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...).

I'm wondering whether once children get past that initial stage of learning to read, their phonics knowledge sort of goes out of focus as they start taking in their stride the different pronunciations of similar groups of letters, and they start relying more on context and memory.

I'm afraid that I'd just think they were getting careless with their reading and I would insist on them sounding out and blending unfamiliar words.

I really can't for the life of me see why people should think that relying on context (or any other 'clues') in in some way superior to good, automatic recall of lettr/sound correspondences (which, yes, does depend on memory). Skilled readers generally use phonics all their lives, whether consciously or unconsciously (there is research evidence for this). Context is unreliable (and inefficient, timewise), pictures run out very rapidly and the capacity for remembering words as 'wholes' is finite. Phonics is always reliable and it teaches children to read accurately.

I am also utterly amazed that people seem to think that their 6y olds know all that there is to know about word reading.

"I find that English language speakers with good phonics learn other languages much much quicker. The foreign words maybe nonsense words for them (their vocabulary is initially not large enough to know the meaning of all these words) but they can read the words easily. Okay, pronunciation will be a bit different in Italian, French, German, Dutch, but you have a basis to work from."

dikkertjedap - it is very bad practice indeed to ask young children to use the phonic knowledge from one language in order to read another. It does long term harm to pronunciation which is then very difficult to undo; and poor pronunciation of written words hinders understanding of the spoken word.

mrz, I disagree with you. I don't do phonics well and it didn't stop me from graduating with straight A's, going to MIT, getting an MBA and a masters in architecture. My dd is doing extremely well in school despite not doing well with phonics. She just can't spell worth beans. And if our schools are measuring a child's aptitude in reading and language by their ability to do phonics, then that's not a good education system. And in the same vein, I am extremely good at Math, but still count on my fingers and am very poor at mental math. My dd is the same way, but in the current state education system, they keep telling her that she is no good at math because she doesn't know her multiplication tables and counts on her fingers and completely ignore that she understands and can do complicated math concepts (with a calculator...or finger counting).
Bonsoir...I completely agree with you.

mrz, I have just gone back and realized that you are a teacher. It is an attitude like yours that all kids must use the same method to learn that has necessitated my moving my children from the stagnant state/public school system to innovative private schools where they are not told that they are "likely to flounder" because they learn differently than the norm. Kids need to be encouraged to excel and explore, not be discouraged because they want/need to learn differently. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't learn the standards, but it does mean that they may not learn them in the same way. And it certainly does not mean that a child should be judged as slow/incapable because they are not scoring high marks on a test that only asses one skill.

My ds was very slow to learn how to read...it turned out it was a combination of an eye problem (fixed) and sheer boredom with the reading material. Once I gave him more interesting material (against the wishes of his teacher), he began to excel in reading and became the fastest, best retention/comprehension reader in his year. (Then I started getting complaints that he was reading too much!!!! - ugh).

UK state schools do not measure reading ability via phonics.

This phonics check is specifically to test ability to decide. Wider literacy is tested in SATS.

Your DD may well be spelling in a simple phonic way, especially if she were not taught the phonic code adequately (especially homonyms). What sort of errors does she make?

Maizie, could well be. But the OP mentioned that in other contexts her ds was able to decode new words quite competently, and I have found the same with dd.

The thing that triggered the thought that poor decoding of the made-up list in relatively fluent readers might not just be a question of lazy reading or regression was that the list included the word "choid". I had to think about this one for a moment or two because its similarity to "choir" and "chord" would suggest a hard K sound at the beginning of the word rather than a soft "ch", which made me realise that it's a bit more complicated than just applying the rules - we also rely heavily on our knowledge of similar words and recognition of patterns within language to help us sound out new unfamiliar words. And it occurred to me that this switch to relying more on pattern recognition probably starts at that point when children really start to get going with reading and encounter a huge number of new words very quickly, as many do some time around Yr 1.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to suggest that there is a problem with the test - I'm sure it is very useful. But there must be an explanation for the discrepancy the OP describes, and I wonder if it is something like this.

Edith, not sure whether your question is addressed to me, but if so, the mistake I remember her making was pronouncing the word bime as "beam". She has been taught phonics very well at school I think - it seems to have been very thorough and systematic.

Sorry Edith! Ignore that - I see now you were talking to Sofia.

Clearly I'm not a good decoder tonight...

the mistake I remember her making was pronouncing the word bime as "beam".

Why was that wrong?

Our school sent the results out on Friday. We got an envelope with a results sheet stating whether your child had passed or failed, and the amount of correct answers they got. They also included a list of the 40 words they asked the children to read.

The thing that triggered the thought that poor decoding of the made-up list in relatively fluent readers might not just be a question of lazy reading or regression was that the list included the word "choid". I had to think about this one for a moment or two because its similarity to "choir" and "chord" would suggest a hard K sound at the beginning of the word rather than a soft "ch", which made me realise that it's a bit more complicated than just applying the rules -

A child could have given either response, 'koid' or 'choid' and have been marked as correct.

The point that I am trying to get across, without much success, is that a 6y old child (unless utterly exceptional) is nowhere near being a skilled reader, however 'good' they may be for their age. They should expect to encounter words that they have never seen before and they should be expected to use phonic knowledge and skills to work out what they 'say'.

'Reading for meaning' is really quite unimportant for your well read to child with an extensive vocabulary. For heavens sake, early reading scheme books are not terribly difficult to understand. What is most important at this stage is accurate word reading and the confidence ( and skills) to tackle unknown words without trying to straitjacket them into an already 'known' word. If people cannot understand how limiting and potentially damaging this practice is I despair...Where is the logic in restricting a reading vocabulary to the lexicon of Biff and Chip?

Will children who believe that all unfamiliar words have to be turned into familiar ones ever progress?

P.S Fluency isn't terribly important at this age, either, unless you are talking about fluent decoding and blending... a fluent decoder will inevitably be a fluent reader, but they need to be given the time and the practice they need to achieve this. There is no point at all in rushing it and only achieving fluent inaccurate reading...

Maizie - "What is most important at this stage is accurate word reading and the confidence ( and skills) to tackle unknown words without trying to straitjacket them into an already 'known' word. If people cannot understand how limiting and potentially damaging this practice is I despair...Where is the logic in restricting a reading vocabulary to the lexicon of Biff and Chip?

Will children who believe that all unfamiliar words have to be turned into familiar ones ever progress?"

I'm not sure whether this is aimed at me, but I have already said that dd has been taught synthetic phonics very thoroughly at school, and it is precisely this that has enabled her to progress to reading the books she really loves now. And those books contain lots of made-up words which she reads aloud quite competently. So it was interesting to me that when faced with made-up words on the list she didn't immediately pronounce them all correctly, and even more interesting that the OP had had a similar experience with her ds. It is neither a criticism of phonics, nor a defence of ORT - far from it. I am just pondering how it could be more difficult to read "bime" or whatever from a list of random words than "furtwangler" from a book or "bramwell" from a sauce bottle.

I do think you underestimate 6 year olds though wrt meaning - seems to me they are little meaning-seeking missiles at this age.

Without accuracy you can't have understanding and if unfamiliar words don't become familiar how will vocabulary expand?

MyDogHasFleas - is there a huge difference between recognition of patterns in language and phonics? I was under the impression that phonics was making obvious and teaching the patterns that exist. As you get more experience, your understanding of the patterns can become more subtle and therefore you can choose the "best" of the possible pronounciations available to you, but surely it's just a more sophisticated version of pattern finding based on experience, not something entirely different? You are still, after all, choosing the most acceptable of the possibilities, not discovering a new pattern unknown to phonics.

I can see that some people can memorise the rules they are taught in phonics quite easily, others don't need to be taught them because that form of pattern-finding comes naturally to them, and others have a different style of learning which means they work out the same patterns in a different way, but surely all people eventually have to come up with an understanding based on combining visual and aural stimuli? And the earliest readers are those who can combine information from both at the same time the most easily (and who have good memories)?

What does an adult who "can't do phonics" do when they read a nonsense word? Do they give up? And if not, then how are they deciding how the word should sound? Surely they have recognised the same patterns as everyone else????

Here's an interesting one: how do people born profoundly deaf learn to read? They must rely an awful lot on their visual skills! Can deaf people read nonsense words?...

"the mistake I remember her making was pronouncing the word bime as "beam".

Why was that wrong?"

Because the split digraph i_e changes the sound of /i/ in a predictable way, which is to "eye" not to "ee". Think of how 'grip' becomes 'gripe' (not 'greep'), or 'pin' becomes 'pine' (not 'peen'). "bime" would rhyme with eg "time" or "lime". I cannot think of any 'ime' words that are said "eem".

MyDoghasFleas. No I wasn't aiming at you in particular. Just trying to get folks to realise that 6y olds don't know it all and that sloppy reading is sloppy reading, however anyone tries to excuse it...

What does an adult who "can't do phonics" do when they read a nonsense word? Do they give up? - Yes. They give up.

There are many, many adults who can't read unfamiliar reads. Can't read them at all.

Obviously, It's not something you would notice very often. Its' very rare we have to read out loud. Reading in their head they will just skip over them.

I would have thought it would be very noticeable if they had children - there are so many nonsense words in children's books. Unless, of course, they don't even read out loud to their kids.

I wonder how people who can't do phonics cope with Lewis Carrol's "Jabberwocky." I clearly remember people reading that out in class at secondary school without huge, embarrassed silences from half the class who were unable to decipher it.

^"the mistake I remember her making was pronouncing the word bime as "beam".

Why was that wrong?"

Because the split digraph i_e changes the sound of /i/ in a predictable way, which is to "eye" not to "ee". Think of how 'grip' becomes 'gripe' (not 'greep'), or 'pin' becomes 'pine' (not 'peen'). "bime" would rhyme with eg "time" or "lime". I cannot think of any 'ime' words that are said "eem".^

What about regime? And while there are not many ime words that are said 'eem', there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of ine words pronounce een. Of course, most of these are 2 or more syllables, but would we expect a 6 year old to know that?

Cecilyp not quite sure what point you are making, as it's hard to work out where you are quoting another poster and which is your own point...
BUT I think you are saying that some words are irregular.

In fact 75-80% of all words conform to the phonic pattern, and the rest are irregular.

At KS1 then the child would be expected to know the "magic e " or silent e pattern, and pronounce the "i" as eye. not ee as in ee or ea words.

Sorry, Amelia, the italics didn't work that time.

I was quoting EdithWeston's 08.03 post. I was pointing out that i-e can and does make an ee sound in many, many words. So many, even those read by a 6-year old good reader, that I wouldn't really call it an irregular pattern. (Or perhaps I was thinking back to when I was 6, and this pattern was in the names of half the girls in my class.) I also added that it was usually in words of 2 or more syllables, but a 6-year-old could be forgiven for not knowing that.