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.

[Pozzled]

Magichouse How will your fluent, confident reader be able to read the hundreds (thousands?) of made up and unusual words that appear in high quality children's books? Roald Dahl and JK Rowling books are pretty hard going if you don't have a solid strategy for attempting new words. A lot of non-fiction will also be very difficult.

[iismum]

Good to see the case for phonics being put across clearly and eloquently by many posters, especially Feenie. But sadly there will always be (a lot) of people who feel instinctive feeling and their own interpretation of personal experiences is a better guide to what works than properly conducted research. You see this in every area of life (alternative medicine, for example) and it's incredibly frustrating. I wish they would spend a bit of time in schools properly explaining the scientific method and the value of properly conducted research over subjective experience. sigh

[MagicHouse]

There is plenty of research e.g Dominic Wyse (well worth a read, and backs up his findings with longitudinal research, rather than on studies over a year or less) that support the teaching of a range of strategies to develop children's reading (others - Marian Whitehead, Reading Recovery, National Literacy Trust) Nobody disputes that phonics is important, just that other strategies necessarily play their part.

[Feenie]

Reading Recovery? Says it all, really

Would that be the Reading Recovery that has been ditched the US and Australia and even in New Zealand where it was developed, at enormous expense, since it has been found that it actually fails the bottom 20% it is trying to help? Absolutely dreadful intervention, heavily entrenched in teaching the very children who shouldn't guess a whole raft of silly guessing strategies and judged so by a raft of international researchers.

www.avko.org/Essays/reading_recovery.htm

[Feenie]

One of the most interesting things I have discovered about RR over the years is that they refuse to take part in any independent research project which aims to make a direct comparison of RR with another intervention, particularly structured phonics. In fact,they have never participated in such a study.

[Feenie]

Big business, you see. Or it was until it was totally discredited.

[Feenie]

I would be very surprised if you could show me something from the Literacy Trust which recommends guessing - we now know that struggling readers rely on picture and context cues.

[Feenie]

Research by Stanovich and West as far back as the 1970s demonstrated that it was poor readers who 'used all the cues'. Good readers decoded rapidly and automatically and only used context to check the meaning of a word, not what it 'says'.

[Feenie]

I can't find anything so far from Dominic Wyse which supports the use of context or picture cues, MagicHouse. Perhaps you could direct me?

[MagicHouse]

Wyse, D. and Parker, C. (2012) The Early Literacy Handbook. London: MA Education Ltd.

[Feenie]

Thank you. Direct quote please?

[BlackeyedSusan]

ooo feenie, lovely links and ideas for (my) reading thanks.

[MagicHouse]

www.ioe.ac.uk/staff/eype/59721.html

You could always email him!

[Feenie]

And, as with other self-professed 'experts', Dominic Wyse has never taught anyone to read other than his own children.

[Feenie]

You're welcome, BlackeyedSusan - did you see my earlier links to Dyslexics.org.uk and RRF - both also have a wealth of research.

[MagicHouse]

Good grief! All his work is peer reviewed as you know. He works at the Institute of Education, one of the most respected research centres for education in the country. Backing off now.

[Feenie]

Neither Wyse nor Styles are cognitive psychologists critiquing research by a peer, but are 'education' academics whose fields of interest, while they may touch on 'reading', are not directly connected to the initial teaching of basic reading skills. (Although Wyse claims an interest in pedagogy a look at his research fields shows that they have nothing to do with the teaching of foundational reading skills).

Sorry, MagicHouse, but everything I have read so far supports the fact that Dominic Wyse is vehemently opposed to synthetic phonics (although he concedes that teaching reading using synthetic phonics 'can be extremely effective' in transparent languages) and prefers the 'contextualised', (analytic) phonics method - yet I can't find anything that supports your view that guessing using picture/context cues is successful for readers.

Anything. At all.

[Feenie]

From any of the sources you quoted.

[Feenie]

More Reading Recovery evidence:

www.afr.com/p/national/why_australia_fails_at_education_RRrO0RxwYUWTudYMMghc0K

[marcopront]

YoniSingWhenYoureWinning

Is Yoni an actual word?
If so can you tell me what it means? If not I presume you wouldn't want your children to learn to read it, but we need to.

[fuzzpig]

I think DD will enjoy it. She is confident at decoding though and loves reading nonsense words in Dr Seuss books.

[BackOnlyBriefly]

People have been learning to read for a long time. Long before phonics was introduced. I managed before I started school so I'm devastated to learn that I did it wrong :) I expect I'd be expelled these days for not being about to read dogeurtenoehtsiscinohp.

That's not to say we shouldn't look at better methods, but phonics doesn't appear to be it. People claim it's a way to decode words, but we all know that's not possible. There are hundreds if not thousands of exceptions and you have to TELL the child this one is an exception and so in this ... and that ... and those...

Eventually you have taught them to read of course, but not by decoding words, as that isn't possible in english.

Perhaps if you invented a language that worked with phonics? Start from wanting so badly to apply it and then design a situation in which it works.

I'm not a supporter of alternative medicine btw. I think it's the other way round. Phonics like homeopathy seems to be about wanting badly for it to be true and about loyalty to the cause. Ask a phonics supporter if there could one day be 'an even better method' and watch them flinch.

[Feenie]

People have been learning to read for a long time. Long before phonics was introduced

Another myth - sight reading is the newcomer, it was brought in in the 70s with not a scrap of evidence to support it.

It's actually phonics that's been around for hundreds of years.

But do carry on.

[Feenie]

People claim it's a way to decode words, but we all know that's not possible.

Have you ever seen the alphabetic code?

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/DH%20Alph%20Code%20with%20teaching%20points%20PLAIN%20A4x7-1%20final%20version.pdf

Very, very few words genuinely do not follow the code.

[Feenie]

That's not to say we shouldn't look at better methods, but phonics doesn't appear to be it.

That's not what the evidence shows. Where are you getting this from?