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...).

moondog, I think you mean it's a [code] in which the letters, or groups of letters represent sounds or groups of sounds, (or don't in certain cases,) in which the relation is sometimes straightforward and sometimes not, where it exists.

Personally, I don't know the precise meaning of phonics, phonemes, phonic sounds, graphemes or other similar words, but I can recognise a pattern.

No, it's not taken into account, endoplasmic - it's below the standard expected for Year 1.

The relationship always exists learnandsay even in Wymondham

No it doesn't. There is no other place that wymond spells wind.

groiks

how is this one pronounced? my dd said it more like groaks rather than as I would have said gr oi ks, with the oi sounding like oy, and she said she got it corrcet as she got a dot at the top like she did for all of them.

You are right - oi makes an oy sound, not oa.

When I gently questioned my Y1 ds, mentioning a couple of words I knew were on it, he swore blind he'd had completely different words to mine and got them all right!

groiks to rhyme with oiks

I have evidence that RR can help 'the bottom 20%', Feenie, but I'd be a fool to claim categorically that it does in every case and situation.

The whole point of the individualised lessons is to enable the teacher to eliminate confusions and free the child from problematic strategies that might 'trip them up later on'.

Sadly the programme has its weaknesses, as does any, but I have seen enough in the 2 years I've been teaching it to still be a firm believer in much of the strong methodology behind the training.

ha ha feenie, I think she probably got that one wrong then. she also swore blind when her cousin in another class got the letter home before we got ours that she had failed.

learnandsay youa re confused.

This And we have some words like Wymondham which have almost no correspondence between how they're written and how they are pronounced
is an entirely regular word.

The y sounds like a long i, because of the vowel "o" following a single consonant.

It would be pronounced Why/mond/ham.

I think you need to work on your onw phonics.

Sorry, dumpling that just sounds like a load of rubbish to me.

Show me another word where wymond spells wind.

Wymondham in Norfolk is pronounce /ˈwɪndəm/

roughly windam

Sadly the programme has its weaknesses, as does any, but I have seen enough in the 2 years I've been teaching it to still be a firm believer in much of the strong methodology behind the training.

'As does any?' You see, this is where I get cross. Because in 15 years of using phonics in our school, the only children I have seen fail to read using phonics, out of hundreds of children, are three couldn't use them, got to a certain point (2c) using sight vocabulary and couldn't go beyond. All three had significant problems aside from reading and went on to a special school at secondary level.

There is a method which teaches all but a couple of children in a hundred who have very specific problems, and not just reading.

I could only have a firm belief in a method which taught all children, unless there was a very good reason. Reading Recovery - famously - does not.

Do you know how Wymondham is pronounced, LittleMissDumpling?

costessey in norwich is said cossy so I would not rely upon norfolk pronunciation for anything as Im guessing the pronunciations are using some very old traditional town names.

Wymondham in Leicester is pronounced Why mund ham

How IS Wymondham pronounced?

Is it W/igh/m/nd/ham - the y saying igh due to a o (a bit like a split digraph e would?) then the o being silent?

Yes, I'm not sure that English place names are actually English :)

Towcester
Bicester
etc.

not totaly sure but in norfolk I think it may sound a bit like wimdn, however the accent does remove the vowels sounds. so the dn would maybe connect with an o or a but sound more sharp as if straight from d to the n

Hulababy the one in Norfolk is Windum and the one in Leicestershire is Why mund ham and yes it has lots to do with etymology.
Originally the homestead (ham) of Wigmund

Everything in English is a historical and linguistic concoction.

yeh! phonics!!