The new Y1 phonics screening check

[SoundsWrite]

The government's new phonics screening check is to be launched in England in June.
The results of the test will be given to the parents of each individual child but each individual school's results will not be made public.
What is the view on Mumsnet? Do you think the results should be made public or not? Either way, why or why not?
You can find out more about this test by going to the DfE site: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/a00198207/faqs-year-1-phonics-screening-check

If they find a word (which is pretty rare) they haven't seen before they use the context, and their knowledge of vocabulary.

I suppose they might just use a bit of phonics in deciphering a Harry Potter spell, or a Lord of the Rings character name, but generally speaking, phonics doesn't get a look in.

I definitely don't use phonics in my reading! And I am a prolific reader, not handicapped by not sounding out words...

I would suggest you should not make judgement on my 5 yo who is an incredibly fluent reader.

not on your evidence on this thread

Lily I tell reception children that the "e" represents the "schwa"

So if you encounter a unfamiliar word how do you go about reading it Lily

Lily,

The point has probably been made elsewhere in this mammoth thread - but I would suggest that both you and your children have reached the stage of 'unconcious mastery' of decoding where it no longer goes through that 'conscious' phase of 'sounding it out'. Just because you do not consciously go through the 'sounding out' stage when you encounter a word doesn't mean that your brain isn't doing it - a bit like reaching out and picking up something from a table, you aren't consciously making the calculation about distance and angle and muscle extension, but your eyes and brain are still going through that process IYSWIM?

To analyse what is actually happening - to test the specific phonic skills of decoding and blending IN ISOLATION (it's not called a reading test, it''s called a phonics test) - it makes entire sense to test with non-words which combine phonic sounds AS LONG AS the person being tested is made aware that some of the words are 'non-words' and so does not try to 'revise' their answer to 'make it make sense'.

Anecdotally - my DS was a fluent pre-school reader. Had you asked me at the time, I would have said that he had appeared to learn to read by memorising whole words, as his 'party trick' before learning to read was to recite entire long books word for word by memory. I assumed that he was using recognition of whole words to 'match' what he said when reciting to what the word was on the page and then moved on to reading it in different contexts. In so far as he could verbalise what he was doing, he would also have said 'I just know what that word says'.

However, when DS encountered systematic phonics teaching on starting school, it turned out that he did in fact have a sophisticated understanding of the phonic code, which he had worked out for himself. So despite what appeared to be evidence to the contracry, he was not reading by word recognition, instead word recognition had given way to understanding the 'code' within the word and thence to reading unknown words through phonic decoding. He was, and remains to this day, wholly oblivious to the fact he uses this phonic knowledge.... but give him a list of members of the Sri Lankan or Pakistan cricket team to read out, and it is absolutely clear that he uses phonics to decode the names.

bound
found
hound
mound
pound
round
sound
wound
ground
astound
flounced

All these common words with ound sound OW except wound which sounds OO.

Phonics is more than one letter at a time.

The way I see it, a good knowledge of phonics is the basic tool in the toolbox of reading - your trusty basic adjustable screwdriver that you turn to when all your other tools don't quite work. A child or adult who has mastery of phonics can 'overlay' that with all sorts of other ways of accessing the written word - through context, through familiarity, through knowledge of word derivations, suffuxes, prefixes et al. However, for words where all of those other tools don't work, everyone literacte should have that trusty basic tool to fall back on. It might not be pretty, it might not fit the screw absolutely perfectly, but it enables you to 'have your very best shot' at a job when everything else fails.

Because it is such a basic tool, it is worth checking that a child has a secure knowledge of it at a young age, when intervention has a good chance of working. One could argue that it would be better as a 'test when ready' test like the old Sscottish level tests, rather than a 'fixed age' test. However, arguing that a child shouldn't be tested 'because they have moved beyond phonics' doesn't ring true to me - everyone, however advanced a reader, will encounter a name or a word in a newspaper article or a textbook that they need to have the tools to sound out accurately, so every child should have a secure knowledge of phonics to fall back on.

"not on your evidence on this thread

Lily I tell reception children that the "e" represents the "schwa""

What - because he made a mistake on a made-up word? Proves my point really, that if the test flags up mistakes like that, then it is worthless. My 5yo is pushing KS1 level 3 in reading, fab comprehension and expression, his teachers are , as am I as he couldn't speak till he was over 3, and had a moderate speech and language delay. But he is just flying at school, and his reading is amazing, because it has all come from him, he has very much not been hot-housed by us. And within a context, he can easily work out new words. With no context, he can work out new words, using his knowledge of the English language. Made-up words - because he is so articulate, he may sometimes (as in 'jound') try to rationalise them.

Not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp, and why all you teachers seem to take the line that 'this proves he is not a good reader'.....it's a bit depressing really that an educator should say that.

What is the point in telling reception children who can't yet read 'the' that the 'e' represents the 'schwa'? How is that ever going to help your average reception child to read?

"I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!"

To read this poem you HAVE to use other tactics of context and memory. Phonics is not going to help you much!

LilyBolero: it doesn't say anything about whether he's a good reader because it is not meant to

Did you see the posts further up, about how many more children learn to read effectively via phonics, com pad to via other methods? This check will indeed show that your DC fails in phonics, and then there should be intervention to see what is needed to ensure good reading (which in your case might be "nothing, sound though atypical reader"). Obviously, if you cannot trust your school/teacher to understand this, then you are in a bit of a bind. But one hopes most schools will not be at such a low level.

But Lily, to your ds a made up word is the same as an unknown word. And instead of tackling the unknown word using phonics he tried to bend it into a known word instead. It's not a huge problem, and it's easily corrected, but the test did tell you something about your ds's decoding skills.

Now you can check next time he comes across a word he doesn't know, and make sure he isn't trying to 'fit' those into his known vocabulary aswell.

Btw, if your very able older children only rarely come across new vocabulary, perhaps they need more challenging texts to read? It's sad to find that able readers rarely find an opportunity to expand their vocabulary.

Bonsoir, what do you do for a living, and have you been doing it very successfuly for over 20 years? Because I would like to read a couple of books about it and tell you that you are wrong.

PS: yes, that poem can be read phonically, as the tackling of different graphemes is part of proper phonics teaching. Obviously, if you have only had exposure to an inadequate programme that does not do this, then you will have greater difficulty. The phonics check should help identify (thus raising the possibility of remedy) any schools/teachers who are not teaching it properly.

Without phonics, that poem would be so much harder!

Lily they are told when they are being taught how to read the word the it's very simple 4 year olds understand it

Lily I'm very sorry you are upset and offended but if your child read joined for jound they are not reading they are guessing! You may not like it and you may insist that because letter patters can represent a number of sounds and that sounds can be represented by different letter patterns it means they aren't "phonic" it doesn't I'm afraid mean you are correct.

There are approx a quarter of a million words in the OED are you saying your children have learnt them all?

"This check will indeed show that your DC fails in phonics, and then there should be intervention to see what is needed to ensure good reading (which in your case might be "nothing, sound though atypical reader")."

I'm not sure why this is all so focussed on my ds being 'poor at phonics' - he got 38/40 on the sample test! I simply quoted one of the 2 words he got wrong, with my understanding as to why. I think it is utterly understandable that a highly literate and articulate child would try and make sense of the written word, as they are used to doing the rest of the time.

He categorically doesn't have a 'problem' with phonics!

"But Lily, to your ds a made up word is the same as an unknown word. "

It's not, because I would say that generally speaking his vocabulary is ahead of his reading age, and so he can work out the word, and get the feedback of it making sense.

"Btw, if your very able older children only rarely come across new vocabulary, perhaps they need more challenging texts to read? It's sad to find that able readers rarely find an opportunity to expand their vocabulary."

They are voracious readers and read everything they can. Ds1 has been reading Macbeth this term. I am always trying to give them a bigger range of reading materials. They are both very articulate though, dd in particular is very 'wordy' - her teacher describes her as a highly-gifted writer, because she uses such a wide range of language. (incidentally, first time she came across the word language, she worked it out using phonics, came up with Lan-ja-jah - I guess she must have been using mrz's schwa for the last letter...)

I have had misgivings about this test ever since it was announced - for my kids, who are high-achieving and very able in literacy, I don't think it is helpful - it will flag up problems that don't actually exist! Teachers are hard-pressed enough without having to address non-existent problems.

Certainly my friends who teach Y1 are very about it, and the trial of the test also threw up problems with it, along the lines of what I have been arguing.

Phonics test a waste of money says phonics expert

Literacy experts deeply concerned about phonics test

"The reports finds, for example,that 54% of respondents disagreed that the check accurately assessed the decoding ability of pupils with EAL, 65% disagreed with regard to pupils with speech difficulties, 67% disagreed with regard to pupils with special educational needs and 72% disagreed with regard to pupils with language difficulties. Yet these categories of children are the very ones who are in most need of identification. Thus the test fails in its main purpose.

Finally, the evaluation of the pilot informs us that 72% of schools experienced difficulties in relation to the use of pseudo words and that some able readers were confused. This confirms our previously expressed worry that the use of a test of only the decoding aspect of reading could actually harm standards in the longer term, with able readers mistakenly identified as needing further teaching of phonics and being held back as a result.

In the light of the findings from the evaluation of the pilot we are sure that ministers will be reconsidering the need for the phonics test for 6 year olds. The signatories of this letter would welcome an opportunity to discuss how teacher assessment of reading would identify and help young readers who are slow to start."

That is from, among others, teachers involved in the pilot study, it's an impressive list of names, and basically backs up what I've been saying on the thread about able readers throwing up anomalous results.

"Lily I'm very sorry you are upset and offended but if your child read joined for jound they are not reading they are guessing! "

I'm not upset or offended. You know nothing about my child and their reading ability. He's my 3rd child, I'm beyond getting bothered about reading levels. I am aware of how good at reading he is though.

He is not guessing. Must be a bloody good guess if that's what he's doing, giving his accuracy reading most texts with REAL WORDS.

otorhinolaryngologist

lapideous

mesoprosopic

fervescent

"There are approx a quarter of a million words in the OED are you saying your children have learnt them all?"

Nice to see people reverting to sarcasm.

What I'm saying is that when I asked my older children how much they used their phonics, they said 'never in reading, occasionally in writing'. I do think their spoken vocabulary outstrips their reading vocabulary generally, they both have a very wide vocabulary because they hear a lot of v good English.

I'm not the only person with reservations about this, read the links from the pilot studies - lots of people found that exactly what I'm saying would happen DID happen - ie it didn't flag up children who were struggling and did flag up a lot of non-problems.

see, I'd use my knowledge of latin rather than phonics there....

I noted that in none of her "ou" list was there an example where "ou" was pronounced "oi", so it does look more like a random guess than an informed attempt.

And also I had a bit of a realisation: the concentration on graphemes indicates a totally different view of language, and I hadn't fully appreciated before just how different that view was. Phonics is based in the sounds of the language, and is taught by learning to recognise and blend the sound of the language in their various graphemes (starting with the commonest, and adding more). Phonics is not/not taught by giving a list of spellings and learning a sound to fit. That sounds to me a bit like the remnants of "look and learn" trying to invade.

Gregg Brookes isn't against the test he's against the cost of something he believes schools should be doing automatically.

Must be a bloody good guess the point is it's a bloody bad guess Lily!

Lily it was a serious question ... are you saying your children will never encounter an unknown word are you saying you will never encounter an unknown word?

Both your links throw up the same (flawed) article, Lily. So that's a list of one name then, whose only misgiving is that the money woud be better spent on resources to teach SP and help children who struggle.

Ministers aren't reconsidering anything, btw - the test will go ahead in June, everything is in place already. The only problem was regarding the identifcation of real/nonsense words and that's now fixed with pictures of aliens for the nonsense word.

Many schools involved in the pilot study use mixed methods, so it's not surprising to hear that they disagree with the test.

I also thought it was a waste of money in the beginning - but now I want schools like my ds's to be forced to teach phonics daily and properly, and to provide decodable readers. I think this test will flag up their deficiences in readng teaching.

"Nice to see people reverting to sarcasm."

Lily: you find it a snippy comment, but it is the only possible way of reading a new word if you do not use phonics. That one is generally unaware of doing so is an indication that the process has become internalized.

Do I take it that you are unable to make a plausible attempt to read the following: Meiyou gongchangdan, jiu meiyou xin Zhongguo?

I don't think mrz was resorting to sarcasm, Lily - you are the only person on this thread who has resorted to swearing, though.

no, what I'm saying is that in the context of reading, most words are either known, or are often related to other words. So blending phonics becomes less important. Eg in your words, the 'rhino' bit is recognisable as rhino, it's not broken down to sounds, but to recognisable word-bits.

"Must be a bloody good guess the point is it's a bloody bad guess Lily!"

No, I was referring to how he gets almost 100% accuracy reading anything with real words - you said he was guessing not reading, I'm pointing out that if that's the case, he is a bloody good guess.

From the 2nd link;

"This confirms our previously expressed worry that the use of a test of only the decoding aspect of reading could actually harm standards in the longer term, with able readers mistakenly identified as needing further teaching of phonics and being held back as a result."

That's not a worry about cost. That's a worry about the test being counter-productive.

2nd link was the wrong link, it was an open letter from the people who did the pilot study;
news link here

actually what the pilot did flag up was that lots of schools weren't teaching phonics effectively and that some still encouraged guessing.