To not feel happy about 6 year old ds being 'tested' on fake words? Phonics.

[OHforDUCKScake]

And is this something all year one pupils have to do?

So the children learn the phonics, 'oa' 'air' 'ng' and so on.

Now, the government, since last year, want to test them on it. If they get a certain amount wrong, they fail and have to do it again.

The thing is, the way they test them is to give them fake words to check they really do know their phonics.

They will be given 20 real words and 20 fake workds and they have to get 34 out of 40 or their fail.

So, as long as they can read toast, fair, treat

As well as taim, roaf, rait

Then they will be ok.

I dont know where to start, honestly. First of all, testing them just so the government can see what the deal is, using them as guinea pigs it feels like. They are only 6!

Secondly, the weeks leading up to the test they have been teaching them fake non-words.

A test? At 6? That they can fail?

I asked if we were obliged to do this? Teachers are, and parents are. I have no choice but to let my son have the bullshit test.

If AIBU then thats fine, but he is our first so we dont know the drill and he is already struggling in some areas so possibly a little more sensitive than usual to him being taught bullshit words and being tested on them.

I don't think it would hurt anyone to have up to date phonics training - most teachers are happy to say they are improving all the time.

It was the teaching of 'can't be sounded out' which was worrying.

Blackholes You explicitly stated that 'have' is a word that 'can't be sounded out'. You now say the same about 'said' if I am reading the post correctly. Both assertions are simply untrue, I believe they are unhelpful for children and statements like that are part of the reason that people are so against phonics teaching- as seen on this thread.

But I read letters and sounds every week when I di my planning. I've already said "ok I'm doing it wrong". What more can I do? Please stop going on.

Perhaps it would be correct to say that "said" can't be sounded out letter by letter?

[And, in fact, it is not always pronounced s-e-d; it could be S-a-ee-d.]

My problem is not that phonics is not a useful strategy but that it is not the only strategy, contrary to what Mr Gove seems to think.

Actually. you didn't say that, you said 'Well fuck me, Pozzled, I'd better quit my job then' - so we explained further.

Aww come on, none of us are the finished article, I'm definitely not, even twenty years on.

Have a , it's Friday (if you can have a small one, that is )

But as a strategy it reaches the vast majority of children. Whereas mixed methods definitely fails one on five, with no way of knowing which children it will affect.

It's a no-brainer.

S-a-ee-d?

You have lost me!

Ok, apologies if I seemed like I was 'going on', my last post was a x-post with both you and Feenie.

SDeuchars Do you mean 'said' can be pronounced 'say-d'? I have heard it used that way occasionally.

No, I meant S-a-ee-d as in Edward Said. This explains why it is not the only strategy. There is no substitute, IMHO, for wide exposure to a variety of text and the supportive assistance of an experienced reader.

My worry with tests like this and with Gove's concentration on getting children to "decode text" is that if we do it too early (and most European countries start formal education later than the UK with no obvious long-term disadvantage), we switch some children (perhaps the 20% who would not learn without phonics) off reading - they define themselves from an early age as non-readers.

Who would ever say it was a substitute? They're vital - but they don't teach decoding.

Who would ever say it was a substitute? They're vital - but they don't teach decoding.

So er..., that will be mixed methods then. Mixed methods works just fine in the hands of an skilled teacher. In fact if the claims are to be believed 4 out of 5 children thrive on it. The question is what are the one in five children doing/not doing that is a barrier to their learning to read - the answer doesn't always lie with lack of phonic knowledge.

Eh? Wide exposure to a variety of texts + supportive assistance + synthetic phonics does not = mixed methods.

Surely, mixed methods work just fine in the heads of 80% of children?

(That is, it is something that happens for most people regardless of what teachers do.) Part of the problem is that we (including researchers) don't know how people read. We know that they do and we know that how expert readers read is not the same as how beginners do it, but we do not know what flicks the switch.

So what is "mixed methods", Pozzled?

What pozzled said - you don't understand the meaning on mixed methods.

There are three ways of teaching decoding - phonics, sight reading or a mixture of both.

NONE of them preclude wide exposure to a variety of text and the supportive assistance of an experienced reader - but only one of them doesn't fail one in five children.

Mixed methods - sight mixed with phonics (and a handful of guessing strategies just to really confuse and hamper them).

Are you claiming that synthetic phonics has 100% success?

Since we implemented phonics only in our school 16 years ago, only 3 children have failed to learn to read to a level 4 standard - they left us to go to special schools.

This reminds me of that song
'There may be trubble ahead, but while there's moonlight ..., let's face the muzik and danz"

I am afraid I can see this ending in tears for Gove. He is on about rigour and we have alien words and apparently the brightest pupils are sometimes going backwards.

Wot's up? Has someone sold Gove a pup?

"The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, believes that the test helps schools to identify readers who are lagging behind in class, but teachers' leaders say the brightest children are failing the test because they are trying to turn the made-up words into real words by spelling "strom" as "storm", for instance."

"The literacy expert Professor Joan Freeman comments: "It is beyond belief. Any psychologist would say this is crazy. Children should be taught to interpret meaning. Every word is connected to a meaning. Those who designed this test have no idea about what one does with a collection of letters on a page."

She adds: "This isn't the way to help children understand words in context. I'm more than horrified with the phonics screening test."

Phonics is all about the sound a letter or group of letters make, rather than recognising whole words. Children who can already read and write a fair number of words are being encouraged to go back to the basics, rather than being allowed to move forward from the stage they have reached, which can be disheartening for them.

More divisively, children who can spell words correctly are being told that they must change the spelling to read phonetically, which can produce a word that looks like gobbledegook or a variation on a text message written in shorthand.

For example, one child came home and wrote the following: "Wot doo u wont pleez" and "heer iz wun apool". He said the teacher told him he must spell words using phonics and that he's not allowed to spell words any other way, unless she tells him he can in class.

He felt confused. He asked his mother why his teacher wants him to write "wot" instead of "what" and why he is not allowed to spell words correctly. On another occasion, the child came home and said he had written the word "come" in a sentence and that his teacher had told him to change it. He said his teacher asked him to rewrite the word by sounding it out first. He said he wrote "cum" and the teacher told him that was correct.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/why-phonics-tests-spell-trouble-8364917.html

I still think if children are turning words they don't know (non words or just words they haven't come across before) into words they do know, this needs to be addressed or they will never progress.

I was at primary school in the 1980s. I don't remember phonics - did we learn some other way? Is phonics better?

"The literacy expert Professor Joan Freeman comments: "It is beyond belief. Any psychologist would say this is crazy. Children should be taught to interpret meaning. Every word is connected to a meaning. Those who designed this test have no idea about what one does with a collection of letters on a page."

YES. YES. YES. THIS.

Look and Say (sight reading) was still in vogue in the 80s - it failed one in five.

apparently the brightest pupils are sometimes going backwards.

Some of the brightest pupils are those who fail to learn using mixed methods/sight. Intelligence isn't a factor in predicting who will or won't.

Some better readers are having their misreading picked up on and corrected early. Good.

Look and say isn't failing one in five kids in my country though, Feenie. It works extremely well.