Y1 phonics check

[piellabakewell]

You can see it in action here so you know what we are putting them through!

There are words though which patently don't obey the phonics rules, but may confuse the children as to how the phonics rules work, and for children who are reading widely I do think this can be a problem.

eg the word Cafe is a word that has virtually become English - most English children will use the word Cafe in their regular speech, and children who are beyond the basic phonic decoding will have seen and read the word. Pronouncing it Ca-fay would be wrong using English phonic rules - it should be C-ey-ff. So if a child knows the word Cafe, and sees the nonsense word Bode or Kade or Pame they could deduce that, rather than it being 'magic e' that lengthens the vowel, it becomes 'ay' as in Cafe.

That's my problem with using nonsense words - for a child who is an able reader, they may well be disadvantaged in this way. I'm sure the teachers will say 'but that is not a plausible phonics solution', but how is a 5 or 6 year old supposed to switch off all their reading experience?

(and have realised that of course Bode is in fact a real word - but it illustrates the point I was making).

I have just done the test with my dd and Im not sure she would do as you have suggested lily she is an adavanvced reader for y1, she did get them all correct using the usual phonix rules.

ment to add because her default method would be to apply phonix

The thing is Lily in school they will have been taught a_e represents the ai sound and will have daily worked with words containing this way of writing the sound they will not have been taught cafe (even if they know it )and oddly enough I've never had a child read ma d ay for made or ca k ay for cake so it can't be a common error

Cecily Vead a child was marked wrong for reading the e and a as separate sounds but this happens in English eg create, seance. wouldn't vead need an extra e at the end to follow the same pattern as create and seance ?

I know they're taught in that way, because ds2 has brought home COUNTLESS sheets that we've dutifully filled in(!) - I also know that ds2 is very very observant about quirky spellings - this may be atypical, but that's why I think the inflexibility of the test may be a problem. Even the teaching of a-e sounding 'ai' and o-e sounding 'oh' doesn't always work, because of 'have' and 'none'.

I am coming more and more to the conclusion that the best way to ensure children are not failed in learning to read is to start them later. I'm not sure where this compulsion that by age 6 you MUST know all the phonic sounds comes from - we are one of the only countries to start teaching kids to read at this age, and I have seen children in all my children's classes struggle, whether taught on mixed methods, or with pure unadulterated phonics, usually summer-born boys. I see other children in my family who live overseas who at age 6 haven't BEGUN to read, and statistically by 11, the children in these countries have overtaken the UK.

I also see this phenomenon in my own teaching - starting early doesn't equate to getting further on faster - in fact for most children (there are exceptions obviously, and you have to be able to spot these), they are at the same stage by 11 or 12 whether they've started at 5 or 8, but the ones starting at 8 haven't had the years of slow progress which can be frustrating.

Mrz, what about realise, ideally, react? I agree that they will have been taught ea saying ee and this is what most children will probably do, but for a child who is an able reader and has come across more advanced phonics it might perhaps be confusing? I do teach the split vowels as a separate concept to some of my students but then I am more usually working with KS2 children who have got behind with reading. Children might also justifiably pronounce vead like head or bread and I think this is a grapheme/phoneme correspondence that quite a few will come across before the end of year 1 isn't it?

well realise has the e at the end sarahfreck ideally has a y representing the ee sound and react has the prefix re so they all follow common phonics patterns they shouldn't pose a problem

Just watching it through - it does seem inconsistent, one child is marked wrong for roopt, when in fact lots of people do say the 'pt' as slightly separate (not a gap, but just articulating each sound clearly - as in abrupt - I'm not sure that's a fair thing to check in a 6yo tbh when speech itself is still developing. And later on, a boy is marked correct for shel-f with a gap between the l and the f. Similarly, Muzz - one child was marked wrong for 'saying it in her own accent' as somewhere between 'oo' (as in look) and 'o' as in box. Clearly it's not Mozz, but the reason they give for the incorrect mark is 'she has said it in her own accent'.

I tried ds2 on this test, he would have been marked wrong on Scrope, because he said Scrope correctly, then remembered Penelope Pitstop and changed it to Scrop-ee. Which I think does illustrate the problem for children used to reading non-regular words.

One girl is marked wrong for pronouncing Scrope as Scrop. The reason given is that she 'doesn't recognise the split digraph o-e'.

Presumably she would be marked wrong for reading None as Non instead of N-oh-n then?

Also, it makes no sense that Blow is marked wrong when pronounced to rhyme with cow. Either this is a reading test OR a phonics test, you can't say it's to check they know the basic phonic sounds, and then mark them wrong when they don't choose the correct phonic option, even when they come up with a plausible solution.

Well having watched the whole video, it seems utterly inconsistent.

Is it a phonics check or a reading test? If it's a phonics check, then any plausible solution should be marked correct. But in the 'real words' check, they have to get the correct word (as in blow). And words which may look like an irregular word (as in Scrope/Penelope) are marked wrong if you happen to have a child who goes for the unusual pronunciation.

Have been reading his thread with interest as I have a (very ) small bee in my bonnet about phonics being the best or only way to teach a child to read but in thinking through all the pros and cons another thought occurred to me which is how disadvantaged some children are yet again by lack of parental involvement, extending to not being spoken to, read to, exposed to a wider vocabulary including technical or cultural terms and so on.

My point being that when coming across a new word to be read, eg 'bough', a child cannot read that word through phonics alone or obviously from memory but would rely on context or an educated guess, ie has had a parent comment at the park, 'Look at the lovely blossom on the boughs of the tree'. And this obviously extends to much more sophisticated vocabulary.

These differences and disadvantages are entrenched so early on it is no wonder that with the best will in the world of the best teachers and schools that outcomes by age 11, never mind 16, vary so wildly.

Well read can be pronounced red or reed locket which why either ved or veed is acceptable.

Like Maizie there were one or two decisions I would question

None of the children we tried this on was phased at all and their performance was exactly as expected. All children in y1 should be used to sounding words phonetically in their daily phonics lessons - they should recognise that certain graphemes produce certain sounds.

I have a horrible feeling that some children will be getting tutored in reading nonsense words.....

l&s the test isn't about meaning, it's about word recognition and decoding strategy. It is very simple and people shouldn't be concerned about it. Surely children need to be able to utter strings of letters before they can read for meaning!!

mumblesmum you obviously don't visit TES primary there is an absolute frenzy of non word list creation occurring

This is a screening check and undoubtedly it will provide useful feedback to many teachers . It's not perfect but if under 5% of words can be questioned - owing to our difficult orthography - it is not the end of the world. Teachers will be able to see what is happening, and what children are still insecure which will prevent thousands falling through the net.

We don't expect perfection in setting a music exam, for example. Teachers need to be more confident and demand decent training - the fact that one or two answers may be borderline (easily checked against PhonicsInternational Code Chart) is not going to matter in 10 years time. Those children who fail to become fully literate ARE going to be affected in 10 years time.

Many of the concerns raised just do not hit the radar when remediating those older children who have been damaged by their mixed strategy teaching (v. confusing for strugglers) or from the fact that these 20% of children aren't given enough time and appropriate materials with which to practice their fragile skills.

It really isn't too much to ask that identification - and action - can be taken as soon as possible.

Teachers - what do you think about the insistence that all 'real' words must be read correctly in the context of a PHONICS check, that is demonstrably NOT a reading test?

Do you think it is fair that Blow, if pronounced to rhyme with Cow, is marked wrong? How is that checking phonics? Because, a child may have never read the word Blow, and especially when 50% of the test is nonsense words, their mind is open during the test to words not being familiar.

I think it would have been better to use all non words for a phonics screening check but the real and non words are clearly identified and I would expect blow to be in 6 year olds vocabulary.

I would too, it's just the illogicality of it - the test is supposed to be screening phonics, not reading, and so, if it's a phonetically plausible answer, it should be marked, whether or not it's a real word imo. Because, if a child is using only their phonics knowledge, they may well know that there is a word 'blow', but may well not know that there ISN'T a word blow (to rhyme with cow).

I think that defeats the object of the test tbh. Because that is a wrong answer, using absolutely correct phonics knowledge and use.

"well realise has the e at the end sarahfreck ideally has a y representing the ee sound and react has the prefix re so they all follow common phonics patterns they shouldn't pose a problem"
Mrz
Ideal is a split vowel word as well as ideally (unless you pronounce it ideel) and the y doesn't create a split vowel in a word like heavy, ready or peachy. What about the word idea too - it doesn't have a letter giving an e sound at the end to show the vowels are meant to be split but you don't say it the same way you would say sea.

Would the child have been given the mark if they had said ved rather than veed? If so, it might be OK as a test given the context of being at the end of year 1, but I still think it could cause problems with different alternatives for some children who have experienced more advanced phonics.

Actually,I think sp is the best way to teach reading and that a phonics check at the end of year 1 is a good idea, I'm just not sure about the nonsense words if the grapheme could have more than one sound. I think they should only be used for decoding practice/testing if there is only 1 way the graphemes can be sounded or child only knows one way of sounding the particular grapheme at that point.

yes ved would be acceptable.
The check says any common plausible alternative is acceptable

But the teacher can say it' s a non-word, so what's the problem?

As to 'blow' - that's a good example of how teachers will have to be allowed to use their discretion when administering the test (surely?) RWI teaches Ow first as an oa sound quite early on, whereas jolly phonics teaches oa. Just highlights the RM influence!

Mrz - will visit primary section now!

Ah, OK, that makes more sense,mrz, but I'm still a bit ? about nonsense words when there are multiple possible answers, unless you tell he child there is more than one right way before they read it. Some may say nothing rather than risk being "wrong" when they can see more than one alternative, unless of course they have had lots of practice at doing it and have understood about there being different possible answers from previous work.