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.

It's like saying 'do you seriously believe that sitting down for 5 minutes devoting one to one attention with a one child will find out how they are progressing? How odd'

I have no idea why anybody would get themselves into a tizz about this.
It's just to try to spot who might need a bit of extra help with reading. That's all. It doesn't go on their UCAS bloody forms.

"It's just to try to spot who might need a bit of extra help with reading."

But wouldn't teachers know this anyway? If they have to wait for an end-of-year test to spot who needs a bit of extra help, they're really not doing a very good job.

And are you completely sure it won't be used by Mr Gove to say, "In 25% of schools, only half the six-year olds passed the phonics test, it's absolutely disgraceful, teachers aren't doing a good enough job"?

AsLondonjax unfortunate example of 'have' to demonstrate the 'magic E', er, rule and the 'kn' words above show, English is not a phonetic language. Which is where it all falls down.

How does phonics help you with the following words?

Plough
Through
Though
Cough
Enough
Trough
Although

hackmum unfortunately Gove doesn't understand statistics: possibly a gap in his own education.

As for the "need" to understand phonics, if a child can only recognise whole words, how on earth will they cope with secondary school chemistry?

hackmum I think for the most part teachers do know which students are struggling, but some children can hid it when reading normal books, either by looking at the pictures or guessing using the rest of the sentence. This 'test' would show if they were struggling. In good schools the students won't even realise it's a test.

If this test was purely to inform teachers of which sounds the kids had got and which needed more work then great...but the fact they kids have a pass/fail grade means its just another government league table. I teach F2s and Yr 1s and although the kids have no clue what they have done (stickers and aliens are always fun) it is stressful for the parents who think their kids are failing at 5 or 6!!! And yes, it is true that the better readers are actually more likely to fail as by 6 they are already reading for sense not just purely decoding. Most teachers know their kids really well and do check ups like this regularly, it doesn't have to be so stressful!

not the worst personal attack i've seen on here but still unnecessary.

Anyone? Any defenders of phonics want to explain how it helps you with the list of words above? Enough/cough/tough/through etc.

Or how about:
gave/have
threw/through
site/sight
bent/meant
shower/slower/hour
said/paid

Not exactly an obscure list of words. More like the real building blocks of English. English is not a phonetic language. Phonics might help with some very basic words like 'dog' and 'cat' but beyond that it is misleading and a waste of time.

By 6 years old many children are reading proper books independently - I remember reading Swallows and Amazons at 5 (don't think I understood most of what was going on but the words weren't a problem).

When it comes to English, phonics has very little to do with "strategies and processes of reading". The kids who can read and spell fluently are the ones who read books, because they learn words. Throwing a load of nonexistent words into the mix is pointless and confusing. Especially when the test relies on 6-year-olds knowing words like 'shrubs'!

As someone said above, phonics and associated tests are no doubt useful tools when it comes to working with/identifying students with specific learning difficulties/SEN, but a total waste of time at best, and actively misleading at worst, for the majority of the others.

A few facts about the phonics check:

It is not published in performance tables
There is no need for children to know that they are being tested
Use of pseudo words allows teachers to identify children who have not mastered phonic decoding but have a good visual memory for words
Alternative pronunciations are allowed in the case of pseudo words (for example 'zow' could rhyme with either 'blow' or 'cow')

Maybe schools shouldn't need it to identify which children are struggling with phonic decoding but it seems that some do.

It may not be publicly published but the powers that be still give us targets to meet and they have been upped from last year due to the performance of different areas/schools... It is NOT just an exercise to inform where to go next with the children, which is what it should be. The authorities are only interested in the pass/fail. I am interested in the sounds that need more focus. Phonics is great and can be lots of fun but its NOT the only way we teach reading/writing...the whole point is we teach as many skills as possible so that children are able to find their own way of making sense of our unbelievably complicated language.

Ok, eccentrica.

Your second list: why on earth would you think phonics doesn't help?

Gave/have- 'ay' and 'a' are both alternative pronunciations for the letter 'a'. Children may have to try out both alternatives, but that is easier than learning the whole word by sight.

Threw/through- both perfectly decodable once you know that 'ew' and 'ough' are alternatives for 'oo'.

Same with site/sight- very easy to decode for reading.

Ditto with bent/meant, ditto with shower/slower/hour- very easy to decode when you understand the possible pronunciations of 'ea' and 'ou'.

Same with 'said/paid'.

Spelling these words is more tricky, admittedly, but phonics is still very useful. With words like bent/meant there really aren't many alternatives, and children will be taught to find patterns and group words together that have similar spellings.

Your first list: Yes, these words are often pointed out as if they show that phonics is useless. But there are still alimited number of ways of saying the 'ough' spelling. And it's quicker to learn these alternative ways than it is to learn by sight every single word that contains 'ough'.

Oh and also, eccentrica I'm fairly sure that my DD does not have any SEN or particular learning needs. However, I've been teaching her using a strict phonics based approach,and she is way ahead of most of her class in reading (her school uses mixed methods). She is also an August birth. Of course this is anecdotal and could be a complete coincidence. But your assertion that phonics is 'a total waste of time at best' for the majority certainly doesn't fit my experience.

And yet despite the uselessness of phonics eccentrica, I can can correctly pronounce floccinaucinihilipilification and antidisestablishmentarianism. I can also work out the names of diseases I have never heard of and read latin and german out loud.

Phonics is the basis for an understanding of how English works as a language - the fact it's not the be-all-and-end-all doesn't make it useless.

Don't forget reading eccentrica. Couldn't read a forum without being able to interpret made-up words.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this has been mentioned.

My sons may well be dyslexic (awaiting Educational Pyschologist assessment). We've worked through one of the programmes designed to help struggling readers called Toe by Toe. It uses these sort of nonsense decodable words to assist in teaching phonics skills and it does seem to work.

I see no problem with this test. Improving their decoding has allowed my sons to read most of the words they need to be able to read at their age.

Pozzled
The 'limited number of ways' to pronounce -ough includes

oo as in through
uff as in tough
off as in cough
ow as in plough
oh as in though

So when a child encounters a word using 'ough', they should run through every one of those, rather than say, the way that people actually learn to read naturally, which is by knowing the words?

"And it's quicker to learn these alternative ways than it is to learn by sight every single word that contains 'ough'."

funny, because I know how to read every one of them,and I've never wasted a moment of my life sitting there rehearsing at least 5 alternative pronounciations for each one.

You say "shower/slower/hour- very easy to decode when you understand the possible pronunciations of 'ea' and 'ou'."

Sorry, could you expand on that please? It doesn't make any sense to me. How would you know whether to pronounce 'shower' as ow-er or oh-er unless you know the word?

I was also an August birth and learnt to read by reading books. If the school's method works, why are you giving her extra tuition? And what about the children whose parents aren't able to augment what sounds like inadequate teaching?

English is a non-phonetic language full of irregular verbs and other words that don't follow rules. Why are we trying to teach children their native language in a way which foreign learners find impossible?

Sarabidog
Two questions:

1. Are you claiming that you never heard the word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' before you read it? That seems extremely unlikely to me given that you would have to be reading something pretty obscure on the subject of church and state to read it, whereas it is very frequently said as a comedy example of a long word.

1. How do you know you're pronouncing 'floccinaucinihilipilification' correctly? Have you sat with a dictionary working out the phonetic symbols? How do you know, for example, if it's 'norci' or 'nokki'?

Incidentally 'floccinaucinihilipilification' is a poor example anyway, as it's predominantly a Latin word. Unlike English, Latin is a phonetic language (even if we don't have much idea how it was actually said by Romans).

And so is German, so really I'm not sure how you think your ability to read those other, phonetic languages aloud has any bearing on whether phonics is helpful for the majority of children learning English?

eccentrica
My sons won't learn through reading books and couldn't have read Swallows and Amazons aged 5. If these tests pick up those children who are having problems in reading then that is a good thing.

When they were little they appeared to be able to read well because they had memorised the books rather than being able to decode the words.

Reading really doesn't come naturally to some children and phonics helps them access a vital skill. It may not work perfectly in the English language but for children like my sons it is a vital tool.

Some posters seem spectacularly ignorant about how phonics work.

As for the horror of testing children, it's not new. I remember having my reading age tested at school - actually up at the front of the class with the teacher whilst classmates got on with work. Everyone knew it was a test and everyone knew you were taking it. In complete contrast to how this phonics test seems to have been run since DD never mentioned it at all.

I remember being worried about DS1's reading when he started primary. By the end of reception, he could barely read - I was v good reader early on and this concerned me. Halfway through Y1 he could read pretty much anything and was tackling Narnia (ooh! Made up word!). All the building blocks provided by the phonics fell into place and he was off.

He had basically been taught how to read anything, not just to read certain words.

eccentrica what do you do when your DC come across a word they don't know? Glancing at DS's bookshelf, maybe age 6 they pick up a Paddington book, or they read something about dinosaurs or maybe come across the word broccoli written down for the first time. Do you really just give them a whole word, or do you use the phonetic components of the word so they can sound it out until they learn it.

Of course fluent readers reading words they know recognise whole words, but everyone needs the skills to read "new" words. I don't know about you, but I don't know every word in the English language yet, and am reminded of this by the word of the day.

Chaz that's great if it works for students who have unusual difficulties with reading but that doesn't mean that it should be used across the board nor that it should take up teaching time for the whole class. This is why children with SEN are often entitled to a teaching assistant.

Soupdragon Narnia is no more 'made up' than Albania, England or any other word you care to mention. There is a distinction between words that do and don't exist in the language. Who invented them and why is irrelevant.

I don't remember any testing, in front of the class or otherwise, at primary school.

MrsHoarder my daughter is only 2.9 so my experience of this is more academic than parental. My daughter so far is doing exactly what I remember doing myself, i.e. she knows her letters, also knows several books more or less off by heart, and is just starting to put the ideas together (she knows what letter her name starts with, and mine, for example), and picks out letters in book titles and words she knows.

Of course phonetic 'sounding out' has a role when encountering new words but it's notable how often it fails. My partner is a very bookish type (even more than me) and he'll often say a word that he pronounces wrong because he's never heard it said, but has only read it. It's interesting how many times 'sounding out' fails, even for an educated 30something who could probably make a good stab at working out the etymology.

Just waded through the 8 pages & sorry if already mentioned-but what happens if they "fail"?

Extra help, held back a year, Uni prospects gone forever ?