When phonics isn’t working…

[Bingowingo]

DS, year 6, struggles with phonics. He has poor visual tracking and visual memory. He remembers more complex words that are quite distinct. He struggles with differentiating phonemes and smaller words that look similar. After nearly 7 years in school he still couldn’t pass the year 1 phonics test.

I get from what I’ve read that phonics is the key to be able to decode new words, spell etc but when it isn’t working what’s the B-plan. We’ve done online games, flash cards, watching YouTube videos, etc etc. I’m actually thinking now that the fixed focus on phonemes is delaying his reading not developing it.

Are there children that don’t ever develop good phonetic awareness? Is there an alternative reading programme?

You need to speak to his teacher in the first instance.

When did you last talk about his reading and what did they say?

I never did phonics. My children all did Look and Say. My grandchildren did phonics. The avid readers in my family are the all the non-phonic learners.

We have regular meetings and I’ve met with all his teachers since year two. He has a small group phonics intervention. His teacher feels he needs more phonics instruction and have taken him back to very simple year 1 books although they acknowledge he’s made no progress at all over last couple of terms and forgets phonemes he’s known previously.

My son did a resource from the school called toe by toe. Really helped him go back to basics and get a solid understanding of phonics. His TA went through it weekly with him.

Phonics/phonemes is the way words sound, not the way they look, so difficulties with visual memory wouldn't directly affect his ability to use phonics to decode words.
I would put money on him having poor phonological awareness, which effects 1 in 4 children (and all dyslexic children). He needs to be taught these skills and then phonics should click a bit easier for him.

Has he been tested for dyslexia?

Has he done toe by toe?
He needs to be tested for dyslexia.

Look up dolch words. It's a list of about 220 words that are used in the US, with words introduced in order beginning with very short or very frequently used words and moving up to longer words or words less frequently encountered.

They comprise about 75% of the words on any given page in pretty much all children's literature aimed at kids under 8-9. They are taught as whole words/ sight words. Most of them are irregular, meaning they don't lend themselves to phonic attack in a straightforward way. Once learned, they help to open up the world of reading.

Working memory/ recall might be an issue for your child. I would have him screened for dyslexia.

Mine never passed either, because she was dyslexic but we didn't know that at the time.

Have a look at Dancing Bears alongside toe by toe - I felt it more suited to my DS in Y4. It’s fairly dry but 20min a night every night plus the flash cards revolutionised his phonetic knowledge and ability to blend and improved his reading enormously.

Thanks for your feedback. He’s been screened at school for dyslexia and they said he showed no dyslexic tendencies but processing, working memory and reading below average. Thanks for your suggestions, I’ll look at these.

How/when did they screen him for dyslexia? From the information given in your post I would disagree that he doesn't show any tendencies
Can I ask, when you say he struggles with phonics what do you mean?
Do you know what his reading age is?

How is his spelling? I assume that knowing to write a word will make it easier to recognise and read it. Ride, Write, Ink program seems helpful for linking reading and writing. Maybe focus on learning to write his year 2 list of words, so he might then recognise them once he is able to write them correctly from memory. Or you could try spelling apps like SpellingShed, they can be quite addictive.

Sorry, what I mean is, he'd have to learn his phonetic words the same way he learned his high frequency words. How are you/school practicing those? Can he read them more easily? High frequency words are usually learned by writing (look, cover, write, check method), so maybe that couod work for him to learn phonetic words, too.

I find it strange that the school says he has no dyslexic tendencies and yet is not retaining/ recognising phonics?
How much of the phonics code does he know in isolation?

Nothing to offer on the learning to read thing, but did want to suggest plenty of audio books of all kinds so he's still exposed to the richer vocabulary and ideas he would otherwise be getting if he could decode more words.

On another note, has he had his eyes tested recently? Sometimes that slips under the radar as kids don't realise that what they're seeing is not the same as what others see.

A friend's son had something which affected his ability to segment words - speaking/listening as well as reading/writing, and so phonics didn't work for him. I'll try and remember to ask him what the condition was.

Unfortunately, if you have to rely entirely on recognising "whole words" that means all new words are a problem, so obviously if they can master the phonics approach they will find things much easier.

(To the person who was saying "look and say" worked better in their family, I think what sometimes happens is that children who do "look and say" also manage to make the connections and work out the phonics code for themselves. That's certainly what happened with me.)

Dyslexia is commonly understood to be a problem with phonological processing. I would speak to the teacher about dyslexia screening.

@Bingowingo
Working memory issues are a big part of dyslexia. I'd be concerned that the school is apparently unaware of this.

Can you afford a private ed psych assessment? Have you researched the cost of this? Time is very important for a child with reading problems. The earlier the identification of the issue the better.

dyslexiaida.org/working-memory-the-engine-for-learning/

Look up this informative piece for a good description of problems associated with working memory.

I was taught to read via phonics, my husband is a little older and was taught to read via sight. He is a better reader thanI am.
Phonics is not the be all and end all. You do learn the codes which help you read new words when you learn via sight.

I think phonics is pushed because it's easier for most children, and hopefully by the end of year 1 the class will be done with phonics. However there is nothing wrong with reading by sight. Phonics, is, most of the time the most time efficient. I think.

I don't think there's anything wrong with either method. But different approaches work better for different children. Some children would have struggled with learning by sight and some will struggle with phonics. I would look into the Peter and Jane books and work through those with him. It wasn't long ago that is how everyone learnt to read! Literacy rates are going down in this country, I'm not blaming phonics as I'm sure there are other factors to consider too, but there is no evidence those who are above a certain age and were taught by sight are worse readers than today. If anything, evidence points to the opposite direction.

@Bingowingo

Ditch phonics.

It's absolutely crazy that we don't be flexible and flip between things that works for different children.

My dd did not pass the phonics exam either.
I wrote quite a long post on our jounrey elsewhere today.
Basically what the poster said up thread sound's promising re the cards dolch?

We used flash card for First 100 hfw.

She loved this as it was fast and not laborious slowly prouning all these long sentences.

A few cards every night and very quickly she was whipping through all 100.

We also want to Peter and Jane book's.
Then during COVID I got. Reading chest subscription. They had our school reading program but also loads of others.
She was on ort 6 ,very basic few words sentence. We read backwards, speed read.. every other words etc.
She read absolutely loads of that level and when she was self reading 2 back to back I knew she had the stamina for the next level.

For spelling, mnemonics worked really well eg big elephants can always understand small elephant or the " oh u lucky duck" should could words2.

We got this rainbow spelling mat where she had to put the words into the alphabet then moved them around.
We did lot's of focus on root words then changing the pre fox or suffix. .a White board.

Within weeks her spelling went from 0 right up.
Shes now a very good speller.

She doesn't really read books still but her education has come on in leaps and bounds.
What amazed me was that she was struggling so much we didn't know what capacity she had!
Now she's pretty much equal with her peers and it didn't take that much and yet it was too much for our education systems to cope with.
No wonder so many children leave primary school unable to read.

My older DC got on with phonics fine. I absolutely definitely would have found phonics to be a barrier..
My other DD didn't get it,it was a barrier to her reading and she instinctively gets how to pronounce words!

@Catsandzcocktails

I got the Peter and Jane set for my dd and alongside the flash cards etc it was amazing. Also because the books are short it really gave her a boost tonsay she had read a whole book!
It was so simple and easy.
So accessible .

@lanthanum

My dd learned this way and has no issues at all with any words and can instinctively say words straight off she doesn't know just like I did.