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

My ds is dyslexic but reads well because of phonics. DH is dyslexic in the days of look and learn and didnt learn to read until he had intense phonics tuition at 10.
Ds has short term memory problems and as an adult cant spell.

My DM gets very annoyed by 'these new-fangled teaching methods' (phonics). She thinks it just confuses children. She reckons it's why DS1 is dyslexic.

What she doesn't realise is that she reads phonetically. I asked her to read a nonsense word. She could. I asked her how she did it. She explained she knew that 'igh' makes the 'long i' sound because she's seen it in other words, and b makes the b sound because it does elsewhere etc etc.

It was a revelation to her that she was reading using phonics - the phonics she taught herself !!! All modern phonics teaching does is make it easier and explicitly teaches the sounds, rather than leaving kids to work it out for themselves (which some just can't do).

Phonics is why my DS1 can read at all.

Your so right whatsername
Back in the day of Look and Say many children worked out phonics for themselves. Some children had good memories and could remember words as pictures but the brain is limited on how many words it can hold and others like dh never learnt to read without interventions of phonics, and many were left functionally illiterate.

Never got phonetics.
Was an avid reader at primary - still am an avid reader
Educated to masters degree
Can’t spell - thank heavens for spell check!
To only have one system of teaching anything is too narrow - we need different system for different folks.

Thanks for help and punters on here

Posters on here 😁

Am I being stupid? Surely the point of phonics is to learn to read? So if a child can read without ‘getting’ it, why does it matter??

ethelfleda, it's not a stupid question.

The issue is long-term independence. Many children can successfully seem to read well by just memorising the look of all the words that come up in books from age 5-7, as if they were just little random pictures for each word.

However, as the complexity of the books increases, and the breadth of vocabulary increases, most of these children are going to struggle. It's easy at 7 to memorise words like "door", "and", "tin" and so on, but what about secondary education and beyond?

Firstly, the method of memorising the appearance of words means you need to have someone friendly on hand (who won't laugh at you) to tell you what it says the first time you see a word like precipitate in Chemistry in year 9.

Secondly, it is very hard work to memorise the meaning of 20,000+ squiggles shaped like dhowr, shqor, avu, and so on. Unfortunately, if you never get phonics, which is just the word for these symbols represent that sound in the word, that is what you will be doing

Not only that, but spelling tests will be very unpleasant, as to you, you're just drawing squiggles, and being told off for drawing them wrongly, because you can't remember whether stationary is ghworj or ghworlj.

Some people have amazing visual memories and may succeed anyway. Most of us don't!

Children who been taught A C T using phonics can read the words act ,cat,tac.
A person taught by memorising words taught Cat, will not be able to work out tac or act.

Phonics, in no way suits every child, indeed there is a train of thought that there are so many exceptions to the phonics rules, the most intelligent kids write it off as a load of old tosh!

My son has speech issues so phonics made no sense. He has learned to sight read and ha come on in leaps and bounds.

If the school wont adapt (often they are tied to a particular dogma), ignore them and teach him to read through sight/whole word reading

Children who been taught A C T using phonics can read the words act ,cat,tac.
A person taught by memorising words taught Cat, will not be able to work out tac or act.

That brings back memories. I was mostly taught to read through Ladybird Look and Say. (Clearly remember the flashcards.) Anyway, there was one point where I memorised the word anemone in a Ladybird book, and then had to ask what TAK said. And got told I wasn't trying hard enough.

I genuinely had no fricking idea how you would pronounce tak, because I did not get phonics in any shape, way or form! Fortunately I got there in the end or I wouldn't be able to witter on mumsnet now

Ifvthe school wont adapt (often they are tied to a particular dogma), ignore them and teach him to read through sight/whole word reading
Dh school took the same attitude back in the 60s and refuse to teach him any other method than Look and Say. He didnt learn to read at all until he was 10 and given remedial phonics. He is dyslexic as is ds. Thankfully ds was taught phonics grom nursery and reads well but has other problems.
The problem with whole word methods is there is a limit to how many words they can learn and dont have skills to work put new words. They do well initially but eventually stop progressing.

jamievardy thank you - that makes a lot of sense!

To add to what Jamievardy said, some children with very good visual memories will also intuit the alphabetic code as they are exposed to text, so they will be able to use phonics to sound out knew words even if they weren’t explicitly taught that. Others won’t be so fortunate.

If you think about the texts children are expected to read in school they increase in complexity from simple words/sentences to a 19th century novel at GCSE and academic texts at ALevel. The very early stages (including simple chapter books aimed at 5-8) tend to have a very narrow vocabulary and more limited sentence structure. A child with a good visual memory can fly through those and will look like a good reader for their age. Where those children can come unstuck is when they are presented with more complex texts with vocab that isn’t used much in everyday speech. It tends to happen in the middle of KS2 but can be a bit earlier or later.