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?

I also hope it will help Ofsted, etc, identify schools which don't teach phonics and fail to teach their children to read.

The point of the test - well so far it has encouraged a lot more schools to teach phonics :)

Can't wait to see the data for our infant school - should be vastly better than last year.

The other point is to identify which kids need extra help......

if schools report honestly it should show who isn't teaching children basic skills.

Feenie and Indigo you might be interested ... the transition teacher from the school most of our children will attend has said not a single child from our school will require support in Y7 (that includes 2 kids with ASD and 2 with identified with language processing disorders)

Just look at the psychological testing data for that group and the critiques of it in the academic journals, and you'll get an idea why people think it's a problem.

Since I pointed out to ds's school that two thirds of their children wouldn't meet the standards required for the check, (and even though they claimed they weren't worried) decodable reading books have appeared in book bags, to be changed daily instead of weekly. Ds's reading continues to rocket and I can dispense with Reading Chest soon, I think.

I should charge them a consultancy fee

so you have no data boffin mum?

good idea Feenie

there was a very worried Y1 teacher on the course last week. I did feel sorry for her. The school used L&S and set across the school with some children still on phase 1!!!

Feenie - excellent news. Really pleased for you.

Mrz - I'm very jealous of your great stats. My school certainly won't match it. Well not this year anyway.

There's shed loads of data on this, don't be silly. If you're a teacher you will know that.

The balance of research suggests that without contextual information or a test of comprehension, a synthetic phonics approach in isolation is of limited validity. Here are reports drawing on the Government's own data as well as systematic reviews of random controlled trials, as well as a paper by a couple of leading scientists in the field.

www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RB711
dera.ioe.ac.uk/10248/6/year%201%20phonics%20screening%20check%20report.pdf
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01411920802268912

I think you should have read all of these if you are teaching reading.

I think, if the phonics test words are actually pretty short and the able reader child is informed in advance that some of the words are made up, not real words, it shouldn't cause too much confusion. Where it would be unfair is if words are deliberately made to look similar to real words and are long enough for the able reader's brain to be tempted to skip the boring process of sounding it all out and just assume that it is seeing what it expects to see. After all, we all know that is how the human brain works (and no fluent adult reader consciously sounds out the words they are reading) - that's why even expert proof readers sometimes allow misspellings to go through uncorrected, or entire words to be missing from text. It should be less of a risk with individual words than words in sentences, where the brain is looking for a context, though. But to avoid the risk altogether, wouldn't there have to be a certain amount of teaching to the test? (ie spending time with fluent readers getting them to read nonsense words, to get into the swing of things, so that they understand the test is about accuracy, not making sense or speed reading...).

By "teaching to the test" though, shouldn't schools be encouraging children to sound out new words when they come across them anyway?

But why spend lots of time with a fluent reader sounding out words that don't exist, except to trap them in the perfectly normal process of anticipating what a word says rather than sounding everything that they see out? I don't think a child should be told off for reading a word as a different word if the two words are similar and both make sense in context - that's a sign they are interpreting what they are reading and making sense of it rather than just decoding it, isn't it?

To check that they can sound words out rather than having just memorised lots of words. The point of this particular test is the assess whether they are able to decode.

But whenever a teacher reads with a child, there will be occasions when the child has to sound out a word, or be asked to try it again and sound it out. You don't need a test to do that, do you? Surely the child goes through that process every time it reads a book out loud to the teacher? Or does this test test absolutely every sound possible? In which case, shouldn't the guidance have changed that the process of teaching phonics should be complete by the end of Year 2, since the test takes place in Year 1? Is the test supposed to be a test of every single phonic sound and blend?????

I think you should have read all of these if you are teaching reading.

As msz teaches all her pupils to read I can't see the value of her reading a paper which tries to prove that what she is doing is actually impossible!

I don't think that there are any research studies which prove that children can't learn to read without the guessing strategies. I've never seen one, despite having asked many times for references.

This test is a way of checking every child's ability to decode systematically, with reported results, rather than on an as and when basis if the teacher happens to be reading with them when they come across a new word.

Well exactly, it's a one-off test, but what is it actually testing? All sounds and blends or just a random selection that it is hoped most children will know by the end of year 1? Shouldn't the children be retested subsequently to check they still remember it all, if it is so important? Or should national spelling tests be introduced, to test how useful phonics are for the nation's spelling ability? And why not introduce a maths test at age 6, too, to ensure all children know their number bonds to 10 and 20 by then? Just how scientific and well designed is this test and is it worth the money?

So it's OK for professionals to base their practice purely on 150 people that they happen to encounter, in one particular situation, rather than consider the wider context of what they do, questioning their practice in the light of research and wider debate? The Usha Goswami paper is particularly interesting, for example. She's led the way in neurological research into reading, by scanning young children with MRI scanners and other established methods. She's also a former primary school teacher. She has authored lots of reading scheme books herself, that Mrz probably uses without realising, and advises the Government. Does Mrz really know more than Usha, based on her sample of 150 kids she happens to have encountered?

I think not.

If doctors took this approach to research informed practice, half of us wouldn't be on this forum as we would have died in childbirth or from infection diseases.

The Gvt's own research, and related systematic reviews, tell us that a battery of tests would be the best course of action.

They tell us that you need to test contextual inference, comprehension and phonics in order for something like this to succeed.

They are ignoring their own advice.

Ah, Usha Goswami:

Goswami and Onset-rime theories
www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=1836
and:
TES: Goswami on 'dyslexia' and D.McGuinness' critique (long)
www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=2995

The 'check' is based on the graphemes which children should have been taught by this stage in Y1. The test developers looked at 5 commonly used SP programmes to established a bank of graphemes which were common to all the programmes (programmes will introduce the digraphs in a slightly different order). Not every grapheme will be used, just a selection of them. The check is supposed to see if children have been taught the leetr/sound correspondences expected by this stage and that they can decode and blend. That is why the nonsense words are there, to completely eliminate the possibility of children recognising all the words and reading them straight off without having to decode and blend. That wouldn't give any information about their decoding skills! Even the 'good' readers, who may already have a very large 'sight' vocabulary, will have to work out the nonsense words.

If children don't remember the correspondences they have been taught they either haven't been given sufficient practice at using them, in which case the check will show that they need more practice, or they are slower to learn and still need more practice! Of course, it is possible that they may not have been taught all the correspondences; which would indicate that the school isn't teaching at the expected rate (a rate based on years of experience on the part of the programme developers...)

Perhaps if enough people expressed concern at the parlous state of numeracy in the nation's young the govt might introduce a number bond test check...

That's one type of view, but they haven't taken into account the recent neuro work.

Boffinmum, I think that msz's 150 kids are just this year's pupils. If you multiply that by the 20+years that she has been teaching (I am assuming this figure from information gleaned through a purely on-line acquaintance) I think you will find that is an awful lot more than Usha Goswami has ever taught.

Added to that, she is succesfully teaching children to read by a method Goswami says can't be done. Strange, but true...

What is more, there are hundreds of teachers across England who are doing the same as msz. Even stranger...