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

I think some people on this thread don’t really understand phonics and I wonder how much that affects how much their children struggle with it too.

I think schools would really benefit from educating parents (particularly those of us who didn’t use them at school) on how to support children at home with phonics and reading. At the very least, teaching them now to say the basic sounds without “uh” at the end.

Dd’s first primary school was very good at teaching phonics and she has been able to read most words by sight since the end of reception. Sounding out is only for unknown words - once they can read it by sight of course they don’t need to sound it out anymore.

@MrsKCastle
Nonsense. If your children can read words like 'fruggle' and 'frabjous' and 'quidditch' then they are using phonics

I beg to differ. My severely dyslexic daughter can read those words & comprehend their meaning but she cannot spell them or say them. Phonics are meaningless to her and other children.
Phonics teaches how words sound as in how to say them out loud. This is not the same as learning how to read. For example, you can teach yourself to read French and comprehend it entirely without phonics- you simply would not know pronunciation.
Academics can read and write in many dead languages that haven’t been spoken for centuries...no phonics there because no one knows how those languages sounded when spoken.

If the ‘dead’ language uses an alphabetic system (e.g. Latin) then scholars absolutely use phonics to learn them.
You’re suggesting that your Dd ‘reads’ using a symbolic system - similar to hieroglyphics or one of the Chinese languages, which would be severely limiting when applied to an alphabetic code.

Test to see are you reading with phonics or not:
If, while you read, you “hear” the words inside your head...like a narrator you are using phonics.

If, while you read, you visualize the events described in the book like a movie, then you are not using phonics.

Phonics links words to sounds, you internally “hear” what you are reading
Sight reading links words to images, you internally “see” what you are reading.

Both ways can be perfectly fluent.

If she can’t say new words she’s learning or write them down how do you know she’s reading them and would be able to tell the difference between that and a very very similar looking word?

I picture the events in books whenI’m Reading all the time and I definitely am using phonics. Where on earth did you get that test from?

You cannot observe a way a fluent adult reads and use that to decide the best way to teach children to read.

banging head against wall
Sight reading only works if you already know the word. It is useless when you encounter a word you have never read before.

How does anyone read a new word without phonics?

Because you're doing the same thing whichever way you decide you're 'doing' it and what you call it - you see and hear, see and hear together until your brain makes the links. So whether you know the sound that 'igh' makes in night, tight etc because you have been told IT'S PHONICS and you learn that sound as a separate THING or whether you just see words with that sound in them over and over until you automatically know that's what it is - it's effectively the same thing.

Just read and read to them, everyone's brain probably does it a little differently.

This is not news. It is well known that many dyslexics cannot use phonics to learn to read. Phonics assumes that a child’s brain can detect the difference between the spoken sounds within a word. But the brain of a dyslexic child can’t detect the individual sounds spoken within a word, let alone the difference between these sounds. It’s as if their hands are clasped over their ears as the parent/teacher says, “/ssss/ /iiii/ /t/.” They can’t identify these underlying component sounds in “sit” and instead hear the word “sit” as a single block of sound.

They then match the entire word sound to its configuration by sight.
It’s not limiting so much as it makes reading more effortful to a dyslexic than a non dyslexic which is why they need extra time on tests and sometimes a reader to say an unfamiliar word.

Sight reading only works if you already know the word. It is useless when you encounter a word you have never read before.

But nobody really does that anyway - you read together with someone else and you gradually learn to read.

Like it or not, people were reading for many centuries before 'phonics' was invented!

Like it or not, people were reading for many centuries before 'phonics' was invented!

They were reading using phonics. They may not have labelled it as such, but it's the way reading has always been taught and learned until look and say reared its ugly head.

But nobody really does that anyway - you read together with someone else and you gradually learn to read.
Even at GCSE level reading science textbooks? As an English undergrad reading texts? You had someone sitting with you telling you what the words were?

Tween what a strange aggressive combative tone...

She wasn't learning and I was called in for panic meeting where I was grilled.
Looking back it's clear dd fell through the net and teacher couldn't tick stuff off (her words).
Showing flash cards isnt teaching other methods.

Two years later she's not getting phonics. Some sinks in.. But not much!!

@Elisheva
Sight reading only works if you already know the word. It is useless when you encounter a word you have never read before.

Not sure what you mean by “know the word”- lots of readers learn new words through the context of other words surrounding it. That’s why the #1 thing that increases vocabulary is reading. Whether you learn that word by sight (reading) or hearing it said is immaterial to whether or not you know it.

Not sure what you mean by “know the word”
For sight reading you can only ‘read’ the word if you have encountered it in text before and someone told you what it said.
To learn a new word via text you have to be able to decode it, store it and then attach meaning to it. You cannot ‘read’ a new word without phonics.

Imnotthrowingawaymyshot if you tell a child that some words 'can't be sounded out' and need to be learned by heart, then you are telling them that they can't rely on phonics all the time. If they then encounter a word they haven't seen before, there is a tendency for them to guess, because they 'know' that phonics 'don't always work'.

The flashcards in themselves are not necessarily the problem. If you showed words on cards and got your child to sound them out each time until they could read them automatically, that would be one thing. But the mixed methods referred to above is the message that children get not to rely on phonics.

We want them to rely on phonics, but we need to teach them a much wider concept of what phonics is. Not just c-a-t, but ou/ow, ay/ai/eigh, ci representing sh and so on. It goes well beyond early reading.

Doctor that's really interesting! I think I'm visualising when reading.

As I said earlier I just found the words made sense one day, I remember the book!

It was about a farm.

I didn't ever find reading a struggle. I was one of earliest readers at school.
I was always praised for it. I don't know how I de coded... I just had good vocabulary.. Maybe from parents??
It was the only thing I was praised for 😂because maths, spelling, writing all slow.
So I clung onto reading and read more and more.

I think you can definitely learn without it - everyone sight reads eventually by just recognising what familiar words look like, the only time we really use phonics or sounding out as such is when decoding a word we don’t know for example a foreign place name or something like that. Kids already do sight reading with ‘tricky’ words that don’t follow the rules. Phonics works for most children but certainly not everyone.

I imagine most people that really enjoy reading visualise while they read.

It doesn't mean that they're not using phonics though.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay
If she can’t say new words she’s learning or write them down how do you know she’s reading them and would be able to tell the difference between that and a very very similar looking word?

She says the word, but usually slightly wrongly until she’s heard it said enough times for her to mimic. She writes the word, but the spelling is wrong....and often the same word will have three or four different spellings within the same paper. BUT there is always enough context to figure out which word she means. Some examples from when she was much younger:

The bagg was hebby = the bag was heavy
We wetn to the muzayumm = we went to the museum

the only time we really use phonics or sounding out as such is when decoding a word we don’t know
That’s what phonics is!
If a child hasn’t learned the phonic code then when they are faced with a new word they have no strategies with which to ‘read’ it.

The bagg was hebby = the bag was heavy
We wetn to the muzayumm = we went to the museum
So she is using phonics. She just doesn’t know the entire code.

'Tricky words that don't follow the rules'.

What would they be then? If you teach the extended phonics code, you are teaching a much more full and complex set of rules than just c-a-t.

There are very few words that need to be taught as sight words. Off the top of my head, the only one I would usually teach that way is 'one', but only because of the 'w' sound, and because it is a word that children tend to encounter fairly early on. I wouldn't tell a child that it can't be sounded out though.

“To learn a new word via text you have to be able to decode it, store it and then attach meaning to it. You cannot ‘read’ a new word without phonics.“

Sure you can. Otherwise how do deaf people learn to read?