The Phonics Test for 6 Year Olds

[WroxhamSchool]

Hello from me!

Just a little introduction, I am the Deputy Head of The Wroxham Primary, in Potters Bar. We are a one form entry Primary School with a Nursery. We work on the principle that our children are the most important part of the school and as a result, we include them in their learning. For example the children help work out where we are going to go with our topics and they select the challenge of work they feel confident with, which makes for a great learning environment and one where the children feel valued. The school has moved from Special Measures in 2003 to Outstanding in in 2006, where it has stayed ever since.

That is just a little bit of background information, now onto the main event! I emailed Rowan Davies, who suggested that I posted on here, so I hope that is ok?

As some of you know the Government has decided to bring in a new test for our six year olds in England, to check their phonic knowledge. We at our school and many other organisations (see list below) are against this idea, as it goes against everything that we believe in.

We feel that this test, which will be reported to OFSTED, will narrow the curriculum for the children in Nursery and Reception, as some schools will feel pressure to ensure that the children are ready for the test in Year 1. This is not a good thing as it will result in putting some of our children off reading, as not every child accesses reading through this method.

We have started a campaign, which is gathering momentum, with our base being readingshouldbefun.wordpress.com

On the Blog you will find lots of information about the test, in addition to this you will find a short video showing the real meaning of reading (which does include phonics, just not only phonics).

We would love to have the support of Mumsnet, as we know that you are key to our children's learning (we only have them 6 hours a day!).

I would be interested to hear from people and try to answer any of your questions. I will also direct some of the people who are backing the campaign to this site, as they have additional information to myself.

Below is a statement from The Cambridge Primary Review, which details their position, but I would like to emphasise that we do not have a problem with the teaching of phonics, just the fact that our 6 yr olds don't need to be tested, or have the data sent to OFSTED.

Thanks in advance

Roger Billing

One of the key recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review, the most comprehensive research into English primary education for the last forty years, recommends that children should have an entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Research evidence in this country and internationally shows that talking to and with young children is of great developmental importance. Telling stories, listening to stories and enjoying books is a vital part of learning throughout primary school. The following video clip shows that enjoying high quality literature at primary school is essential and that learning to read should be a varied and rewarding process.

Some of the Groups backing the Campaign

David Reedy ? President, UKLA

John Coe ? Chairman, National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Alison Peacock ? National Network Leader for the Cambridge Primary Review (CPR)

John Hickman ? Chair, National Association of Advisers for English (NAAE)

Russell Hobby ? General Secretary, National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)

Christine Blower ? General Secretary, National Union of Teachers (NUT)

Professor Trisha Maynard ? Chair of The Association for the Professional Development of Early Year Educators (TACTYC)

Bill Goodhand ? Chair of The National Association for Small Schools (NASS)

CPRNet: of course it's a decoding test. I thought that was the whole point?

No-one who is proposing it is suggesting it is anything else.

The problem is that complete lack of understanding of the neurological processes involved in the task of reading. The sublexical process (phonics) is only one neurological process required to perform the task of reading. And According to the UK Medical Research Council at least 10% of children will not be able to access phonics due to having Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) including those children who may have had Otitis Media with Effusion (Glue Ear) who may require a whole language approach
Phonics depends on being able to distinguish the sounds that make up a word, and then being able use the graphic symbols chosen by society to represent those same sounds that make up the sound of a word. But many including those who have APD are not best able to process the gaps between the sounds that make up a word, or for some even the gaps between words in rapid speech, thus making the concept of phonic blending redundant. As Rose said in his literacy review of 2005 phonics depends on the ability to listen, and then he totally ignored those who have APD which is a listening disability, typical civil servant. The whole "phonics for all" policy is based on a political lie, and contrary to international neurological research.
The early psycholinguistic model of reading are best summarised in the 2004 research paper Aphasia, Alexia, and Oral Reading (Alexia is also known as acquired dyslexia, or those loosing their ability to read)

Some interesting research papers
Cognitive subtypes of dyslexia.
Making Sense of Listening: The IMAP Test Battery
Toward a Research-Based Assessment of Dyslexia
Form?meaning links in the development of visual word recognition
Teacher Knowledge, Instructional Expertise, and the Development of Reading Proficiency
Components of verbal working memory: Evidence from neuroimaging
Adults with dyslexia are impaired in categorizing speech and nonspeech sounds on the basis of temporal cues
Neural systems predicting long-term outcome in dyslexia
Newborn brain event-related potentials revealing atypical processing of sound frequency and the subsequent association with later literacy skills in children with familial dyslexia
Auditory sensory deficits in developmental dyslexia: A longitudinal ERP study
Association of a Rare Variant with Mismatch Negativity in a Region Between KIAA0319 and DCDC2 in Dyslexia
Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution

CiteULike Research Paper Group Libraries
Alexia (acquired dyslexia) - library 155 articles
Developmental Dyslexia - library 403 articles
LanguageAndBrain - library 905 articles
Audiology and Auditory Processing Disorder - library 311 articles
Working memory for sentence processing - library 42 articles

I think it is really good news that the UK is introducing a short and sweet decoding check at the end of Y1 - I wish the same would happen in Australia, where, I believe phonics is not well-taught. The UK is really leading the waay on this sone.
The test results will provide information on what has been learnt by the child at school, with the focus, hopefully, on the instruction and not deficits in the child.
The focus on the child's ability to read novel words, be they pseudo or otherwise.
Sorry Wroxham School - you sound a wonderful place but you are misspending your energy running this campaign.

I'm not sure you should be testing the children but checking the teaching of phonics. From my experience my son just seemed to learn to read, but my duaghter who is at the end of year Yr1 now, has, and is still, really struggling. I'm sure of the whole set of phonemes are introduced quickly then it helps but she seemed to spend so long at the early stages that it has been extremely hard to move past the 'a' of cat into all the other 'a' sounds when she sees them for example.

Testing isn't about testing the kids though.
It's testing the teachers and standard of teaching.
This basic fact seems to elude so many.

The Cambridge Primary Review proposed that ?literacy ? in the familiar sense of reading and writing - be re-integrated into the language curriculum. Further, the goal of literacy by the end of the primary phase must be more than functional. It is about making and exploring meaning as well as receiving and transmitting it. That is why talking must be part of reading and writing rather than an optional extra.

I just read this from your link and I'm very confused OP.
The EYFS strand is called Communication Language and Literacy Development so obviously COMMUNICATION & LANGUAGE aren't optional extras... In KS1& 2 we report Speaking and Listening levels so obviously it isn't optional

It is about making and exploring meaning as well as receiving and transmitting it .. I had thought of looking at the links but your extract mrz has put me off. I absolutely detest this sort of language 'receiving and transmitting (meaning)'! Why can't they just use normal words. Who ever describes conversing, discussing ,talking, or exchanging ideas, for example, as 'receiving and transmitting meaning ' has lost the plot. (IMHO anyway)

I think if the OP has an issue with testing (and don't we all) this is perhaps the wrong test to protest against ... 10 mins (max) 1-1 as part of the normal class routine compared to end of key stage written tests

^Testing isn't about testing the kids though.
It's testing the teachers and standard of teaching.
This basic fact seems to elude so many^

I think that is the real reason that there is a determined campaign against the decoding test. Teachers who cling to their look and guess methods of teaching reading and who have a significant tail of strugglers in their classes because they will not teach systematic, structured phonics, or they add in all the guessing from pictures, context & initial letter nonsense alongside their phonics teaching, are running scared because the decoding test will possibly reveal deficiencies in their pupils' learning.

I find the outcry over the decodoing test, and its imagined potential for stress and confusion in pupils, hypocritical in the extreme. These same people will cheerfully allow unnecessary reading failure for the sake of their ideological attachment to look and guess and will submit pupils to the stress of SATs without a single qualm.

I'm on the fence with this.
No one teaches you how to distinguish between a cat and a dog, but a 3 yo can do it more reliably than any computer that has ever been invented ( according to royal Institution xmas lectures!) Through experience the human brain, sub consciously, recognises patterns and puts together 'rules'
this is what happens with 'look and say' taught readers.As adults we rely nearly entirely on context and to read a word only bringing in a concious phonics approach when faced with a technical or foreign word or unfamiliar name.I am not sure whether artifcial taught phonics rules can ever compete with the subconcious process
Ideas about teaching reading have swung back and forth over the generations and proponents of each method have claimed that the evidence supports their approach.So I think it is very naive really to claim phonics to be definitively the best method. Common sense would suggest a range of techniques to be needed.

Have you taught many children to read, fairydoll?

fairydoll: it can (compete with the subconscious process), and indeed outstrips it. You are not comparing like with like. How an adult who has learned the rules then uses them is a completely different matter from how you learn the rules in the first place.

Not a great example - but it's not totally dissimilar from the effort it look to learn to depress clutch, select gear, find bite point, release handbrake, move off, all whilst remembering mirror/signal/manoeuvre. As a competent driver, you do this on autopilot, perhaps only checking consciously the first time you have a new car. And you'll have seen it done thousands of times as a passenger before you ever learned to drive. But when you start to drive, you really benefit from an instructor who breaks down and teaches the skills so you can then use them yourself.

Is it a level playing field though. Well known fact that children develop reading skills at different rates and successful at a phonics test aged six might not mean anything in terms of reading ability some years down the line! Know some girls from DS's class who were on bottom table and would have struggled with such a test but now nearing the end of their primary education they are voracious readers and have caught up (if not overtaken) some of their peers who were a lot more advanced with phonics, aged six.
Also, will this not be another test which favours girls to the detriment of boys? Think it could be.
DS picked up reading, using phonics, very quickly but DD is not so quick and probably wouldn't score as well (that would seem to contradict what I've said in above paragraph but we are talking individual cases here) but she is a very astute child and I have no worries about her intellectual abilities.

think that children develop at different rates and that six is too soon to tell really.

I don't think the point is to predict reading ability later down the line - or even age 6.

It is a phonics test, not a total reading test. And, as MRZ points out, it's the sort of thing good teachers are doing anyhow.

Does anyone know what this test is called? Is it the Middle Infant Screening Test or is that a different thing?

Our debate too often assumes that all those opposed to the Government test are also opposed to teaching phonics. This is not so. Most primaries teach a combination of analytic and synthetic phonics together with other ways in which we readers bring meaning off the page [syntactical and visual clues for example]. We do the same as we share a book with a four year old on our knee.
So why are so many teachers opposed to the test? It is because politicians are seeking to dictate that synthetics should be the main if not the only way in which teachers help children to begin to read. We should remember that when our children are taught a skill they are taught not only the skill but the attitudes which prompt the use of the skill in life. To teach decoding alone, in isolation from meaning and pleasure, is to send a wrong message to the child about what it is to be a reader and the inevitable and well documented result is that the skill is too often lost when the child is old enough to make a personal choice.
Motivation is tremendously important and this is why teachers are so concerned that their introduction of children to reading should always be accompanied by meaning and not merely be centred upon a technique.

It's not the MIST. It's a new short test of phonics (reading 40 words, some real, some novel) in a set time. It is being trialled this month.

It is not a wider reading test - nor is it presented as such by anyone other than its opponents. It is a check on whether children have learned to decode by end yr1, and to ensure that children who haven't learnt basic decoding skills are identified before they fall behind.

dominie makes an odd claim To teach decoding alone, in isolation from meaning and pleasure....

• The whole purpose of decoding is to be able to understand the word; first what the word is, then what the word means. Children seem to get enormous pleasure from working out what a word is, figuring out the little puzzle that every new word presents, for beginners. What a triumph and what joy it is when they crack 'sounding out'

I don't think anyone is advocating the teaching of phonics in such an isolated way. And I don't think there would be so much hot air about which methods are effective if all were shown to work well. This test will establish that.

What people seem to be missing here is the fact that this test will change the direction of some schools. There will be schools who will only focus on the ability to decode and read the words that the test will cover, which in turn will change the learning that goes on in our Foundation Stage, for the worse.

In regards to why we are targeting a 10-20 minute test, rather than the KS2 SATS, this is because the Government are looking into the assessment at KS2, so many teachers and educational groups have contributed to Lord Bew's review and we will see where that takes us.

In addition, the majority of people who are against this test are mainly against it due to the way in which it will be used. If this were a test that schools could use as one of the many resources we use everyday, it wouldn't be so bad. But in schools where leadership is only worried about numbers, levels and OFSTED, rather than the whole individual, children's learning will suffer (in my opinion, and others).

maizieD
These same people will cheerfully allow unnecessary reading failure for the sake of their ideological attachment to look and guess and will submit pupils to the stress of SATs without a single qualm

This is about the best description i have for you and you phonics only brigade, who have no neurological support for your claims only to sell more phonics programs for your mates regardless of the needs of children who are not cognitively able to use phonics. It is called promoting or marketing disability discrimination which you have been doing for years in order to sell these phonics programs .

'What people seem to be missing here is the fact that this test will change the direction of some schools. There will be schools who will only focus on the ability to decode and read the words that the test will cover, which in turn will change the learning that goes on in our Foundation Stage, for the worse.'

If there are schools out there as idiotic as this, then frnakly it says more about education than a simple phonic test ever will.

'No one teaches you how to distinguish between a cat and a dog, but a 3 yo can do it more reliably than any computer that has ever been invented.'

Really Fairy?
Are you referring to auditory or orthographic discrimination?

'To teach decoding alone, in isolation from meaning and pleasure, is to send a wrong message to the child about what it is to be a reader and the inevitable and well documented result is that the skill is too often lost when the child is old enough to make a personal choice. '

Dominie who is advocating decoding in isolation from meaning?
It would render the whole experience null and void.

I'm interested however in the 'well documented result' you speak of.

The key issue in cracking any sort of code is to uncover meaning.

WroxhamSchool
The real problem is a lack of understanding in the teaching profession about the real neurology of how we learn, and how we learn to read. There is no Educational Research Council to carry out independent peer reviewed research in the UK.
Teachers are not adequately trained to understand the neurology of how children learn, how to work with other professions who will have a greater understanding of these specialist issues, and how to understand the developmental processes pre-school.
Research states that formal education should not begin until after t he age of Maturation 7 - 8 years old when children stop growing out of developmental problems, and have had time to develop alternative compensatory skills to help work around their cognitive weaknesses or disabilities.
The Brooks report has no supportive peer reviewed research included supporting each claim so the whole thing is probably the scientifically unsupported ramblings of Mr Brooks.
So waht we really need is real scientific education research, and not the ramblings of contracted academics, and program provider lobby groups. So that we can have scientifically informed teachers who have a basic understanding of all the possible SEN issues, and how the y may need to adapt their teaching methods to best suite the learning needs each pupil they may have to teach.