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 the word is not in their receptive or expressive vocabulary then it is, to all intents and purposes, as much a nonsense word as are the nonsense words in the screening check."

maizieD - this assertion is not correct. I do understand, however, that if you believe this assertion to be true, the nonsense word test would be less of an issue than it is for me.

With all due respect I think you need to revisit language acquisition processes.

Feenie - I think you also do not understand fully the definition of familiar and unfamiliar words.

A word that is neither in a child's receptive nor expressive vocabularies is not necessarily totally unfamiliar. Far from it.

I understand that this simple strategy works beautifully as a check, Bonsoir.

maizieD - this assertion is not correct.

Perhaps you could tell me where I am going wrong then?

How does a child discern between a word it has never encountered before ( and is not in its vocabulary) and a nonsense word which conforms to the 'legal' spelling of words in its home language?

A word that is neither in a child's receptive nor expressive vocabularies is not necessarily totally unfamiliar. Far from it.

Do you know what receptive and expressive vocabulary means?

Is there some other sort of vocabulary which encompasses words which a child doesn't understand when spoken to them and words which they don't understand and use themselves?

Yes, phonics enables children to read unfamiliar real words via decoding ,
actually phonics helps everyone (if they know the code) to decode any word real or otherwise ... Asking children to decode nonsense is asking them to suspend their knowledge of how real language sounds . so would you never ask your child to read a nonsense rhyme or read a story containing made up words
www.yellow-door.net/ragtag-rhymes/set-2

A word that is neither in a child's receptive nor expressive vocabularies is not necessarily totally unfamiliar. Far from it.

Ah, I've got your meaning. Words which they have heard and 'recognise' but do not know the meaning of.

They may well be meaningless words though, used by those around them as a joke. How is the child supposed to know?

Of course, if they recognise them as familiar but meaning unknown why does anyone think that they are going to try to make meaning from them?

"Is there some other sort of vocabulary which encompasses words which a child doesn't understand when spoken to them and words which they don't understand and use themselves?"

YES YES and YES and it's massive in small children learning their MT!

mrz - I am no fan of nonsense words. I would certainly not inflict them on children who didn't find them entertaining, as their only purpose should be to entertain. Dr Seuss and Lewis Carroll do not have unanimous appeal.

How about Michael Rosen?

or Shakespeare?

Roald Dahl, Edward Lear....

Whatever floats a child's boat, in small doses . Like chocolate and cakes, a few nonsense words are not going to hurt a child if that's their thing. But they are entirely dispensable.

As a scientist (lapsed) I explain the use of short nonsense words as a decoding test to myself thus:

The test is designed to be a test of decoding ONLY. It is not a test of comprehension, and it is not a test of working memory.

Therefore, the test needs to be designed as far as possible not to be affected by a child's comprehension skills or their working memory - ie to be a 'fair test' unaffected by other variables.

If a child decodes a long 'unfamiliar' word incorrectly, then there are two possible explanations: they may have a problem with decoding, or they may have a problem with working memory [I have in my class an SEN child with extremely poor working memory - he can decode almost all graphemes in isolation and in short words, but he cannot decode all through a long word because of his working memory issues. He would - correctly - pass the phonics screening test, but the working memory tests he has had show that that is where the problem lies. We are addressing the problem of him decoding longer words not by working on phonics - he has that knowledge - but by focusing his working memory issues. A test where the two issues are not distinguishable would not allow us to intervene appropriately].

If a child is faced only with 'known' words then we do not know whether they are using decoding skills or word recognition skills - again, that is not a fair test of decoding.

If the child is given short, phonically regular nonsense words then the decoding can be tested in isolation - which makes it a good test of decoding.

It is NOT a test of reading. It is NOT a test of working memory. it is NOT a test of comprehension. It is NOT a test of social background, how much children have been read to etc. It is designed - and as a scientist I would suggest reasonably designed, with other variables as far as possible controlled - to test decoding in isolation. Another variable - behaviour of teachers administering the check, especially where it challenges existing practice - should perhaps be a focus for future control ....

Sorry, Bonsoir, I meant to quote your original point but forgot:
"No-one on this thread has managed (or even really tried) to argue convincingly that short nonsense words are a better test of a child's decoding ability than long real words."

My argument would be that because the failure to decode a long real word could be due to a) a difficulty in decoding or b) poor working memory, it is better to use a short phonically regular nonsense word because the complication of working memory, which would cloud the results, is not introduced.

I should also say (sorry for multiple posts) that for the majority of children, phonics tests with long unknown words and short nonsense words would be equally good tests of decoding skills.

However, for a minority - and one might argue that they are an important minority, as it will contain children who are failing to learn to read - short nonsense words are a better test because they allow a clear distinction between (and appropriately targeted interventions for) children who have poor phonics knowledge vs those who have working memory problems.

It could of course be argued that both should be picked up by good class teachers as a normal part of teaching (working memory problems such as my pupil has manifest themselves in a whole variety of ways) but it is useful that if a test is designed to test decoding, then it does that.

I am interested in your point, teacherwith2kids, that the Y1 phonics test has been designed as a test of "decoding in isolation". From my understanding, that is just no longer conceptually possible once a child is a fluent reader of a language in which they are orally proficient, given the nature of language acquisition.

It is conceptually possible for adults who have been reading for many decades Bonsoir

Bonsoir,

I can apply my phonics knowledge, if asked, to decode hoglash or jound or frazz or ipud. If told that they are nonsense words to which I can apply my phonics skills freely but reasonably, that is exactly what I would do. I do not attempt to apply 'sense' or 'word recognition', because I have been told that the words do not make sense. I have used the 'tool' in my 'reading toolkit' I have been asked to, and so have decoded the non-words. Why is that not possible for a child much closer to the original point of phonics teaching, where such conscious application of phonics skills in the classroom is [should be] a daily part of his / her school life?

YES YES and YES and it's massive in small children learning their MT!

I appreciate that, but there still must be a category of completely unfamiliar words. No child will hear the full lexicon in everyday speech.

In fact, reading is held to be one of the most extensive sources of new vocabulary. If a child has closed its mind to learning new vocabulary from the reading route, by 'forcing' unknown' words into 'known' words it will not extend its vocabulary.

I consider words are more than the sum of their parts, hence I have little belief in the phonics 'system' per se.

I am in favour of traditional learning through regular reading at increasing levels of complexity of sentence structure and extensiveness of vocabulary usage.

Boris Johnson is never lost for words and I imagine he was taught traditionally, he's perhaps reciting a poem to someone as you read this! ;O)

My ds was 'taught' to read using traditional (well traditional from the 1970s-2000s) methods. The result was two years of struggle and frustration. Then he had six sessions of synthetic phonics tutoring and as a result actually learned to read, as opposed to guessing wildly and inaccurately before giving up because he thought he was stupid. Traditional teaching methods fail a significant proportion of children, and yet there are still teachers who are apparently still refusing to move to phonics despite the evidence that it is a far more effective method, children like my son are therefore still totally unnecessarily failing to learn to read. I welcome any test that shows them up so that they are pushed to make the change.

My son is very rarely lost for words, but if we hadn't helped him he would still struggle to read them.

If you are "traditionally" taught, then this may well mean phonics. Boris probably was - the modern methods which began in the 1960/70s didn't catch on quickly (if at all) in the private sector.

Phonics is about ability to decode - ie access the written word.

It is a misuse of the term to apply it to wider literacy. But that can only develop in any useful way once a child can competently and confidently read/decode the text in the first place.

Edith beat me to it TopDaddy

Phonics was the primary method of reading instruction for four centuries the whole language/real books was a brief trendy American import.

You may also like this quote from Boris TopDaddy

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7897687/Illiteracy-is-bad-for-us-so-why-dont-we-do-something-about-it.html

With incredible speed you are decoding clutches of letters into sounds, in order to identify the words; and those words are being virtually simultaneously converted into sense; and the reason you can do this so fast is that hard-wired into your reading brain is an understanding of how the alphabet generates the 44 sounds of the English language; and the best way to reach that instinctive understanding of how letters make sounds is a system known as synthetic phonics .
That is the system that rescued me after the appalling verdict of my grandmother. I remember going to primary school and sitting cross-legged as the class learned C-A-T, and how each sound helped to make up a word, and after a while I had cracked it; and I find it unbelievable that so many children are not given the opportunity to learn by this simple and effective means .