Sight reading and decoding

[runoutofnameideas]

How do slightly older children learn new words which are irregular - do they still decode somehow with rules I'm not aware of or learn them by sight? Something like "unusual" for example?

Do they work out that there are different ways to pronounce say the middle u and then try them out in their head or something?

Ds just finished reception. He is a very able reader (well I might just be being a proud mum thinking that!) and has zoomed through the levels (and before anyone says too quickly, he does understand and has good expression, rarely sounds out out loud) but he wasn't taught at his level at all for reading within school so I feel a bit lost about how this all works. He is a natural sight reader although he can decode if he has to so I am wondering if he will just learn these sorts of words by sight as he goes which is I'm sure what I did but maybe that's not the done thing these days?

Advice would be great if my question isn't too vague and confusing!

If they have been taught thoroughly they will be able to decode the word "unusual" using phonics knowledge. Often when a child meets a word for the first time they will have to "try out" the alternatives until they work out which sounds right.
Unfortunately what happens in many schools is that phonics is taught in reception then nothing new is taught in KS1 so the children can't decode words containing alternative ways of writing the sounds.

I'm not sure how it happens either - ds has just finished year 1 and he is generally a sight reader as well. Just asked him how he works out a new word and he says he tries and either a grownup will help, or he uses the pictures to help or he uses the rest of the words in the sentence. He doesn't tend to do that much sounding out but is a pretty good reader.

I think that keeping reading lots of different books increases thd times words are seen and so they aren't unfamiliar any more if that makes any sense.

DS has definitely been taught more phonics during Year 1 but I think his style of reading means that using his phonics knowledge isn't the first method he uses.

MRZ - part of the problem is he is at the end of reception but reading purple NC level books, so whatever they teach at school wasn't really responding to that at all last year. The group reading was at a max of yellow level in the top group.
The class phonics were not at the level to address the words he was encountering in his books.

So it doesn't help him tackle the kind of words he's coming up against now. Quite often he does surprise me and knows them or works them out by trying different sounds in his head or, ahem, guessing but that doesn't sound ideal from your post?

So I guess I need to look at the more complex alternative phonics somewhere online and mention them when we're reading together?

Why do you think him being on purple level means he wasn't responding to phonics?
I often have a few children reading purple and gold levels by the end of reception while others are still on blue or yellow levels.

best overview of phonics I know

He has been fine with the phonics they have taught but just seems to be a whole word reader by nature if that's possible. So it's not that I think he didn't respond it's more that they stopped at ou and oi etc. whereas he was at a totally different level.

There were no other children vaguely at this level in his class at the end of the year as they were quite slow with the teaching (no reflection on the kids as there are some other bright ones).

With my children who are reading ahead of the letters/sounds taught so far I do a mini "lesson" when they meet a new way of writing a sound. Usually something like "unusual" child sounds out /u/ /n/ /u/ /s/ /u/ /a/ /l/ I would point out that the "u" can sometimes represent /yoo/

If I am listening to a child read and focusing on this way of writing /yoo/ I would point it out before we begin the book.

That's because you are a good teacher though mrz, whereas sadly I fear the reception one ds had didn't bother with anything like that - not worth it for one child.

Hoping next year will do more for him at his level.

I have done a few of the more advanced sounds like how a g can change sound or a c but I'm not being very good at the explanations so will check your web link.

He seems to have picked up the above very easily at least so maybe it doesn't matter that school aren't doing it with him.

He might enjoy game

Do children have to be taught phonics though ?
My 2 older boys both learned by the look and say method.They developed their own subconcious phonics rules in the same way, I suppose, that a child can tell whether an animal is a dog by comparing what they are seeing with all their past experiences and applying lots of subconcious rules.I would have thought recognising patterns is what the human brain does best and am sceptical as to whether trying to hard wire the brain with a lot of phonics teaching is a good thing.

My kids were taught phonics but were given ORT books to read - they took to sight reading very quickly and disliked sounding out words...despite my encouragement

So will it be okay if he just carries on sight reading?

He has a very good memory so I don't think learning spellings would be a problem for more complex words and he does use phonics to do simple spellings.

My kids have no problems with spellings either - they have just that kind of memory, they sight read and spell well. I think the half baked approach to phonics (learn the sounds and read ORT) is a bit crap - but my kids survived it. They still do phonics in Year 2 - code name for spelling and suggest that it is the most boring thing they do in class.

Right, you've given me the confidence to not worry about this then.
He's progressing really well and it sounds like whole word learning works well for him and so far he hasn't had any problems and just knows a word after he's seen it once, at most twice.

I guess I was sort of thinking, well how will he get through all the words in the English Language that way but he will.

No children don't have to be taught using phonics but it is the most effective way for the vast majority of children.

Look and Say is very limited and slow because there are millions and millions of words to learn. Children may appear to make rapid progress early on because they are being taught only the words contained in the texts they are asked to read but when faced with texts outside the scheme they can struggle with even simple books. ORT is a Look and Say scheme.

Of the methods Cat describes I would discourage looking at pictures it encourages children to be guessers not readers and can be a barrier rather than an aid to becoming a good reader.

Of course we all use context but it is a later skill used for comprehension rather than to guess words.

Reading makes good readers like everything we do the more we practise the better we become.

The whole idea of phonics isn't to have children sat around sounding out every single word but to give the child the tools to read words they haven't encountered yet. Obviously when they first start to learn they need to sound out most of the words but it will become fewer and fewer as the child learns, which is why you may think your child is reading entirely by sight but in reality they have mastered those words over time by repeated decoding.

I've said many times my own son never ever grasped phonics but was an amazing reader but his lack of phonics severely limited his writing ability.

Whatever you decide is best for your child please, please don't encourage him to guess words from the illustrations.

I should add that context relies on understanding and having the word in your vocabulary which is fine for us but not so reliable for children aged five or six.

great post mrz - all that laborious sounding out is what leads ultimately to fluency. I can remember the thrill of working out 'what word' when I was small, the excitement of solving the puzzle.

This all sounds very sensible and I am very much encouraging him to sound out new words rather than guess.

I do also wonder though, I managed to read very well via Look and Say (am also a visual learner who had a very good memory) and was an excellent speller.

For those children who suit whole word learning (maybe with a very good visual memory), what's the harm as long as they do know to try sounding out if needed?

Please don't forget that your dcs are only atthe very start of their reading 'careers'. There are plenty of children who can master the very limited 'sight word' vocabulary in reading schemes such as ORT but who run out of steam in 2 or 3 years time when the vocabulary in texts becomes more extensive and they have no way of working out what all the new words say (pictures & context being highly unreliable). Wonderful reading at the end of YR or Y1 might not signify anything more than a photographic memory.

For most children phonics is absolutely essential. It is also simple, child friendly and quite easy to learn when properly presented(miles easier than learning thousands of words as 'wholes').

But surely if you have a photographic memory and memorize all the words commonly used in the English language and can sound out any new ones you're fine?

He does do phonics at school, is perfectly happy with them but is reading at purple level whereas the phonics at school are way behind where he is at. What am I supposed to do? Not let him read ahead of the class level.

Despite the above about him learning phonics quite happily, I don't see what the problem is with learning all words by sight IF you're the kind of child who can - that's what I did and I didn't come to any harm.

Am I missing something?

There isn't necessarily a problem in learning all the words by sight, and your son may end up being one of those children who deduces the phonetic code from his practical reading experience. You may find, though, as I have with DS1, that 'gaps' turn up later - DS1 learned to read and spell exactly like your son and I could never see why it was worth him sounding words out since if I told him the word once he would remember it. He was similarly ahead with reading and spelling in the early years. However, now, at nearly 12, his strategies for decoding unfamiliar words are not nearly as strong as they should be - he's impressionistic with words he doesn't know (and are not in his passive vocabulary) so will often invert vowels or approximate diphthongs.

To put this in context (and not as a brag) at his last reading test at 10 he was considered to have a reading age of 16+ (top of the scale), an equivalent spelling age, achieved 5a in teacher assessment and 5s in statutory tests in Y6 for both reading and writing and got places at several highly selective secondary schools, so by most standards he'd be considered a 'reading' success. I still think the way he learned to read wasn't optimal and I'm still amazed by how poor he is at working out new words.

If I were you, I'd just check that your son knows his advanced code (some of the links posted earlier will allow you to test this) and make sure he gets this to automaticity. This will shore up any gaps in what he's worked out.

runoutofnameideas I am not suggesting that he should be made to sound out words if he can read them just that he also needs the phonics knowledge to help him read words that he may not find so easy and encouraging guessing (using picture clues) isn't helpful.

That sounds fair enough mrz. And I can see it would be good for spelling.

eidetic memory
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory