Yr 1 Phonics test - what if your child can already read?

[MayaAngelCool]

Can we have them exempted from the test? From what I gather, such a child is likely to fail the test as it includes lots of 'fake' words written phonetically. Children who can read well are thought to be likely to try to guess what real word these words are similar to, rather than saying what they actually are, and thus fail the test.

The Pearson Phonic Test information conveniently avoids saying anything about this problem. Anyone know?

MarySA

Have you analysed WHy so many educational psychologisrs tests include non-words, including the prestigeous and widely used US Woodcock test?
If you read through the thread, I think you will see that this is a legitimate way of ensuring that children don't just learn to the test. If you can decode, the world is your oyster.

MayaAngelCool - in an effort to defend The Guardian, I've never been 100% keen on phonics. In my opinion it is not a fool proff way to learn how to read....at one school I've been to the teachers have given children lots of one-to-one help and reassured them that not all sounds were the same and phonics has not been a problem.

However, at another school which did not have the time to give such attention but also taught phonics, many children learnt the phonics sounds and technically sounded out words perfectly but came up with gobbledegook because the english language just doesn't work that way.

However, if your child has learnt how to read in a 'standard' way then they should still pass the test fine.

Doodle cloud- I think we'd need more evidence of that-because phonics doesn't work like that. If your observation is correct, they must have been being taught incredibly badly.

MarySA- if you rad the thread from the beginning you'll see why the nonsense word thing is a good idea.

Oh I don't think it was taught well at all...as I said, one primary school seemed to be doing well but the other one...the children were taught the basic phonics but not so much that different letters can have different sounds and vice versa. So they came across words like ceiling and would say 'kehihlinguh'...it was quite depressing and a little scary... : (

I didn't mean to be too negative...I just obviously haven't had the best experience so I'm a little wary...

I really got sick of having to say 'good sounding out but unfortunately those letters don't quite make that sound in this word...' They looked so confused and disheartened. ; _ ;

Have I missed? What is your professional involvement here?

Mine? At the time I was a student on a placement in a primary school for a few months. I basically helped out the teacher, including observing the children reading and changing their books. TA work basically. I was present at the English lessons....I admit my knowledge of phonics is still growing but and I have had positive experiences since (and hopefully soon I'll be able to study phonics in depth : ) ) but I wasn't particularly impressed...

MarySA pseudo words have been used for decades as an effective diagnostic tool for assessing reading ability.

www.annarbor.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=246_392

www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v14n03/3.html

The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test - (WIAT-II UK) is commonly used by Educational Psychologists as diagnose reading difficulties surely screening early to identify possible problems is more desirable than waiting until the child is so far behind an EP needs to be involved.

(and hopefully soon I'll be able to study phonics in depth : )

Where do you hope to this, just as a matter of interest?

If it is during teacher training you'll be extremely lucky if you get more than a couple of hours on the topic!

Re your experience on placement, I would doubt the quality of the phonics teaching if children were being given books to read which contained correspondences which they hadn't yet been taught.

I'm glad to hear that you've had better experiences since.

Well I'm doing a teaching degree and it's a four year course not just a one year PGCE so I'm hoping they'll cover it a least a reasonable amount? :x If not then hopefully I'll at least be able to access books on it so I can read about it myself.

Sorry to disappoint you but as maizieD says there is very little phonics instruction on most 4 year courses and often it is of a very poor standard. I do hope your course is different and provides what you expect.

www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/747832?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=47699037876847

I haven't read every page of this. But why can't sounds be taught like they were years and years ago. Like ee says ee. Of course pairs and groups of letters don't always make the same sound. But that applies to those nonsense words too. Even if the rule is applied the child might still not read them correctly. Nobody taught me to read using nonsense words.

But why can't sounds be taught like they were years and years ago. Like ee says ee.
They are why do you imagine they aren't?

Nobody taught me to read using nonsense words.
Well no one taught me to read but I could still read nonsence words like Edward Lears Jumblies and Milligans Ning nang nong and even Shakespears Hey nonny nonny ... I was one of those fortunate chhildren able to work it out for myself others need more explicit teaching
This check is a diagnostic tool nothing more nothing less and if 5 mins spent in Y1 prevents reading failure then it should have been done years ago!
and remember for a young child every new word is nonsense until it enters their vocabulary.

Love you last sentence mrz- very true.
When a child is learning how can they possibly know that jumblies is nonsense and jumble is in the dictionary?

You know, this is one of those things where I really think I'm on another planet.

Kids are learning to read. It's important to be sure that they are cracking decoding because that's how you learn how to read new words. Lots of children can recognize a huge number of words by sight. How can we find out whether they are decoding properly so we can help them if they aren't? Give them a list of the names of aliens to read.

Sorted. How can anyone object to that?

I thought that teaching sounds was frowned upon in schools for quite a while. It was all about recognising whole words by sight and not attempting to sound them out.

I'm not pretending to know a lot about this, but over the years lots of teachers have disagreed with different methods of teaching children to read. Look at the ITA. Probably nobody here remembers that. But it produced a generation of bad readers thanks to some theorists who thought it would be a good idea. And let's face it some children find learning to read easy so they will probably learn quite well whichever method they are taught by. It's the children who find reading difficult that are the problem.

I think you need to read the thread MarySA. Sounding out has never been totally "frowned upon" in the UK although Look & Say and mixed methods have been used in recent years.

ITA was a spelling system invented by the grandson of the man who gave use Pitman shorthand. It was based on the premise that English spellings are too difficult for beginner readers so simplified the system 1 sound 1 spelling (based on the phonetic alphabet) which meant children were initially taught a completely different writing system and then had to learn the system used by everyone else.

mrz can I ask a practical question.

If a fake word has a grapheme in which matches 2 phonemes (hope I have terminolgy correct) I assume the child will be marked correct if either pronunciation is used.

E.g. phonetically LOOCH could be pronounced Luch (like in look) or l-ew-ch (as in boot).

Realises that probably makes no sense at all but then we are talking about made up words

yes any phonetically plausible version is acceptable

hi all. my son has a good reading age and can use his phonics well but sometimes he stutters, does anybody know what might happen if my child stutters through this test, as he finds it hard to blend when he is having a bad day with his stutter, i have asked the school and they don't seem to be able to answer. thank you. xxxx

I started reading this thread because I was so intrigued by the title.

If your child can already read, then they'll find the phonics test easy. What is this suggestion that if they can read they'll read made-up words incorrectly? If they do, it means that they can't read very well yet.

Why is this in any way controversial? (Sorry, I know it's been said before and better on this thread, but it's an extraordinary argument.)

singers, the normal argument runs thusly, nearly all text is meaningful; there's not much point in writing nonsense, therefore there's less point in being able to read it.