonics in school, but all did phonics in 1st grade (at age 6) and were also expected to master Dolch words, 220 words that appear in (iirc) 75% of literature aimed at children under age 8, but do not really follow the rules of basic phonics - words like what, where, here, who, want. Mastery of these words is key to kids seeing reading as an enjoyable pastime.

Agree.

There are many ways to skin this particular cat.

See three different O sounds there as an example of the difficulties faced by students.

Throw in 'of' and see the issues with F too.