Phonics Test

[SnowieBear]

DS (6) came back yesterday from school with a slip of paper saying that after being tested against the government's phonic test, he had not reached the standard required and will be receiving additional support with his reading.

DS is a rather good reader and has progressed all the way to stage 9 ORT since the start of Y1. However, I am not surprised he didn't do well at the test, as he finds it difficult to decode words he cannot adscribe meaning to. In general, that's not a problem as he is a very wordy kid, but it was always going to be the spanner in the works for the phonics test.

Am I right to be utterly unconcerned about it? (Well, as utterly unconcerned as someone can be that then goes on to post under the primary education thread...).

heh? what, come again.

Everything in English is a historical and linguistic concoction.... including phonics

OK, right.

Learnandsay

It's not rubbish.

The point is that you don't understand it.

I've been teaching phonics as a trained, specialist teacher for years and years.

learnandsay You know, sometimes I think you are in your own universe, responding to a different thread.

I didn't say that is sounded like wind.

Can't you read.

WHAT are you on a about?

Which pronounciation of wind are you talking about? The wind that blows or the wind that you do with wool?!!!!

(or pronunciation...)

There's the old one about the father who kept beating his son with a leather belt and his neighbours were shocked. And he kept saying you only disagree with me because you don't understand me.

Enlighten us to your understanding of education/reading learnandsay

Nobody has yet told me in a way that makes sense why anyone could possibly object to a simple diagnostic tool that finds out cheaply and effectively whether or not a child has grasped the basic building blocks of literacy. It just seems like a no brainer to me!

Seeker, you would be astounded at how obstructive many are to processes aimed at identifying and remediating faulty teaching practice.
People are resistant to change even when it means better outcomes for, in the appalling jargon of today, their stakeholders.

Never more so than in the world of Special Educational Needs which at times seems to be run entirely for the benefit of those it employs. There seems to be a simple equation at play which is in essence that te more dependant, disenfranchised and deskilled the child in question, the more work there is fro those who perpetuate this dismal state of affairs.

It is positively Orwellian.

People hold onto (and create) jobs for themselves as and when they see the opportunity.

ha, that's why when I read "wymondham" i went " it's pronounced Wy mond ham!" (cos i am from Notts, so haven't heard the norwich one, only the leicester one)

Thank you very much for all your responses and the interesting argument that ensued ? I feel I?ve reopened a can of worms! Slowly reading through all your comments, I really appreciate them all.

Apologies from disappearing from the thread, really didn?t want to post and run, but RL got in the way?

In answer to different questions posed and observations made, I do not have the score for his test, I?ll be discussing this with his teacher next week during a parents? evening. DS is very proud of his reading and has been read to every evening for as long as I can remember. Our bedtime routine now sees us cuddled up in bed with his reading book for him to read me a few pages per night, followed by my reading to him. All very relaxed ? the greatest punishment for DS is to be sent to bed with no reading.

I paid special attention to his reading yesterday to take into account your comments, but honestly, it was pretty good. He read quite fluently, with expression, he only struggled with ?laughed?, but got there in the end. Of course a six year old does not know everything there is to know about reading! I wouldn?t expect him to, but I am surprised that he can curl up cool as a cucumber reading The Blue Ball and fail the phonics test too ? it doesn?t square up.

So? all in all: he could have had an off day, or been a typical 6 year old boy and done what he wanted instead of what he was told to do, or indeed his phonics are bizarrely out of synch. In any event, DS will be getting additional support and I?ll be getting some answers from his teacher soon to understand how best to support him.

He?s bilingual at six with a very wide vocabulary, a great school and a family that cares about his education ? he?ll be alright.

Do you think it could be to do with his bilingualism? If he couldn't identify the made-up words as being from either language in the usual way, would that make him confused as to which phonic rules to follow?

mmm, good idea, Robinson
especially as Bonsoir has already said a couple of the made-up words are real french words.

he only struggled with ?laughed?, but got there in the end.

And u can be absolutely certain Snowiebear that he did not get to that word with just phonics.

Anyone who claims that English spelling is entirely phonic, should have a look at the sounds of the following 69 graphemes:
a: and - apron, any, father
a-e: came - camel
ai: wait - said, plait
al: always - algebra
all: tall - shall
are: care - are
au: autumn - laugh, mauve
-ate: to deliberate - a deliberate act
ay: stays - says

cc: success - soccer
ce: cell - cello
ch: chop - chorus, choir, chute
cqu: acquire - lacquer

e: end - English
-e: he - the (car)
ea: mean - meant, break
ear: ear - early, heart, bear
-ee: tree - matinee
e-e: even - seven, fete
ei: veil - ceiling, eider, their, leisure
eigh: weight - height
eo: people - leopard, leotard
ere: here - there, were
-et: tablet - chalet
eau: beauty - beau
-ew: few - sew
-ey: they - monkey

ge: get - gem
gi: girl - ginger
gy: gym - gynaecologist

h: house - hour

i: wind - wind (down)
-ine: define - engine, machine
ie: field - friend, sieve
imb: limb - climb
ign: signature - sign

mn: amnesia - mnemonic

o: on - only, once, other
-o: go - do
oa: road - broad
o-e: bone - done, gone
-oes: toes - does, shoes
-oll: roll - doll
omb: combine - bomb, comb, tomb
oo: boot - foot, brooch
-ot: despot - depot
ou: sound - soup, couple

• ough: bough - rough, through, trough

ought: bought - drought oul: should - shoulder, mould our: sour - four, journey ow: how - low

qu: queen - bouquet

s: sun - sure
sc: scent - luscious, molusc
-se: rose - dose
ss: possible - possession

th: this - thing
-ture: picture - mature

u: cup - push
ui: build - fruit, ruin

wa: was - wag
wh: what who
wo: won - woman, women, womb
wor: word - worn

x: box - xylophone, anxious

-y-: type - typical

• -y: daddy - apply

z: zip - azure

All you achieve in doing, Mashabell, is making English sound like one hell of a more interesting language to study than any other one. No wonder you can make such fantastic poetry out of English. It's definitely worth the effort to learn it... I hope nobody goes about fiddling with English spelling or pronunciation!...

mashabell
Look down the thread and you will see a post saying 75% of words are phonically "regular"- the rest are not but it's still worth learning phonics.

Also words like Wymondham are place names- I assume- never heard of it.
Names are exempt from phonic rules due to the historical influences on them over the years. Some place names have several local/regional ways of pronunciation. I'd read Wymondham to rhyme with diamond-am, but bet the locals say it another way.

Classic example , a London street- Beauchamp Place- pronounced "beecham".

Masha,

  a discrete phoneme can be represented by more than one grapheme
  a grapheme can represent more than one phoneme

An awful lot of people know that and, what is more, are able to successfully teach the code in a structured and accessible way, going from simple to complex.

Your list isn't exactly earthshattering news.

Also Mashabell- sorry to go on but many of the examples you cite above are in fact regular- for example y can sound like "i" as in the word pie, or "ee" as in the word "mummy". It's classed as a half vowel and can have 2 sounds depending on position in the word.

I'd take issue with the whole concept of 'English' too.
Many of those words are borrowed from other languages.
This is of course one of the reasons why Englsih is so phenomenally successful.

Masha what about your claim that you were banned from MN was that your imagination too?
[quote user="mashabell"]

They have regularly tried to get me banned from this forum for posting links to word lists on my website and blogs which show particular English reading and spelling problems when these are raised in discussions.

But they have succeeded in getting me banned from Mumsnet.
[/quote]

I am waiting for my ds's result with interest. He is currently reading probably the school equivelent of lime. However, I do wonder whether he really understands what he is reading. Part of me thinks much of his success in reading is down to memory.
I presume all the tests should now be complete.

yes they had to be completed by the 29th