Phonics? Dc can learn to read without it? Surely? Those that don't get it.. ANY positive stories?

[Imnotthrowingawaymyshot]

My dd doesn't get phonics.
She just reads the words.
The school is still plugging phonics. Could there be an issue with my dd ie dyslexic? Or something else if she doesn't get phonics?
I just read the old fashioned way. Anyone else have dc who are fine but didn't get phonics? My older dc has very different brain, very ordered she got phonics and it helped her read like formula... Younger dc just bumbles along.
Year 2

Pas deveant.

My first also got it, was also telling me the formal names for the blending and stuff.
It was very much her structure and formula to reading. I do think the flashcards building up dd words is what's helping her.

Building up the word bank.
And yet teacher was awful to me in reception when I mentioned we had flash cards!!.

My son didn't get phonics easily. He could eventually sound out words but wasn't very good at it. School spelling lists were a 7 day marathon of drilling and revising. I found a book by Jeffrey Freed called "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your ADD Child". I know there is a lot of debate about the validity of the right brain/left brain distinction and this is a book aimed at ADHD children. But the spelling method was a revelation for me. I'm not saying my son was ever going to be a spelling bee champion afterwards but the spelling list became two days homework learning rather than seven. I think even though it is aimed at ADHD children it might be helpful for children who struggle with phonics. (I have no connection whatsoever to the author or publisher.) My son is expected to get our equivalent of UK A levels this year.

@Endofthedays I memorise the way the word looks, so if it’s in a book I recognise it again, some times I’ll ask dp to tell me what it says, sometimes I’ll guess and get it majorly wrong, which means that no matter how many times I hear the right way to say it, it will always be stuck in my head as my first guess

At what point in reception did you start using flashcards?

The is twofold. Firstly they can mask an underlying issue. This is less of an issue than it used to be.
Secondly for some children it can make the problems worse or create problems which wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

I’d do sight & hearing tests first, but if those are fine it might be worth unpicking to what extent, if any, the mixed methods she’s been taught are causing an issue.

Phonics is not just about reading, it is also about writing. Yes many words cannot be sounded out phonetically but these are the 'tricky' words that are taught separately by sight and recognition.
The purpose of phonics is to help them to recognise that the group of letters makes a single sound. There is also the fact that in the english language, in some cases there are multiple ways to spell one sound e.g er ir ur are ear. It is only when you teach phonics you realise how complicated it can be to learn to read and spell english language words.
Phonics taught correctly should not have able children, who can already read fluently and spell correctly, sounding out phonetically. They can access further programmes such as no nonsense spellings that help them to understand suffixes and homophones etc.
Phonics should be taught with children grouped according to their ability.
It wasn't until I became a teacher that I put much thought into how children learn to read and write and indeed how I did. Taught correctly, phonics has a massive impact on children's learning and I can see the progression throughout the year.
There are many different phonics programmes out there and schools should fond the right one that fits their children. Also those children who don't get it should have strategies to help them.
Interestingly you said that your child gets 'igh' , without phonics how would they know how to sound out words with the letter I g h in the middle. That's the whole point of phonics, teaching phonemes so children aren't trying to make sense of words by saying each letter individually and failing to make a word. Once they get a sound it opens up to a recognition of a whole group of words sharing that sound. It takes away the individual learning each word as a new word when they see it.
I would discuss your child's struggles with the teacher as your child should be getting the correct support for this.

DS2 struggled with phonics, we didn't really know he just learnt to read eventually but as he got older he started going backwards with his reading it seemed. Basically it was because he could know longer guess/recognise whole words as they were longer and harder.

He started having 1:1 help in Y4 and went back to basics, it has helped him massively and in 18 months he managed to get back to the reading age just ahead of his age.

He does have a diagnosed phonological processing issue now, this totally makes sense.

How does anyone read a new word without phonics?

How did all the 'look and say' people know how to read made up words in Harry Potter or Roald Dahl, or read technical unfamiliar words in science?

You can only look and say if it is a word you already know.

Another one for Peter and Jane books.

My son went to school able to read basic words and knew his letters by the end of Yr 2 - not getting phonics and telling me it was stupid he had no love of reading and even now getting him to read a book is nigh on impossible aged 11.

I got the Peter and jane books and off he went - school still plugged phonics like the mecca of reading and he would not engage.

I would like to thank Mrs W - for punishing him, belittling him and generally being an absolute cow when he would not read with phonics - your actions have damaged my child to this day.

I learned with flash cards in the 1970s, I'm not sure how I learned to read quickly and fluently as I haves dyslexia (diagnosed in my 30s) and astigmatism, not picked up until I was 10.

My daughter can read but didn't do phonics. She was home educated until year 4 so didn't do it that way. She reads like any other child her age now. The only difference is that her spelling isn't as good, because she didn't learn phonetically, she doesn't sound things out the same way. Once she's been told/shown she remembers, but can't work spellings out as well for herself.

This thread is so utterly frustrating, and totally explains why 1 in 5 children leave primary school with poor reading skills.
Phonics is how we read. It is impossible to be a fluent, proficient reader without phonics. Our language contains hundreds of thousands of words, an adults vocabulary is 30-40,000 words, it is simply impossible to memorise the ‘shape’ of all of those words.
If a child is truly sight reading it means that they need an adult to tell them each new word they encounter which would severely curtail their ability to read new books independently.
Everyone who can read fluently uses phonics to do so.
Either they were taught explicitly - using synthetic or analytic phonics, or they worked out the code themselves through repeated exposure to words.
Systematic Phonics is the most effective way of teaching children to read. The reason many children don’t ‘get’ it is because it is being inconsistently and badly taught. I’m schools where it is well taught 95 - 100% of children learn to read successfully.
I’m not sure why it makes so many people so angry? ‘All children learn differently’ is utter bollocks. Most children learn in exactly the same way.

There is a book called Toe by Toe by keeda Cowling - quite expensive £20+ pounds but look on eBay too. It helps to break the words down, whilst you still need the basic phonics A B C (c without the er that we all put on the end god knows why!!) it does help to make sense of sounds. I used it for my now 9 year old when he struggled with phonics back in year 2. Doing half hour at a max each day he really progressed. It's not for everyone but they have a website too so check that out before you purchase the book so you get an idea of what it's about. It will come it takes some longer than others. I work in secondary and have children there that still struggle with phonics so don't worry too much.

remember trying to argue with my teacher that the word was "the", not "ter-her-eh".

Yes, but that example just demonstrates a poor method of teaching phonics, and the phonetic code not being applied.
'The' is not taught as t-h-e under phones, it's taught as /th/ which is one of the first digraph taught.
And it is never 'er/uh' on the end of a sound anyway - that's not the way phonics is taught at schools, or shouldn't be!

There are a very small percentage of children who can't get phonics. They are often children who have other learning needs, though not always. It's taught in English schools as it is known to work for the vast majority, and is especially useful for children with dyslexia type issues. Phonics works extremely well for both reading and spelling, and should be taught throughout primary, though lots of schools seem to,just stop at the end of year 2.

They found sounding words out really annoying.

Why were they still sounding out words if they could read them?
Again, that seems more like an issue with the way it was being taught rather than the use of phonics.

A lot of schools seem to stop after the PSC these days.

Everyone reads with phonics. You can’t read or write without phonics. Everything everyone describes as reading without phonics is using phonics. Phonics is reading. Phonics is language. It is the sounds that letters in words make.

Not all words are completely decodable no. But actually all words are a bit decodable. Even if it’s the initial and last sounds. And that’s what people who ‘don’t use phonics’ do. They use phonics. If you don’t know that /a/ is /a/ how do you read apple? It’s bloody phonics knowing that a is a.

I taught all my dc to read with phonics. It's utterly brilliant. Anyway, everyone who reads well uses phonics, otherwise you'd come unstuck at new words. It is also how you tackle foreign languages.

Everyone reads with phonics. You can’t read or write without phonics.

Yes you can. It's whole word recognition. And that's how most adults read by until they come across and unfamiliar word. Otherwise you'd be sounding everything out all the time.

I can read mirror writing, or upside down, or ones where the letters are in a mixed up order liek thsi without having to think about it any more than normal reading.

Ever seen this on fb:
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

But what do you do when you do come across an unfamiliar word?

Witch that's interesting!

I used flash cards along with usual school books as an additional aid.

She wasn't moving anywhere so flash cards helped. Then she was bored and frustrated by not reading any words fluently. So I got the Peter and Jane books.

That build up, Peter. Jane.
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. The dog. Here is Peter...

Really really helped her! She could quite quickly get through those books and it helped her enormously. Gave her confidence, she became more fluent...

She nows most of her flashcard words.

I don't know where we would be if I had not intervened like that.

What can the school do for me if it's all phonics?
The reception meeting was very aggressive towards us as parents and do we read at home, what do we read, what does my husband read, her tone was incredulous and rude.

I was even asked if we have books in the house.
Conversely, dd 1 was reading lemony snicket in year 2 and understanding the nuances, the whole set! Dd 1 has always been smothered in praise at school for being outstanding reader.

Next teacher was also defensive when we briefly said.. She is supposed to be getting extra help, is she?

Snapped at.. Yes she is.
School has rep for defensive non team working.

I'd remove her but where too and I've read moving child can cause delay of months or year in learning..

I feel we are on our own. I've put feelers out for tutors and see if that could help.

But how did your DD read Lemony Snicket? The only way to read those two word is by using phonics!

Witchend - that mixed up word thing only works for people who can already read all the words there. It uses other skills such as context to help people read it too.

Phonics is used for reading and spelling unfamiliar words, words not already known and stored in memory.

The Cambridge university thing has been debunked many times, including by Cambridge University IIRC. It’s a myth and readers do something different with words when the letters are scrambled up.

My son struggled with phonics and was having reading interventions right up to year 6. He did toe by toe in year 4 and it did help enourmously. This doesnt sound like a great advert for phonics but actually it is! There are other ways to learn to read but it left a lot of struggling readers never learning at all. I learned by whole word recogniction and a bit of sounding out but it wasnt until i learned phonics alongside my son that i understood explicity a lot of things i'd picked up. It improved my spelling and my ability to read and pronounce new words. phonics helps more people than any other system, its particularly good for struggling readers. Of course you learn to recognise the shape of familiar words over time and that helps fluency but you need the 'code' for new words and when you start out most words are new.

The trouble is, OP, your DC wasn't 'getting it' fast enough in Reception for you, so you started using other methods at home.

At which point she was being taught by 'mixed methods'.

So you don't know whether if you had left well alone she would have got there better with phonics.