to find it difficult to take the year one phonics test seriously?

[xmasadsboohiss]

i understand the theory behind it, but i still think it's bonkers!

I don't mind the formal test and can see the monitoring benefits. But I think it's a distraction from teaching them real reading. DS doesn't read yet (not truly) so he doesn't see it as nonsensical. For a child who reads, it must feel like a step backwards. For DS it's a small nuisance until they can get back to actually learning to read.

I have a feeling that lots of parents would be complaining if they were to find out that their child was having 1:1 or small group remedial lessons for a year and they weren't told. So I'm not sure how true it is that only the school need to know.

Searchlights is so yesterday. In fact a dirty word in our school.

well if extra help is needed presumably this would be communicated to the parents, but otherwise why say anything.

It really shouldn't be a big issue.
It takes less than 10 minutes to administer the check with a child. Hardly any time at all.

Nonsense words are not a new dad. They've existed for years and exist in lots of books : Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, etc.

The games online people mention have existed since well before the screening check was introduced.

Ime children are totally unphased by the whole thing.

As said before - we have had no real surprises and we have never had an able reader not achieve the level required.

To effectively teach reading, all of these methods need to be used in conjunction with each other. They rarely are though.

Oh phonics isnt real reading now - lijk what is then? do tell.

I love it when parents have a perspective when it is not based on any real research or trial of what works.

I don't know about past papers but I do have an app that die the same...

Teachers can get the kids to understand the difference between nonsense words and real words by, for example, telling them it could be the name of an alien eg Zod. The ability to decode words that appear nonsense to you or me is really important to children - remember for them there are LOTS of words they will come across in more difficult books as they get older that they may never have seen actually written down, but may have heard used by adults or on television etc. If they can managae to say the word out loud using their phonics skills, their brain often remembers how they've heard it used before and it helps their understanding of the word (some would argue that is what true reading is.). Plus of course the rest of the sentence will also put the word into context, as will any illustrations in the page, perhaps. So no, phonics and decoding are not the ONLY way that children learn to read, but they are a really important part of the overall process, hence the need for checking children know how to do it.

On the other hand, the test itself should not be emphasised by schools as a "big deal". No-one should be "revising" for it. As a parent you will already know (or should know) how well your child can decode. If they have been struggling then why have you left it till the end of year 1 to think you may need to be doing some extra practice with them? Let your child do the test without any additional revision - it is supposed to be a test of their solid, basic, ingrained reading skills that they should be using daily as a matter of course, not cramming for with their parents downloading practice papers off the Internet. Failure in the test doesn't mean your child is a failure at school - it is just to flag up weaknesses in their reading ability that can be worked on and improved. This is not a bad thing!

"Searchlights is so yesterday. shock In fact a dirty word in our school."

Why is searchlights so bad. I feel its an advanced skill that confuses the socks off many young children. However unless you use searchlights then you have no way of knowing how to read "bow", "row", "read", "polish" you also use searchlights to understand the meaning of words like "bark", "bat", "light". Searchlights is needed for developing comprehension skills once a child has a grasp of basic phonics.

The problem with the old NLS was that too much was thrown at children far too young. Some children found this confusing.

People worried that they would not be able work out tricky words like "cough" or "bought". The great thing about pure synethic phonics in the early stages is that it builds confidence in the majority of children. It is unreasonable to expect the average reception child to be able to read complex words. Once they have a strong foundation of phonics then they can learn other skills.

Completely disagree with the OP. I think the phonics check is necessary and will force schools to improve the way they teach reading.

My DD1 is one of those 'able' readers who could pick up and read a page of Roald Dahl or Harry Potter pretty fluently. But I'm bloody glad she's doing phonics daily, because how else will she be able to read 'oompa-loompa' or 'muggle' or 'voldemort'? I don't think she'll fail the check, but if she does I want to know so that I can work on her decoding skills, in partnership with the school.

Exactly Mrs

what are searchlights?

Both probably - and noticed the punctuation to give clues that 'Reading' is pronounced differently from 'reading'.

I got flamed on another thread for saying this, too (sigh).

Below short list* (off top of my head, I'm going to bed) of words that do not appear on the phonics test because they don't follow the phonics rules the kids are expected to follow. A child who can read would say them wrong & fail these on the test although the words were pronounced correctly in conventional English. When DS reads them he has to disregard the phonics rules he's expected to follow for the test. Not that in learning to read DS is only being taught the narrow test phonics, but an emphasis on him learning the phonics rules could be at the expense of teaching him the rules for saying other words correctly. And therefore interferes with word recognition & that interferes with fluid reading.

Ready?

dove, goes, to, you, one, great, find-kind-mind, does, bread-ready, some, do, love, live (as a verb), one-done, gone, two, eight.

All the children know whether the word they are reading is a 'real' word or an 'alien' word! There is a symbol on the card which tells them.

DS1 didn't have any idea that it was a 'test'. It was just another game.

I read with Yr 2 students, I can tell which ones didn't really do that brilliantly with their phonics. They find it very difficult to decode new words.

But LLJKK, they try it out with phonics. Often enough the word will sound familiar enough, that combined with the working out the meaning from the sentence they will be able to work out the word.

ps: teachers said (oh, 'said' is another one belongs on my short list) that kids who could read sometimes ('who' is another one belongs on list) came a cropper because they easily mistook the nonsense word for a real word they knew. That's part of the skill of reading, to try to match the words written to words we already know in English. Luckily DS had delayed speech so not so articulate.

I didn't understand how all that could be until they showed us the narrow sounds expected & mentioned some words that would never be on the test because they don't follow the rules being tested.

I teach, mainly, dyslexic children to read. My job is made much more difficult by prescriptive one-size-fits-all methods.

I tend to tailor my method to the individual child as they need to find a way that they can progress and become fluent or they will be forever spelling out and blending every single word.

I'm just saying that the emphasis on phonics is at expense of something & for DS that might be at the expense of time used to present a more rounded approach to teaching reading. So that's only thing I mind about the test.

*Did you use phonics or searchilights?8

Advanced readers use both. Searchlights on their own just gives random nonsense. There are lots of words I could subsitute for "read" or "reading" if I did not use phonics. Lets be silly and subsitute the word "cut" for reading. Its by using phonics that I know that "read" is not the word "cut"

Search is necesary for comprehension. Phonics is necessary for basic decoding even in Kim147 examples and my example below. There is a simple and a complex view of reading.

My dog barked "bow-wow" when I tied a bow in her hair while sitting on the bow of a boat.

However I would not expect a reception child to be able to read such a sentence.

The reason that searchlights in reception is discouraged is that children will randomly guess rather than attempting to decode. They will say "House" instead of the word "Home". Solely using searchlights would be a disaster for reading.