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

And tbh this is what an intelligent child will do

Not if they have been taught made up words as a commonplace check of phonic skills, Lily.

And you are right about 'jound' - either jownd or jooned would receive a mark but not joined because it's not right.

Whew! You are a couple of toughies, Mrz and Feenie! :) But you're also right!
Still, Lilybolero, your ds won't be having much trouble with the test with only two wrong. So, no worries there! However, is almost certain to be 'ow' in the test, even though on page 136 of L&S (Phase 5) it suggests: 'out', 'shoulder', 'could' and 'you'. 'Could', imho, is bonkers. In 'out', the is 'ow'; in 'shoulder' it's 'oe' (as in 'toe'); in 'you' it's 'oo'. And, they seem to have left out 'touch', where the is 'u'. A few pages back, it suggests only as 'ow' in 'out'. Anyway, it's not clear from Section 2 of the test media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/year%201%20phonics%20sample%20materials.pdf, as they only list the spellings, not the sounds they represent.

Toughies....!

Sounds~Write,

However, is almost certain to be 'ow' in the test, even though on page 136 of L&S (Phase 5) it suggests: 'out', 'shoulder', 'could' confused and 'you'. 'Could', imho, is bonkers. In 'out', the is 'ow'; in 'shoulder' it's 'oe' (as in 'toe'); in 'you' it's 'oo'. And, they seem to have left out 'touch', where the is 'u'. A few pages back, it suggests only as 'ow' in 'out'. Anyway, it's not clear from Section 2 of the test

Have you read the technical report (yes, I'm sure you have). The graphemes used were ones which would have been taught by the end of Y1 by all, or most, of the programmes they studied in order to compile the test items. I don't know, of course, but is it likely that many children would have encountered 'rough' or 'tough' by the end of Y1? If they have, is it likely that they would offer a relatively rare correspondence for 'ou'?

If they did, surely they would be marked as 'correct'? Unless, of course, the teacher administering the test didn't know it themselves.

But even if they shouldn't have been 'taught it' by end of Year 1, a bright reader may easily have encountered other phonic sounds just by reading.

I do know 'joined' isn't correct, but faced with a word that makes no sense, and knowing that often words don't behave exactly as you expect, (rough, bough, ought being a good example), if reading a passage of text, it is normal to make a bit of a guess. And if you are used to reading texts with difficult, non-rule-obeying words in, you are more likely to do the same in a test with made-up words in. You can't just 'switch off' your reading knowledge in order to do a phonics test, and especially not when you're 5 or 6....

I do know 'joined' isn't correct, but faced with a word that makes no sense,

The children are told that the nonsense words aren't going to 'make sense'. They are, it seems, told that they are the names of aliens.

An awful lot of bona fide words make no sense if you have never encountered them before (I'm talking of people of any age here). That doesn't mean that you have to somehow turn them into words you 'know'.

I would wonder if children who are desparate to 'make sense' of every word they encounter have been taught by a teacher whose primary focus is on 'making meaning' right from the word go.

If 5 -6 y olds are 'thrown' by words they don't know how on earth are they going to extend their vocabularies, reading or oral? Because surely no child of that age has mastered the entire English lexicon?

if reading a passage of text, it is normal to make a bit of a guess.

But that's just it, Lily - children who have been taught to work words out, not 'guess' (i.e. have been taught to read well using SP) will try to read the word instead. Guessing would most definitely not be 'normal' to them.

Which is most beneficial?

yes yes, I understand what you're saying. Try and hear what I'm saying - I'm not saying that that is how a child should be 'taught' - what I'm saying is that if a child is reading lots for fun, as my ds2 is, they will be used to seeing words that are unfamiliar, and may well be non-standard in spelling, and working out what they are. That's also part of learning to read, believe it or not, using the context, and your awareness of vocabulary. And faced with a test like that, I could easily imagine a child who reads widely, making a made up word into a real word.

Even if they're not taught to do that, and have excellent phonics knowledge, at age 5 you can't necessarily turn off the awareness and intelligence you use when reading a book in order to complete a phonics test.

That's all. Honestly, you should hear my 5 yo read, he reads all sorts of words that shouldn't be 'taught' in Y1 - just because he works them out, using a mixture of phonics, context and deduction. And that's all good imo, using a variety of tactics, and learning to love reading. It would be pretty limiting if he was confined to texts that only used the particular phonics they have been taught, he is reading anything and everything he can get his hands on.

he reads all sorts of words that shouldn't be 'taught' in Y1

I am at this - there are no words he shouldn't be taught, where do you get this idea?

I am sure that your 5 year old reads very well - 80% do using mixed methods, so it's a fair bet that your ds may fall into this category. My Y1 ds is one of the 20% who have been thoroughly confused by a mix of strategies - I have had to step in and use Reading Chest to teach him phonics properly, instead of the twice a week lip service that his school pays it in Y1.

What I'm saying is that the fact your ds can't read the alien words with confidence, and keeps trying to make them into real words, shows me that he hasn't been taught phonics exclusively. He uses a range of methods, and happily he isn't one of the 20% they damage. That's lovely for you and your ds, but not great for the 20% whose reading is confused and damaged by mixed methods - and there's no way of knowing which category your ds has fallen into until after it fails them.

My ds will be ok - I am a Literacy coordinator after all, I know what to do. I regret leaving it up to his school and wish I hadn't taken such a gamble on my ds being someone who can learn to read using mixed methods. The phonics is easily sorted out, and in 6 weeks he has already made more progress than in the 6 months before. It's the damage to his confidence and enthusiasm as a reader which may take longer to fix.

What advice can you give to a parent whose child is being taught mixed methods? We have a parents meeting this week so that school can explain the screening test to us and confirm their teaching methods

I agree with LilyBolero here. The natural inclination of a child who is a fluent speaker and reader of a language when he/she encounters an unknown written word form for the first time is to assume that that word is real word they know from their mastery of the spoken language. Which is why it is quite normal and healthy for a child to pronounce "jound" as "joined".

Feenie - why are you shocked? It was in response to the comment;

"The graphemes used were ones which would have been taught by the end of Y1 by all, or most, of the programmes they studied in order to compile the test items. I don't know, of course, but is it likely that many children would have encountered 'rough' or 'tough' by the end of Y1? If they have, is it likely that they would offer a relatively rare correspondence for 'ou'?"

It makes total sense to me that there are certain sounds etc that are not necessarily taught in Y1, and so for some children, the phonics is the only tool at their disposal, which makes the "alien words" much easier, but a child who is reading for pleasure is encountering 'off-curriculum' words, and will need to use a variety of methods.

"What I'm saying is that the fact your ds can't read the alien words with confidence, and keeps trying to make them into real words, shows me that he hasn't been taught phonics exclusively."

Did I say that? What I said was he got 38/40 correct, and the 2 he didn't get right were because he made them into 'real' words - bear in mind the sample test didn't say "This is a real Word". "This is an alien Word", so a child who is used to encountering unknown real words that may or may not be decodable by a purely phonics method may well try a close real word - and it's obvious to me that this will overlap into the test a bit.

I didn't say he 'couldn't read them with confidence' - most of them he was fine on.

What's more, he hasn't been taught using mixed methods - he's been taught purely using phonics. But he uses a variety of methods to read - because we all do as we read - mostly we all use memory. Doesn't mean he's been taught in that way, just that this is the way he has developed when he's reading.

His phonics knowledge is excellent. This is why I dislike this test so much - perhaps it should only be for struggling readers - because once you get past a certain point the phonics becomes less significant in reading, and I reckon your score will dip. I think ds1 would have got 100% 6 months ago actually, when everything was much more phonics based in his head. But he is a far FAR better reader now.

You just can't disengage the two.

If a child is used to reading any combination of the sounds they are taught to make any word at all, including nonsense words, as a strategy check to see if they know the sounds inside out, and KNOW that it's an alien/nonsense word because they are told that it is, it would not be normal and.....healthy(?)

If, however, a child has never encountered this teaching strategy before in decent everyday phonic teaching, they will struggle and try to make a real word instead.

'Jound' is not 'joined'. It's wrong.

Feenie - my DD was taught phonics rigorously in both her languages, including a lot of nonsense words in French (not English), not long ago. I can assure you that she is now a very fluent reader in both her languages and she always assumes that any word is a real word, not a nonsense word. She has an assumption of rationality in what she encounters, as do most small children. When she encounters something that is not rational, she tries very hard to put it in a rational box. We had another interesting example recently, of a book they read in French class that was recommended reading by the French Ministry of Education; neat and tidy, but simplistic and wrong, interpretations were freely available on the internet for teachers to use in class and DD's teacher used one. DD was totally confounded by this and tried really hard to reconcile her (correct, but complex) interpretation of the story with the simplistic and wrong one provided by the teaching establishment.

Some good points - LilyBolero. However it only takes a little light practice of the check to make clear to any child that the words with little creatures alongside are pretend words.

but:
using a variety of tactics

doesn't help around 100,000 children a year. 'The variety of tactics' approach reached its zennith in the 1980s with a big push for 'real reading' . The results were disastrous.

One of my dc was also a voracious reader by the age of five but she would have benefited from a good synthetic phonics start. The logic of the alphabetic code and how sounds map to letter(s) is quite simply one of the marvels of human development.

Maizie's comments referred to sounds taught in Y1, not a ceiling on Y1's phonic knowledge. A mark would be given if the sound was plausible.

Your ds has not been taught phonics properly if he isn't used to reading nonsense words. It's a standard check - that's why it is used in this test. It's a little worrying that his instinct on seeing an unknown word is to 'guess' it. That might hamper him when enocuntering unknown words in the future.

Feenie, that's just not right, sorry! You can't say to a 5 year old 'you have to turn off all of your reading skills that you normally use' here. And I'm very at the idea that my ds1 who is way ahead of where he should be in reading (I mean WAY ahead, not one or two colour bands here), should have to waste time reading alien words so that he can practise for a phonics test to check he 'knows his sounds'. He knows them, inside out, he's excellent at blending.

But when we did the test, his common sense took over a little.

Is that so hard to see? Fwiw, I remember being VERY bored at school, particularly in reception and Y1, practising 'key words' and 'phonic sounds', when I was a really good reader already - my mum says I had read Alice in Wonderland before starting school, so going fishing for the word 'the' and reading it really didn't inspire me. Which is a shame.

English is not a regular language. As soon as you get off curriculum you HAVE to use common sense. And it's unreasonable to assume that a 5 yo can turn it on and off. In fact, I think including 'ou' in a phonics check is stupid as it does have so many different sounds associated with it - 'ow', 'or', 'oo', 'uh' - I think it's not illogical for a 5 yo to assume there may be yet more sounds that they don't know yet....

You're really asking a lot of 5yos to be able to process all of this (I'm talking about the advanced readers here) - to force themselves to abandon all of their usual reading tools and use purely phonics. It's really hard to do that, and they are FIVE!

"It's a little worrying that his instinct on seeing an unknown word is to 'guess' it."

Forgive me, but I think your interpretation of what this little boy is doing when he encounters an unknown written is wrong. He is not trying to "guess" the word - he is applying a rational strategy, which is to assume that any short written word he encounters is already familiar to him in his spoken language.

Feenie - my DD was taught phonics rigorously in both her languages, including a lot of nonsense words in French (not English), not long ago. I can assure you that she is now a very fluent reader in both her languages and she always assumes that any word is a real word, not a nonsense word.

Gosh - every single week in her phonic lessons she would try to make it a real word instead of blending the sounds to read them as they appear, even though they did this activity week in, week out? I've never seen a child do that, and I've taught many, many very able readers. Most children would catch on after the first few practices of this strategy. It can't have been an everyday strategy, surely.

Not reading a word, and bending the phoneme into a different on to 'make sense' of it is guessing, pure and simple. It's not reading.

No, Feenie, that is not what I said and I don't know where you got that from.

Reading is not "decoding". Children read for meaning and it is vital never to forget that!

And it's unreasonable to assume that a 5 yo can turn it on and off. In fact, I think including 'ou' in a phonics check is stupid as it does have so many different sounds associated with it - 'ow', 'or', 'oo', 'uh' - I think it's not illogical for a 5 yo to assume there may be yet more sounds that they don't know yet....

You underestimate 5 year olds then, Lily. They cope very easily with trying alternatives which they know - it's easy to them.

The test is a test of decoding and there is a very short phase when children read only to decode and where, according to the language, nonsense words may be appropriate. From my own experience, I think nonsense words are almost unavoidable for learning to read in French but are entirely avoidable in English.

Once a child is able to decode fluently, they read for meaning and therefore rationally assume that any written word they encounter is a representation of a real word that forms part of their oral vocabulary.