AIBU to question whether my Year 7 still needs phonics?

[Passmethecheese]

Hi so there is a long back history but I won’t go to far in to it unless I have to expand later on.
for multiple reasons DD ( year 7 ) was a late reader.
she has never grasped phonics and it was a huge struggle for many years. Year 4 she was reading at reception level and then something changed.
She started reading and progressed very fast to being a “ free reader “ in year 6.
the issue is she still would not pass a year 2 phonics screening !
her year 6 teacher was adamant in keeping phonics going. That although she could read well that without phonics the gap would appear again when readinf more complex texts.
so we continued with phonics but to be honest not getting anywhere apart from stress.
Sats she scored 107 scaled score for reading.
She now attends a small Sen school that she doesn’t quite match the cohort for but was the best choice we had. It follows full mainstream curriculum and is for those academically able.
they assessed them at the start of year 7 and again now towards the end of year 7.
they have reading interventions but said they didn’t feel the need to stress DD with phonics intervention when her scores showed that although there is issues with her phonics. Her reading, speed, accuracy and comprehension was not affected.
she has read in year 7 and got “ secured “ in end of topic assements for - private peaceful and Romeo and Juliet.
she doesn’t use a reader in any lessons and reads independently.
reading plus ( not sure that relevant ) but is on the level of year 8.
I am conflicted if I should still push for phonics intervention when her teacher last year was adamant you could not be actual free reader without phonics.
should I still request her to be put in to phonics intervention ?

I don’t believe this. I was never taught phonics, have a STEM degree and read 100+ books a year across a range of complexities. There are millions of competent, educated readers in this country who were never taught to read with phonics and are coping very well.

But again, this is teaching for the exam rather than for the real world so, on that basis, I am not sure that 100 is significantly better than 98.
I had similar issues with times table at school. I still remember the whole year where teachers, mum and even my grandmother made it their personal project to teach me times table. I never learned and I have my own ways of working out the sums using the closest position I can recall. For example, it doesn't take me significantly more time to work out 7x8 by subtracting 14 from 70. A second at best. And any double digit multiplied by 11 is worked out by adding first digit and the second and sticking the result in the middle (i.e. 27x11 is 297). And by the time we are deep into algebra (and I was exceptionally good at it) times table becomes irrelevant.
I was very lucky that after that year-long times table incident, my parents were a lot more concerned with actual acquired knowledge than test results. I used zero maths in my entire research project where calculations were done by statistical software and ability to analyse data was actually a far more useful skill to have than recalling times table.

My DC learnt by the look and say method, so did I. Phonics is a tool for learning and not a way of reading. If she can read, then phonics are not needed. They might help with spelling but not really necessary .

As a teacher of several decades, I can assure you she doesn't need to learn phonics now if she is reading well for her age! I'm working with a child at school in year 6 who is noticeably dyslexic- spelling all over the place - who has recently become a fluent enough reader to pass her SATs tests. She can't use phonics or read aloud fully fluently but she sure is determined to succeed.

100% - my DS is never going to read much for pleasure, but he is confident with reading now and shot ahead at spelling and can decode fine. The programme achieved more than 3 years of in-school interventions. I’m so glad we got it sorted and he is happy about moving to high school academically, as I don’t know where he’d be now otherwise. We need to work on times table recall next- I think there are similar methods to Toe to Toe for that too.

This isn't true. There were phonics based methods that pre date look & say.

Most people who were not "taught phonics" unconsciously grasped the code, the repetition of sounds within words embeds it. As fluent readers we develop automaticity, we blend the sounds so fast we are not even aware we are doing it but brain scans can show it happening.

How this impacts later on is our ability to read a completely new word (which is common in higher education, and in science/tech especially). You can't work out "ketone" or "spectrometer" or "quark" from look & say.

It also underpins foreign language learning. Many European languages are underpinned by phonics (often more regularly & predictably than in English), its just a different set of grapheme phoneme correspondences.

So op it depends what you want for her. If you expect her to move on to higher education (a-levels, uni) or work in a profession where you regularly encounter technical or specialist vocabulary, its worth continuing, if not, you may seem it not a valuable use of her time.

I agree they are subconsciously using them, but if the OP's DD is already doing this successfully (and is at secondary school), there seems little need to go back and teach the principles. Once you're doing it subconsciously you've cracked it.

Yes I suppose its how do we know if she is or not 🤣
when she tried deciding out loud it all comes out wrong but I do think this is a speech thing so is it sounding better / current in her head. Who knows

I do yr 7 literacy interventions. English is such a difficult language to understand - the rules seem completely arbitrary to children. We have pupils whose test scores are the same but whose abilities are completely different. Due to staffing levels, they are being taught as small groups, rather than individually. There are children who experience difficultly with seeing the letters within words, so we are breaking the words down and teaching them to identify sounds. Others can read quite fluently but cannot spell at all, so we revisit phonics to try to overcome the disconnect between reading and the ability to reproduce what they've seen and recognised, in their written work.

Learning for our children is a mixture of working out sounds in some cases and just recognising words as a whole in others. Or deciphering meaning based on the sentence as a whole.

I would think that if your child can read fluently, then what they need is a focus on the areas where they might be struggling (such as spelling), rather than a specific phonics programme because they seem to have worked out the 'rules' even if they couldn't tell you why pronunciation is one way instead of another.

They do, but phonics gives you tools to deal with new words that are complex. It is just “sounding the sounds out”.

My DD (6h learnt to read without phonics. I’m not sure how, she is doing phonics at school still (Y1) and does understand it, but she became a free reader before she had covered 50% of the phonics content.

She makes me smile as she will say things like “we haven’t learnt that sound yet” while at the same time being able to read practically anything without help. She’s currently reading Harry Potter, Goblet of Fire without assistance.

The only thing I find is that sometimes there’s a word she has never come across that she can read but not pronounce correctly because it’s unfamiliar. But most of the time phonics is no help anyway. She virtually never uses the phonics to read - she could just read on sight from about age 3. As did I (and her Dad) who were reading before school long before phonics were a thing.

I’ve nothing against phonics but not all kids need it.

Teacher of 34 years here.
Seen it all.

If she's sight reading and motivated she'll do just as well with inference and deciphering.

She definitely doesn't need any more stress with phonics if it hasn't suited her up to now.

You also won’t work out “colonel”, “buoy” “Hermione” or “choir” from phonics.

Most bright children who learn like this simply recognise & apply the phonic code unconsciously. I was like this, I had no trouble explaining phonics to my own DC despite never being "taught" it. It's quite intuitive if your brain works that way.

Ps Harry Potter goblet of fire isn't really suitable for a year 1 child. My 9 year could easily read Bridgerton but I'm not giving it to them.

A good guide for a book is whether the characters are roughly similar ages to the reader. Generally speaking books with teenage characters aren't really suitable for a 6 year old for whom the themes and content are too mature.

In terms of further study she wants to be an occupational therapist and although only 12 I don’t see this changing.

I’ll make my own judgements on what is suitable or not thank you.

I am happy with her reading the first 4. I have said she can’t have the rest yet. But it has absolutely fuck all to do with you if I did.

This is just our or curiosity not judgement does she still not need to read age appropriate levels for comprehension skills
as in the difference between been able to read a work and comprehend what your reading ?

Toe to Toe is multi sensory but still phonics based though isn't it?

IMO phonics is the best way to teach kids to read and write, it's been around a long time and was how i was taught in the late 70's early 80's. I'm not so keen on all the 'pure' sounds 'mmmm' and 'llllll' particularly are hard for children to consistently pronounce correctly IME from listening to readers. I prefer 'muh' and 'luh' even if they're not perfect as they're so much easier to pronounce. Try sounding out mum when you use 'mmm' - not perfect either!

That's not to say phonics works perfectly for everyone but I think anyone still struggling with phonics by age 7/8 should be screened for dyslexia. Has your DD been screened OP? Sorry if i missed that. I definitely think if phonics isn't working the way it's being taught by yr 3 then other alternative approaches are definitely required. To still be pushing it at Yr 7 would be pointless and ridiculous IMO.

The alternatives to teaching phonics to young children are pretty limited though - basically Look and Say which requires you to remember how to read and spell each word as a whole. It failed as a method when it was tried and most kids didn't learn to read. What other alternatives are there really? There are a number of different ways to tackle phonics that might help kids with them - and a lot of schools use more multi sensory approaches with sand trays etc - but phonics is still the best way of teaching kids to read and write.

Google says 'Phonics does not work for many children with dyslexia because it primarily relies on the exact brain functions that are impaired by the condition, specifically, the ability to process, remember, and connect sounds (phonemes) to letters (graphemes).' So IMO once it becomes clear that phonics aren't working then kids should be getting screened for dyslexia - I just don't understand why that doesn't happen in schools?

Quit the phonics OP and leave her to progress in her own way, encouraging her to read as much as possible and check any words she's unsure of with you.

No she was never screened but weirdly enough does attend a school for Spld so most students there have dyslexia.
they don’t believe she has dyslexia.

for example I was just looking at her reading plus ( not saying it means anything ) but as a ball park

her reading level on there
year 8 with a spread of 208 words a minute and a overall comprehension percentage 90 percent.

she has been assessed in many areas

her visual perception is average but her m
motor co ordination is extremely low as well as a low abc movement score.

Another (retired) teacher here saying she obviously doesn't need phonics, she's reading fluently now. Fluent readers don't sound words out, they simply read.
I have a qualification from the British Dyslexia Institute which advocates using phonics when teaching children and adults to read but that doesn't mean that I think it is the only effective strategy for anyone learning to read.
I wish that phonics wasn't being pushed at the expense of all the other strategies that successful fluent readers use. Harder texts that she will meet in secondary school will need strong comprehension skills not phonics.

My dyslexic 11 year old has a reading age of 13.5 and enjoys classics like Mansfield Park. She can't spell or remember times tables. Or phonics!!

Although spelling is slightly behind her reading it’s more exposure that caused that. Her spelling is rapidly catching up.
times tables is an issue

@Passmethecheese So how did she get into the school then? Around here places in SpLD units are like hens teeth. We don’t have a state SpLD school. Parents wanting these schools get the LA to pay for private, and that’s not given easily without all sorts of evidence.

I'm dyslexic wasn't taught phonics and when teaching my own DC it became clear two three letter combinations sounds no idea about.

From about mid key stage 2 could read well - in fact did really well on reading tests but rely heavily on sentence context and having a wide vocbulary from reading and family - TV radio exposure.

There was/is an issue with pronouncing unusal words even if knew what they meant. Also similar shpaed words can and do still throw me - usually now place names rather than proper words. I often read what I think is there as well - so have to be very careful in exams. Main issue was spelling - and why I sought dsylexia diagonsis and was found to have it. I wasn't diagonsed till Uni so while it presented issues I was doing well.

Also had issue with instant recall for timetables - but have maths A-level - though lost time working a few timetables out every time.

For my kids - made sure they were rock soild in maths basics - one like me had a really episodic and good long term memroy and others have extremely poor working memories - it was explinations and a lot of practise in end. We used on-line site that taught maths like DH and I learnt in school that sadly no-longer working for new people. Basically over years of frequent pratcise it finally stuck and then they had very fast recall.

Could she read eccentric, eclectic, electric all correctly?
Eclectic would have tripped me up at younger ages and would have relied on sentence context to pick it out - the L and c would mean I could mix it up with other two words. There were two roads near one place we lived both with post offices down - no-one else mixed them up but they looked similar same length and same style of letters - I mixed them up a lot.

If she reading well I'd not focus on reading and phonics.

If she does has spelling issues may be worth looking at phonics based programs for spelling like https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/learning-to-spell/ - though there a lot of practise built in with that as well.