KS1 teachers advice please. Phonics/reading.

[BunnyWunny]

Have just found out from my dd, after asking her if she was being taught to join up her writing yet, that she is apparently in a different phonics group than her guided reading group.

She is in Y1 and reading ORT stage 7 comfortably, and as I help in her class one afternoon I know she does guided reading with a group of children and they are all roughly at this stage too. However, she is doing a daily phonics session in the morning with a different group of children, who I am pretty sure are of a lower reading ability (one girl I read with is only reading ORT stage 3). The children from her guided reading group are in a different phonics group and are given more challenging spellings than her, and are being taught to join (dd has excellent neat handwriting).

Just wondered, before I ask the teacher about this at parents evening what your opinions are. As an ex teacher myself I fail to see how reading and phonics ability can be separated, and if she is expected to read with a certain group of children, why she is not expected to be able to do the same 'phonics work' as them?

There is a difference between blending (which is needed for reading) and segmenting (which is needed for writing) and I have known children to be at different levels in these two elements. Could this be situation? I don't think you'd be at all unreasonable to ask the teacher about it.

Are you an ex lower KS2 or KS1 teacher?
it's quite common for a fluent reader to have an excellent visual memory, wide vocabulary and so rely less on phonic strategies, using grammatical and contextual cues instead.
As NWN said, you need to be good at segmenting in order to spell phonetically, and to take on board alternative spellings for the same phoneme.
I'd also go in and ask.

As far as I am aware she has good segmenting skills, she spelled water as 'worter' tonight when writing for example, that is pretty good going for a 5.5 year old.

I used to teach R/Y1 myself and although, yes, some children do have good visual memories for reading, most children who have been taught to read using synthetic phonics were pretty much in line.

Haven't taught for a little while, but surely phonics teaching is linked to reading though so still can't see how she can be expected to keep up with the rest of her guided reading group if she is being taught different phonics to them?

And I am wondering why handwriting is being taught alongside phonics work, good reading ability doesn't equate with good handwriting...

Then the only solution is to go in and talk to the teacher and ask why.

I will .