Phonics

[DaisyRaine90]

To wonder how the hell my child is supposed to get from phonics to reading actual words?

She knows the letter names
She knows the phonic sounds

What next??

I swear she’s getting more confused not less.

I think the biggest problem is children being taught to read far too young.

Children should be read to as much as they will listen. They should pretend to read the stories back or talk about the pictures. They should see their parents reading. Books, magazines, cookbooks, signs etc. Then when they are ready they will start attempting the words themselves because their natural curiosity will drive them to. Eventually. Unfortunately, the national curriculum does not allow for this!

My eldest children were taught using phonics. The biggest downside to me is that it can affect their spelling and enjoyment of reading. When my eldest was first at school we were told not to correct their phonetic attempts at spelling. Some words stuck!

My 4th dc could read after a term at nursery school. It's like he worked out the code all by himself. He could just do it. The staff used to say how impressed they were with all the extra practice we must have been doing. I laughed and said I had 4 children and we didn't do any extra anything!

We now home ed and our youngest dc5 is 4. I haven't taught her anything formally but she knows about a third of the phonemes and she can write her name and recognise family names. She asks what something says and then naturally breaks it down and sounds it out again.

More importantly, she has great comprehension skills. When I read her a story she can tell me all about what we have just read, what might happen next and pick out important bits.

My DH is dyslexic and I can't explain the impact it has had on his life. He wasn't taught phonetically. It was never picked up and he left school unable to read or write. He left school in 1999. How the fuck does that happen?

When schools rigidly stick to one method some children always get left behind. It is what happens when we try and teach groups of 30 children with a huge range of abilities in a limited amount of time.

posted too soon.

What do these words say @grannytomine

chom

tord

thazz

blan

steck

hild

quemp

geck

thrute

slabe

pode

chescue

wheck

pominoes

@happy2bhomely

"My eldest children were taught using phonics. The biggest downside to me is that it can affect their spelling and enjoyment of reading."

Sorry for 3 posts in a row but I can't help but point out that well-taught phonics massively benefits spelling. Why do you think it has a negative effect?

I'm especially keen to know why you believe this as you home "ed" all 5 of your children.

tunnelBear well I am older than you, does that have any relevance? You sound like exactly the sort of teacher who will keep banging on with phonics when it isn't working. After a year of look say my GS had moved to top table in his class, the slavish adherence to a system that didn't work for him had held him back and damaged his confidence.

Phonics works for many but it is wrong to say it works fullstop because for some children it just doesn.t

tunnelBear, I read them all for you. Did you hear me?

What a ridiculous thing to ask me.

When schools rigidly stick to one method some children always get left behind. It is what happens when we try and teach groups of 30 children with a huge range of abilities in a limited amount of time. Too true. What is the cure for not "getting" phonics? More phonics.

@grannytomine

I got the impression that you were a 45-year-old grandmother although the only relevance really is your attitude.

I'm not a teacher and nor do I "bang on". Happily, I don't run a school that would ever have a "top table".

The more you write, the more it becomes apparent that the issue(s) you have aren't with phonics per se but the school in which they're taught.

Do you suspect that we read those nonsense words the same? How did we do that without phonetic knowledge?

tunnelBear

Sorry for the confusion. I don't home educate all 5, only the youngest 3. The eldest is at 6th form now and he has attended school all the way through.

I am not bashing phonics at all. It clearly works for lots of children including mine. I think the trouble is that it is not always taught well.

I agree @happy

I've posted a lot (too much?) but did say

"Phonics needs to be well taught. Pure sounds and graphemes / phonemes need to be used properly. "

'tuh, puh, kuh, huh" etc do more harm than good but when discussing the merits of phonics, surely it's a given that we're talking about the method being taught well.

An improperly taught scheme will be easily picket apart.

tunnelBear maybe you didn't read my post about how I, and millions of others, were taught to read? Look Say is how you start to read and then as you build confidence you start to work out words from context and eventually using phonics. Just like when you learn with phonics you start off with phonics but have to learn the "tricky" words. As I said before I don't think it matters which way you start as both work for the majority of children, I do think it matters what you do when you realise your method doesn't work for certain children. If I say to you that I used Look Say with my children and it didn't work for one of them so what I decided to do was to stop him doing other things and get him to do more Look Say. Does that sound sensible, does it sound like it would work?

If phonics doesn't work for some children at your school, and it would be remarkable if there weren't any children at your school that it didn't work for, what do you do then?

I still can't see why you need to know how old I am. Totally bizarre.

Actually the age thing fascinates me. I wonder why you think a 45 year old would have a particular take on phonics? Or do you make judgements about younger grandparents?

but it is true and you know it

um, no, I don't know it, because it isn't true. We accept 95% success rate as 'working' in pretty much everything in life. And I didn't leave it at just that (although as a stand alone statement it is fine) I did qualify it to say a very few children cannot manage it.

If it doesn't work do something else
I have no objection to anyone trying something else! Not sure why
you think that is a problem for me.

Your GS had a problem with phonics. From that you are extrapolating to everyone. If your GS had a dairy allergy and couldn't eat school dinners, would you expect the school to stop serving dairy to all children? No. I am sorry that his experience was bad, but that doesn't alter the premise that phonics is good and works.

There was an interesting study on reading which looked at older children struggling in school. Many of these were struggling with reading. When they tested these children, they had very poor basic phonics. Looking back at their school history it was apparent that they had not done well in reception. Some were very young, some had been late developers, and other reasons.
The study proposed that these children had not been ready to absorb the phonics teaching in reception, as they were in some way too immature. Once they got into year 1, the phonics teaching was one step ahead of where they were, and somehow they were never able to pick up the basics. The further phonics being taught wasn't helping as they hadn't mastered the basics.

To test this hypothesis, they took these kids, now year 5 and 6, through a back to basics phonics programme. Within 6 weeks those kids had pulled their reading ages up by 2-3 years, and the results spread across their whole school experience. It was a 100& success as a reading programme. It worked for every child in the study. Bear in mind that these kids had had 'reading support' over the years.

So, I would suggest that 4 kids out of 30 struggling may have other roots than the actual phonics, maybe maturity, maybe specific learning difficulties, maybe???

"do you make judgements about younger grandparents?"

Absolutely.

Most of your post at 1806 is fairly incomprehensible. However, if phonics really doesn't work, we use word shapes. We would dust off ORT which uses a mix of methods. We would use other approaches to phonics*

*which is proven to work!

Or maybe that they needed to try something else? The two who started Look Say suddenly improved rapidly. The two that continued to do phonics continued to struggle.

I just don't understand why phonics is such a sacred cow that schools won't use something else with children who are struggling with phonics.

And, before you have another go at me.
For those few where it really doesn't work, our school does use some look say. But the number who need this is tiny.

I can think of 2, one has autism, and one is dyslexic, and couldn't blend letter sin the right order. That covers about 6 classes.

It is proven to work for some children. You say you use ORT if phonics doesn't work, it is a shame all schools don't do that although ORT wouldn't be the scheme I would choose.

If what I have written is incomprehensible to you maybe you have a problem with reading?

Why do you judge younger grandparents? Do you think they are better than you or worse?

"If what I have written is incomprehensible to you maybe you have a problem with reading?"

No. My phonics are spot on.

"Do you think they are better than you or worse?"

Worse.

Well how nasty are you. I might be an older grandmother but no way would I be judging a younger grandmother like that.

"Well how nasty are you"

Was that a question?

Perhaps 3/10 on the International Nastiness Scale.

You underestimate yourself, that sort of judgemental attitude rates much higher than a 3. There are lots of great grandparents who are younger than you.

Those aged about 45 would have been going through school at the time when the new discredited fads of the late 20th century were in full flow.

It's not a comment about your age now, but about the likely school experience you would have had (unless you went to a trad/private school, or were taught to read at home by parents who would themselves have been taught phonically). As even the discredited methods led to many competent readers, it is easy to put more weight, wrongly, on personally remembered anecdote than in the actual evidence.

AuntieStella did you miss the bit where she judges herself to be better than grandparents who are younger than her?

I've got children older than 45 so not relevant to me at all.

If you read my posts you will see I was talking about children who aren't learning with phonics and who are being failed by schools that rigidly stick to phonics when it isn't working.

Do you have a plan Pengggwn? I think you are a teacher but I might have mixed you up with someone else.