to think that primary school teachers should be made to sit the year 1 nonsense words test

[ReallyTired]

It would be really interesting to see what proportion of existing qualified teachers can pass the year 1 phonics word test. Those who fail it should be sent on an intensive phonics course and then resit the test. Those who pass should be given a bonus. (It make make those teachers who have suffered a pay freeze for the last 3 years a little happier!)

They might have never been to nursery kim but they have spent a year in Reception. Children do not need to speak English to learn phonics, they are all learning new sounds and new graphemes. The majority of the Year 1 class should pass the Year 1 phonics test.

I think if that is the case, their school would be in special measures. The phonics test is designed for 5 year olds so, unless there is a high incidence of learning difficulties in the class, the majority should pass.

As a teacher who has carried out this test with year 1 children I'd be very surprised by an adult who could read but failed. Also in year 1 the children are taught all the alternative sounds. If a child makes a mistake but corrects themself it's counted as correct.
In the school I work at each year it's been done there has been an INSET on it where all teachers have been exposed to it and have an understanding of what it entails, especially as those who don't pass have to repeat in year 2.

Personally I don't agree with the test like many others, but what can you do!?

We have many children start reception, with no experience of nursery, who come to school with no English. Most passed the y1 phonics test last year, after spending nearly two years in school learning phonics daily.

My ds has been home educated, so has never touched phonics, but can read fluently. I didn't think he'd pass the phonics test as he hasn't seen anything like that before. But this morning I got him to do the 2012 test which I found online, and he did all of it easily, not a single mistake.

Not that I'd care if he failed it, mind you.

Why has he not learned phonics bobot?

If he can pass the test, he has learned phonics. He just hasn't been taught it explicitly. Some children will pick it up just from exposure to words and reading.

Most won't and will need to be taught explicitly, which is why we teach it and then check that they have picked it up.

As many others have said, most teachers don't like the test. They didn't set it or want to waste time doing it. It proves nothing.
My issue with it is that because we need children to read nonsense words to pass this test time is spent teaching children to read nonsense words. What is the point in this?

Because you are not teaching children to read nonsense words , you are teaching children to decode sounds which just happen to be included in nonsense words! Actually, its a bit of fun, a sort of "given the sounds we know, what nonsense words could we come up with " game!

It seems to me really obvious that testing children with words that they cannot possibly have seen before is the exact way to test phonics understanding.

Who cares, then, if they are nonsense? The decoding ability is the issue.

Why would they need to teach children to read nonsense words? Surely they just need to give them the ability to read new words - most 5 year olds aren't going to know that vex is a real word and tox isn't. It's the decoding skills that are important.

Some schools are spending lots of time on nonsense words to prepare for the test, but that is up to them not the fault of the test. If children are taught to read unfamiliar words by sounding out and blending from left to right, then there is no need to do spend so much time on nonsense words.

If a school is having to spend a lot of time having to do this in order to get their children to pass the test then I'd be looking very closely at what else they are teaching when they are teaching reading.

They don't teach children to read nonsense words!

They teach the ability to decode words so that they can, eventually, read all words.

Words like spronk will test the child's phonic knowledge.

I should really learn to proof read before I press post.

Exactly science. For what it's worth, I work with year 1 children and have a group that I teach phonics to. I have spent maybe 1 hour over the course of the whole year on nonsense words. I haven't taught them nonsense words, I have used nonsense words to check that they have indeed learned the graphemes Ivwas trying to teach them. The attraction of nonsense words is that the children can't have come across them before, so I know they are using phonic knowledge to read them, and not guessing from one or two letters, or the shape of the word, or some other tactic.

A few x posts there - and I too need to proof read!
Ivwas I was

Interestingly, proof reading becomes a lot harder if you read the word you think should be there because it makes more sense, or if you can't tell the difference between 'strom' and 'storm' because they have the same letters and the same shape.

They arn't being taught to rad nonsense words- they are being given th tools to decipher new words. I honestly can't see why people are getting so steamed up about it- have they never read Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear or Spike Milligan? Do they go charging in to the teacher being all outraged that their child had to read Jabberwocky? "All mimsey were the borogroves...."

Well, I'm not steamed up (and I like the idea of rad nonsense words).

I just think that it's interesting to consider what role nonsense words play and how we read them, because that tells us a lot about what we're actually doing and how we might struggle. I've certainly heard children struggle with Lear - not because they weren't good readers, but because they wondered how to read nonsense words. Same is true with Harry Potter - people get into arguments about whether 'snape' is said with a long or a short a; people don't realize 'diagon alley' is a pun because they stress the wrong syllable; some say 'assio' and some say 'akkio'.

It doesn't really matter, but it does demonstrate (to me, at least) that if we gave this test to adults, as the OP suggests, we would not be testing at all the same things as if we gave it to children.

I think it's because people can't get away from the pass/ fail thing, and they feel their child is somehow being tricked by being asked to read the rad nonesense ( ) words. And it shakes their view of themselves as the parent of a "good reader".

Well, I can see why people would worry about that. Wouldn't anyone? Because surely you want your child to be a good reader?

Lots of people who're parents now learned to read with 'look and say,' so they won't necessarily feel very confident with this method and may worry they're not able to teach their children.

LRD that's exactly why I like phonics. I was taught by the look and say method and it caused me no end of problems during my education.

Watching my children learn by phonics is a revelation!