to think children should be taught to read and to form letters before being given spellings tests?

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Ds2 who has just started yr1 now has weekly spellings tests. I think it's crazy enough as it is that a 5 year old is having to do this, I don't remember spellings tests until I was in the equivalent of year 4. But to make matters worse he cannot read, so therefore it makes it more difficult to learn to spell words. The phonics that schools now teach are stopping him from being able to learn to read as he tries to 'sound out' every word that is put in front of him. Would it not be a good idea to teach children to read properly first?

On top of that, he hasn't yet been taught to form letters. So for instance a and e he does in a really odd way, he doesn't seem to be able to 'unlearn' the way he does it.

Now I'm not expecting the school to do everything with him, I understand that that is part of my role as a parent as well, and I do do a lot with him. I can't teach him to read though as I have no idea how to unteach phonics. During the summer holidays I started teaching him words the 'old fashioned' way, i.e. showing them to him and teaching them to him. He was learning about 5 words at a time and learning them after only seeing them twice, words he had learnt at the start of the holidays he still knew 7 weeks later when he went back to school. Now though that he's having phonics drummed back into him he looks at them, tries to sound them out and gets confused and stressed so I've stopped. In year R he had only learnt 40 out of 100 words that they are supposed to know by the end of yrR, although many of them he didn't really know imo. I've sat with him trying to help him with form letters but any breakthrough I do seem to have is wiped away the next day after school.

The school say he is well ahead of where he would be expected to be - his work is what would be planned for the end of yr1, so he is 2 terms 'ahead' but I am struggling to understand why 1. spellings tests are a good idea for a 5 year old and 2. why they are not taught to read and write before they are taught to spell.

(Btw, do you ever notice which words people mis-pronounce because they've only seen them on paper? This is again because we are always trying to use phonetic skills to decode words, even when we don't realize we're doing it. So lots of people want to say 'mizzled' for 'misled', that sort of thing.)

oh, that's a good point - I say hyper-bole and epi-tome.
etc.

LRDTheFeministDragon you say "probably the same way other people did at the time?" and of course that is right. My mum would have said "not 'KA-nife' it's pronounced 'nife' and I remembered for next time.

Of course sounding out words from the letters came into it. That's why I'd have been trying to pronounce it with a 'K' in the first place, but it's not enough on its own as English is not so strictly rule based as to make that possible. Phonics seems to be the conviction that it is.

Yes, I always want to say hyper bowl!

I actually think that sort of word is hard than something like 'knife', because we're all pretty well conditioned to know that 'kn' just means 'knock the k off and read as (k)normal.

I think it is fascinating how much complex information our brains absorb about which rules apply when, and how. Especially when you think that writing, as a system, isn't something we're programmed for in the way language is - it's a technology we developed. I'm a huge geek about this stuff.

Oops, cross-posted there onegar. Yes, I agree, phonics isn't really all there is to it. I don't think that's because English is too complex in its orthography though, I think it's because it is so much quicker to read using both the visual and the phonetic systems. But you are right, phonics alone can sometimes be a bit evangelical the way it's taught. I do get what people are trying to do and I suspect it will prove effective, but it's strange for us who've learned under a different system.

I think it's almost certain that children now who have strong visual memories are learning to read words as pictograms just as subconsciously as children in the past learning phonics.

sorry, that should have been 'I don't think it is just* because English is too complex ...'

onagar, I think we have the same thinking on the subject, and made harder for me to see how useful this way is as I didn't need to use it with ds1 and ds2 is struggling so much, but reading what LRD says makes a lot of sense.

I get what you mean about saying words how they are spelt, names like Siobhan for instance, how many people probably read it as See-Oh-Ban. Ds2s name is, without giving his name away, similar but more popular and has several anglicised versions, his is spelt the 'proper' way so while everybody recognises it as it is popular/traditional it's not a good start for teaching phonics!

nickelbabe - Magic e, yes I remember all this now, the programmes, Geordie Racer and the like with the orange pencil floating on a black background.

I suppose it wasn't drummed into us the way Jolly Phonics etc are now, it was more subtle.

I suppose it's the evangelism in phonics that I first took exception to. Trying to find better methods is a good goal in itself as long as people don't assume that new is always better. It's also okay to combine methods and use different ones for different children (as much as you can in a classroom)

I'm laughing at hyper bowl! because that's still what I hear in my head when I see the word. :o
Over the years I've weeded out quite a few words that I mispronounce ,but there are probably many others as I've never said them out loud. They are just waiting to trip me up and embarrass me.

Yes. I think although phonics itself is very good, Ruth Miskin is basically interested in selling her version as a product. Tricky. (Incidentally, I had a really long train journey with her - didn't know her from adam, this was a good while ago - and she talked to me all about Jolly Phonics, and gave me her card. Which, when you consider I was a 19-year-old student, seems, erm, keen marketing! )

But I think that trying to avoid phonics or unteach it would be a bad idea - shame that the school perhaps hasn't picked up that this child needs more explanation and less rote learning.

OK, so how do you pronounce hyperbole? I've just looked on dictionary.com to save myself the embarrassment of having to ask and can't figure it out from the pronunciation on there.

High-per-bi-lee.

Emphasis on the per, not the 'bi'.

I mispronounce loads of things and I don't really see why people get so snobby about it.

Oh and that's short 'i' on the 'bi' - as in 'sit', nor long 'i' as in 'sigh'.

Kind of an illustration why phonics is tricky! I mean, no wonder it takes a long time to master but once you have learned it, I think it is really helpful.

These magnetic digraphs are good for a child that just doesn't seem to 'get' that 2 letters = 1 sound.

I work with these in school e.g. put the 'oa' on the board and ask for the word 'boat'. We write or place the letter tile 'b' before the 'oa' and the 't' after. It's useful for the child to see that the 2 letters in 'oa' can't be physically separated so therefore shouldn't be sounded out separately.

By now your ds should have learnt the trigraph 'igh' but if he has this mental block on combining then 'sight' and similar words will be impossible to read. If he understands that 'igh' makes the 'eye' sound then it all becomes much clearer!

Regarding 'said', 'like' and 'to', these are taught as tricky or sight words early on that children just get to 'know' as they come across them often in their reading.

I agree that to some children this is confusing, I'm working with a year 2 child at the moment who attempts to sound out every letter in a word and it is holding back his learning and is frustrating for him.

i would have put it as hy-per-boh-lee

or hy-PER-boh-lee

Yeah, I think I hear it as 'bi' but it's just a short 'b' sound. We may well say it differently!

it sounds like you are missunderstanding what he is doing in school to be honest. The key tricky words such as "out" "was" etc cant be sounded out and are not taught to be sounded out. that is generaly why spellings and tests are done to keep practacing these words untill remembered at sight.

' Looking at your post there's a lot of words that can't be 'sounded out' - 'taught', 'sight', 'to' being just a few of them'

I'm not sure you understand how phonics works tbh.
Of course those words can be sounded out.

igh is a common grapheme your son will need to know.
Do you really expect he will learn to read without learning common graphemes? ch, sh, th?

They've been trying to teach him 'th' and 'sh' for almost a year, and I'm sure others like that too. He still reads words with 'th' in them as 't-h'.

LRDs quote again: "we all learn quite differently and what works for one person may not be what is working brilliantly for the other children in the class".

That's what I'm trying to say, she's just said it much better. Phonics isn't working for my son. He sees the individual letters and tries to sound them as he sees them, he cannot grasp that certain letters are 'blended' so making a different sound to the one they make on their own.

To for example, he can't grasp, using phonics that the o makes the 'ooo' sound. Fight, might, light etc. Of course I know that igh makes the eye sound, but for someone who just can't grasp the concept that different sounds together make different sounds to what they do on their own, it doesn't work.

I may try the magnetic ones that hocus suggested and see if that helps him at all.

DS learned to read without sounding out every word. He is 5 now and a fluent reader who very rarely makes any mistakes with pronunciation and is very good at spelling. If the sight method works for your son then go with it. He will figure out the sounds as he goes along. Eg. He will learn the word 'light' and then know that 'fight', 'sight', 'might' will be similar. There is not and should not be a 'one size fits all' approach to teaching.

I was completely put off a school that was teaching the alphabet as - this is the letter 'buh' grrrrrrrrrrrr. No it bloody isn't - it is the letter 'B' and it makes the sound 'buh'.

The fact that phonics as it is being taught doesn't work for him doesn't mean he needs a non-phonetic method, or that that'd be more than a quick fix, necessarily.

I'd worry that if he tried to learn purely by memorizing the look of words, he'd reach a certain point and not be able to get beyond it (because it's so demanding on visual memory). I don't know what the right answer is though.

I really hope you get some better feedback from school and get there with him - it must be very frustrating for him (I remember very well - I didn't learn to read until I was rising 8).

Btw ... I'm sure this varies from person to person, but it seems likely that people who learn to read most easily without phonics are those who find understanding the phonetic principles easiest. That's why they pick them up without apparently having to try or being taught. That's how most of us and our parents learned. The problem is some people really, really can't pick up phonics like that. Will they learn by sight better? Dunno. But my hunch is if they do learn sight vocabulary for a few hundred or a couple of thousand words, tehy'll be more lost after that when the sight vocabulary runs out.

(Sorry if I am being really depressing - I am probably thinking most about people who really have problems, and it sounds as if 26 your DS is very able, just quirky, so I am maybe being daft to talk like this.)

ds didn't start getting spelling until the beginning of year 2 when every child in the class could read at least a bit. At the beginning of year 1 around 30% of the class could read at all becasue the school truly follows the EYS and does not teach much phonics in YR at all. By y the end of the year 1 the worst reader(i.e Ds) was on level 3. The best (at least 2 of the 12 boys in the class and goodness knows how many girls) were past the levels and free reading.

Ds is at the lower end of reading and would not have been able to do spellings in year1. The more hear about some primary schools the more I am beginning to love ds's school

Phonics isn't just about reading, it's writing as well. Children can produce their own work and not have to keep asking how to spell something if they can segment words. Even they aren't 100% spelt correctly it means they can read their own stuff back and an adult can understand it as well.

He is still very small.
Reading can often just 'click' in year 1 and 2.
I wouldn't be worried at this stage.

Out of interest, have you being helping with phonics at home?
I am confused as to how a child who cannot grasp th,ch,sh, could learn by site enough words to read fluently.