DD failed her phonics screening - any advice?

[formerdiva]

I know there's another big thread on the screening, but it mostly seems to be debate about whether the test is worthwhile or not. I just wanted a bit of advice about what my strategy should be? To give some context:

I trust the school - the teaching staff seem good, and the other children don't seem to have an issue
They've told me that DD is immature (she's an August baby, but to be fair her friends who are summer babies don't seem to have issues)
She doesn't concentrate or focus very well at all
We do her homework every day and read to/with her every day

I feel really anxious for her. Any advice about what our next steps should be?

Did an interesting thing today. Got one of our gold readers (who got 23 on the test) to read the words again using 'Fred Talk' (RWI). She got 32 right. Her mistakes were the 'oi' sound, the 'ai' sound (introduced very late in RWI) and split digraphs.
All her sounding out was totally clear - all phonemes read clearly and correctly.

Did you not tell the children before the check they could do this?

The example instruction is but you could have worded it Fred talk if that's how you refer to sounding out ...
"You should try to read each word but don?t worry if you can?t. If it helps you, you may sound out the letters before trying to say the word."

Yes, we told them they 'could sound the words out' (as per the instructions) and naively thought they'd understand. We didn't think to tell them their familiar way of sounding out, using fred talk (which she did perfectly).

I was really surprised by how much difference it made.

P.S. Anyone done the graphs of percentage correct of non-words and words against reading colour?
Did a plot against NC levels today and found in all levels that non-words were read more poorly, with an increasing gap from 2C-2A.

I've only matched it to reading age and NC levels

What did the NC level graph look like?

We didn't have any children who were 1B or above fail the test. Children from 1A-3C scored 39-40. Our 1C children scored 28-35.

My ds (July baby) got his report today, he should be at a level 5 but is at a 4.

mrz, if your 1c children are decoding so brilliantly, what are they unable to do within the 1b/1a criteria?

Our children arrive with extremely low levels of spoken language so the 1C relates mainly to there level of understanding

"Our children arrive with extremely low levels of spoken language so the 1C relates mainly to there level of understanding"

I think that is very interesting, mrz, given our previous debate about the impact of spoken language on reading. The DCs I know are highly verbally fluent when they arrive at school and start learning to read.

My DS (June baby, year 1) was on an 'intervention' program for his phonics back in October last year. He had gaps in the basics to cut a long story short.
Our school is absolutely fantastic and they had a few kids with the similar issues so they worked with them all. His reading, with their and our help (they gave us a set of cards with the words required and the phonics explanation) improved exponentially.

When they tested DS at the start of this summer term (checking that he'd got all level 4) he'd not only completed level 4 but also knew level 5 and most of 6. Seems that once they'd filled in the gaps he had he was fine-better than fine in fact-one level away from free-reading as it stands now!

What I'm saying in essence is not to worry, you'd be amazed what results you can get with the right help-and as worried as you feel right now at least you know so you can help fix it.

It's also a not often mentioned fact that concentration will improve with practice-try playing games like ludo/frustration/junior scrabble or similar to increase the time that DD is actively concentrating. Make it fun and engaging and you'll see her concentration span improve in no time.

Did you miss the bit where the other children were 3C Bonsoir?