Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5

Original poster

'this' is a tricky word and can't be sounded out ...

107 replies

rushofbloodtothefeet · 07/12/2011 17:02

So goes the teachers comment in DDs reading book.

Aaargh!

I hereby give up all hope of her school teaching any child to read effectively. I shall continue teaching my daughter to read at home - where she is happily reading the Songbirds books. (And she was able to work out 'this' by herself before she even started reception)

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

FlamingoBingo · 08/12/2011 16:10

How did people learn to read for the thousands of years they did manage to before they invented synthetic phonics?

Feenie · 08/12/2011 16:18

Er....using phonics, actually.

It's sight reading/whole word recognition that's the relatively new method.

FlamingoBingo · 08/12/2011 16:29

So when the first people were learning how to read, they had to be taught by people who had been taught how to teach reading?

FlamingoBingo · 08/12/2011 16:29

What's the difference between phonics and synthetic phonics?

Feenie · 08/12/2011 16:35

Same thing - used up until the seventies. The synthetic part refers to the blending, I believe.

mrz · 08/12/2011 17:55

FlamingoBingo Phonics has been the main method of instruction since the middle ages and oddly enough back then people knew how to teach it. Whole language began in the USA in the 1920s and as in most things the UK eventually followed. The trend is credited with the decline in literacy in the US but as you can probably imagine it left a gap in the system because people had been trained to teach whole words not phonics.
It appears many teacher training universities are clinging to whole language when training future teachers.

Original poster

rushofbloodtothefeet · 08/12/2011 21:17

Feels somewhat proud that I've had MashaBell post on my thread without interminable and indecipherable lists!

So after my slightly terse note to the teacher yesterday the 'explanation' is (as someone guessed yesterday) that they have called it tricky because they have not taught the grapheme 'th'. Apparently my daughter can sound out 'th' because she picked up what was being taught in the that lesson - completely ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly mentioned that she knows many of the phonemes/diagraphs and did so before starting school

Apparently they continually assess the children's words and sounds and will continue to monitor DD's progress - these words do not inspire me with confidence

OP posts:

Feenie · 08/12/2011 21:26

You had a 3 itemed list! Was relatively restrained though, yes.

mrz · 08/12/2011 21:54

I'm blaming bucharest for summoning up demons from the other side of my patio

maizieD · 08/12/2011 23:03

You forgot the garlic, mrz

Mashabell · 09/12/2011 07:04

How did people learn to read for the thousands of years they did manage to before they invented synthetic phonics?
Before the invention of printing in the 16th C there were very few people who could read. It took off mainly when paper and books became more affordable in the 18th C. But until 1870 many people remained illiterate.

Prior to the 1950?s, the main way of teaching children to read was the one recommended by James Dunn back in 1766, in his book 'The Best Method of Teaching to Read and Spell English':

Begin with words that are absolutely regular,
in the sense that they are pronounced in the way children would expect.
Build into the exercises material that unobtrusively revises earlier work.
Give special emphasis to the pronunciation of c and g, the first big difficulty;
introduce other difficulties progressively....

The rest of the book takes teachers through all the various difficulties, such as letters with more than one sound and sounds with different spellings.

Until the advent of synthetic phonics, teachers would have called only 1 and 2 'phonics' and regarded the rest as further teaching of reading and writing.
The advocates of synthetic phonics have left people very confused by calling virtually all teaching of reading and writing phonics.

maizieD · 09/12/2011 09:54

^Until the advent of synthetic phonics, teachers would have called only 1 and 2 'phonics' and regarded the rest as further teaching of reading and writing.
The advocates of synthetic phonics have left people very confused by calling virtually all teaching of reading and writing phonics.^

Heavens, you're at it again, masha. You don't like English spelling because it won't obey your rules and now you don't like SP because it doesn't conform to your ideas of what 'phonics' is.

You forgot the stake through the heart, too, mrz

mrz · 09/12/2011 17:08

Silver bullet just to be extra sure

learnandsay · 09/12/2011 17:20

I think this is within the topic. Have you guys seen the unholy row that's brewing over this new Year1 phonics test the gov is just bringing in? It's on the BBC news website today. The BBC website is claiming that the test at present has a 70% failure rate!!!!

I remember just after the announcement of the test (which includes non-words to test phonic awareness) one professor was complaining that phonic awareness is only one aspect of reading, as are comprehension, contextual awareness, word recognition and so on and so on. And he complained that to confuse phonic awareness with reading itself is to not understand what reading is actually about. Oh dear, what a pickle we're getting ourselves in!

IndigoBell · 09/12/2011 17:22

I think in my LEA the results were very interesting.

In some schools they were getting about a 30% pass rate - and in others about a 70% pass rate. (Or something like that, I can't remember the exact details)

Now there is no way you'll convince me that those schools are equally good at teaching reading.

daveywarbeck · 09/12/2011 17:24

Does anyone really expect a 4 year old to be able to read "flour" and "spaceman"? Really?

learnandsay · 09/12/2011 17:24

Can anybody post links to any results, especially countywide ones?

IndigoBell · 09/12/2011 17:26

learnAndSay - I don't think results have been published.

Tiggles · 09/12/2011 17:33

I wonder with that test if they actually tell the children that 'half' were nonsense words, because in my experience children will try and read a word that they 'know' so if they had 'foo' they would think it should say food for example, rather than saying 'foo' which they know doesn't make sense.
Not entirely sure I am making sense either!

maizieD · 09/12/2011 17:40

The test had such a high failure rate because schools are not teaching phonics properly. (as evidenced by many, many threads on here, if nothing else!) Nearly threequarters of the schools in the pilot were still teaching guessing from pictures, initial letters and context. No wonder children were phased by words with nothing to help them to guess what they were!

It'll be an even more unholy row next year when those results are replicated across the country! Which they will be if schools don't start bucking up their ideas.

Have a look at this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/1358993-this-is-a-tricky-word-and-cant-be-sounded-out and you will see poor teaching well illustrated!

The current fuss about examiners running 'cheating' courses for teachers is a direct result of secondary schools being stuffed with semi-literate children who teachers are supposed to get better and better results from year on year. Those schools are desperate to do anything they can to 'improve' their results.

The 'professor' who says such silly things about 'phonic awareness' is defending the 'methods' he has based his career on; it wouldn't look good for him to admit he's been wrong all this time (I'm assuming it's a 'he', though there are plenty of equally 'wrong' female professors...).

I disapprove highly of just about everything the present government is doing with education, but as far as the teaching of reading is concerned they are doing exactly what should have been done years ago.

maizieD · 09/12/2011 17:44

Instead of speculating, why don't you have a look at the DfE documents on the test?

www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/phonics

IB Where did you get the information about your LA's 'test results'?

maizieD · 09/12/2011 17:47

OOOOPs, I've linked to this thread...

CecilyP · 09/12/2011 18:02

Yes you are making sense, MissGreen. In much the same way as we can read spelling mistakes and typos, rather than thinking it is some strange word we have never seen before. Would 5-6 year olds already do that? I don't see why not.

mrz · 09/12/2011 18:03

the 'explanation' is (as someone guessed yesterday) that they have called it tricky because they have not taught the grapheme 'th'.

rushofbloodtothefeet can I ask if the teacher has previously sent home the as a tricky word?

mrz · 09/12/2011 18:06

yes the children are told that they aren't real words.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5