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.

eccentrica
Reading difficulties aren't unusual just because you didn't have them. The estimate is near 10%+ of the population. My children don't need a teaching assistant but they do need a method of reading that helps them understand the "code" of the language.

eccentrica what else do you suggest for encountering a new word? Once past infants children can't (or won't) ask every time they don't recognise a word, they need to have some tools to handle it. Phonics is a big part of this, hence needing to get it taught well before children move onto "silent reading" and more comprehension-type activities in their reading.

diddl if they "fail" then they should receive additional help. I'm sure a yr 2 teacher/parent will tell you if that actually happens. Being held back a year doesn't happen in the English/Welsh system (see 10000 threads in Primary about wanting to put summer born children in the year below).

eccentrica Fri 14-Jun-13 09:32:32

How does phonics help you with the following words?

I really couldn't care less what the individual or class results are. I don't care if DS (6) gets 100% or fails. School informed us this was happening in March and sent home a sample of what the test could look like. 40 words would take my DS about 3 mins to read. If school can gain an understanding of how the class/ their approach is doing, then fine.

He learns using Read Write Inc/ phonics at school and I taught him the way I learnt.

Chaz While I appreciate that it works for your kids, anything which affects "near 10% of the population" IS unusual. I was in the vast majority, over 90%. I think it is very questionable that over 90% of children should spend time learning in a way that doesn't work for them. As a previous poster said, phonics and the test were designed for children with difficulties reading, not to be applied to everyone else.

Muddled I've read your post three times and I find it almost incomprehensible. "if they got a little stuck I would say, for example, "the 'gh' is a new one, the g and h in this word make a " which would make them work out the sound with a little help and they would then add it to their list of sounds to try for those letters." ??? Feel sorry for little kids learning this way.

More importantly I find it very concerning that all the parents on this thread whose kids are learning to read through phonics are supplementing this with additional reading lessons at home. This did not happen when I was at primary school. I did not know ANYONE whose parents had to give them extra reading lessons. In fact most of the kids were learning second languages (Gujurati, Swahili, Hebrew, Arabic) by age 6 or 7.

Clearly phonics is not working very well for the majority of children. What happens to all of those whose parents don't have the spare time or inclination to make up for what they're not learning in school?

eccentric IMO parents are doing extra reading at home because there is less done in school (than when I was at school 30 years ago). Due to larger class sizes and other demands on teachers.

Incidentally are 'Jolly Phonics', 'Read Write Inc' etc. all brand names? So there are a load of companies making money out of this too?

Again, I've only met 3 children who definitely couldn't learn using phonics, and why would you leave children to work things out for themselves and just hope for the best?

Oh, I remember reading tests. Stand by the teacher's desk and read the "sounds" written in her book and they were ticked off if you knew them.

When I started college in the nineties it was common for children to be given the Hertfordshire reading test which measures reading age. This was done three times a year and the results would go on reports.

I once did work experience in the class of a teacher of who had an extremely good reputation for getting results. Amongst other things, she used to give the children the opportunity to learn the words they had missed in the reading test so that by the end of Year Six their reading ages had improved enormously

eccentrica which method would you prefer be used to teach reading?

In my experience phonics works for the vast majority of children. As I said before when 'sight reading' was taught for a few years students reading levels plummeted.

Only read the first page of posts...

I was like you OP, I hate the idea of actual tests on children so young, I also dislike the fact the school only teaches phonics and no other techniques. I have tried the 'look and say' approach and have seen a noticeable difference in my daughter picking up on words when reading.

However, the school made no fuss of the test, they also didn't show the children their results. We got them sent to us in an envelope. I think I would have actually complained if they had given out results, as my daughter's confidence in reading is already low.

The test has had absolutely no impact on her life in Y2, or on her at all. So in the grand scheme of things, it really didn't matter.

Reading difficulties are on a continium. A child has to have quite severe special needs to be entitled to a TA or a place at special school. Not being able to read is not a reason for being statemented in year 1.

A very bright child with dyslexia may not have their reading difficulties picked up early. There is little provision for practicing reading in juniors or secondary where the class are learning other stuff. Its often a science lesson where the lack of phonics ablity makes life difficult and the child becomes distruptive because they cannot access the learning.

When you consider all the time that is wasted in a school day or other things (ie. taking the register, assembly, fire drill) , does it really hurt to do some phonics?

More importantly I find it very concerning that all the parents on this thread whose kids are learning to read through phonics are supplementing this with additional reading lessons at home.

"All" the parents aren't.

There is a distinction between words that do and don't exist in the language

And Narnia did not exist until it was written in the book. Not entirely sure what point you are trying to make. A child taught how to decode words is at an advantage when encountering "Narnia".

eccentrica

*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.*

Or I could have read it during an English lesson about long words. There's really no need to read an obscure text to learn about obscure words.

2. 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'?

Funnily enough, I have a friend who has a phonetic dictionary who confirmed it for me. I do appreciate you trying to get all sniffy about it though.

Soupdragon has summed it up perfectly - "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."

Phonics is one tool amongst many that help us deal with words that we don't know. To deny it's usefulness in teaching kids to read is really just being churlish for the sake of it.

Eccentrica I am one of the parents who is doing extra phonics at home. I'm doing it because the school believe in mixed methods. It is helping DD to progress much faster than she would otherwise do.

Phonics works well for the vast majority of children. Mixed methods/look and say fail a substantial proportion of children. There is no reason at all not to begin teaching all children with synthetic phonics.
As I said earlier, I work with older children who haven't been given a solid grounding in phonics. By the time someone has realised that they're struggling, the damage done to their confidence, and by the bad habits that they've learned, is really hard to undo.

eccentrica more people in the uk have reading difficulties than have red / ginger hair. Would you call a red haired person unusual.

It feels to me that you are projecting your own experience into the situation. You got to grips with reading early, great for you but plenty of children don't even if they don't have SpLD. It is really important that those children are picked up early as Pozzled says.

Whatever methods you or the school choose for teaching a child to read, it requires work from the parents. A teacher simply does not have time to listen to 30 children read every day. Many of the 20% of children who leave primary school unable to read have can't be arsed parents rather than actual dyslexia. (Don't get me wrong dyslexia is real, but not the only reason children fail to learn to read.)

In someways I think that meeting and assessing the parents gives a better idea whether a child is dyslexic. Usually if a child has parents who take an interest their child's education then they learn to read easily unless they are dyslexic.

If you tell Mrs Bloggs that you want to have a really important meeting about her son (offer her a choice of dates, offer childcare and pay for any taxi fares) and she doesn't turn up then prehaps its a parenting issue rather than necessarily a learning diffciulty.

Re helping a child to learn to read at home...

Imagine you're learning to drive.
With lessons you will get there.
The more lessons you had the quicker you will pick it up.
The more practise you have outside of the lesson the quicker it will be again.

Just like reading. The more practise a child gets, in and out of school, the quicker they will pick up the skills needed to read.

I think reading at home is old school. As children, we had books my grandparents read with my dm. I read books that I read when I was little such as Hungry Caterpillar and Dr Suess.sporting reading at home is not new our unusual.

In any case I like to be involved and see what ds is up to.

Well fuck me, Pozzled, I'd better quit my job then. Never mind the fact that I'm a bloody good teacher whose phonics set will be getting bloody good results next week.

The "e" in "have" does not make the a say its name, which is why children learn it as a tricky word and an exception to the rule. Yes I know letters and sounds makes you explain that these letters make that phoneme in tricky words (the "ai" in said for example feenie) BUT it doesn't hurt for them to know that they wouldn't pronounce/sound out the individual letters "a" and "I", hence making it a word they can't sound out.

There are so many exceptions to every rule, and phase 5 goes through them all.

I can't quite believe I've been told I don't know much about phonics!!

You need to read Letters and Sounds carefully, Blackholes - no one has said you aren't a good teacher, but your claim that tricky words can't be sounded out. Very, very few words cannot be sounded out - you are sending out the wrong message by saying that, and it is also incorrect.

BUT it doesn't hurt for them to know that they wouldn't pronounce/sound out the individual letters "a" and "I", hence making it a word they can't sound out.

Just tell them that in this word, 'ai' is code for /e/.

Later on, they will also find it in 'again' and 'against'. It's a more unusual correspondence, but not totally unique.

So I'm doing it all wrong then, as are all the teachers in my school.

By the way at no point did I say that I don't underline the phonemes in tricky words and explain which letters are making them. Obviously too tired to make sense after being up all night, teaching all day and looking after my own little ones (oh and being pregnant).