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?

EdithWeston: if a child who is reading fluently and has no problem decoding real words but is confused by pseudo-words, that is a sign of a healthy relationship between understanding and decoding in an emergent reader.

"flexybex" that's interesting.
Could that be because good readers don't simply sound the words out - they sound them out in their head and try to make sense of them/liken them to a word they already know? Did they have a bit of preparation to "warn" them that there would be non-words in the test and to expect them to not make sense?

No: if they cannot decode novel words it shows they cannot decode. If they say the word, then ask 'what does that mean', then they are a good decoder who is looking at meaning. At was removed from the test, by use of aliens.

Flash cards are useful for sight recognition, as it helps children to "bark at print". It's not useful in code-breaking.

There seems to be a recurrent error of understanding among proponents of phonics about the phases that an emergent reader passes through. I am a huge proponent of phonics, but it is crucial to understand that children don't have the same analytical language skills that adults have and that they go through several phases before they get to the point where they can easily separate decoding/understanding/real words/pseudo-words in the analytical way that seems completely obvious to any adult with a grasp of phonics.

RuthlessBaggage would that be the Michael Rosen who writes nonsense stories and rhymes or is there a Michael Rosen who has a background in reading research and education?

Bonsoir, I agree that good readers move on from "just decoding" to scanning and using other knowledge, etc to make sense of a text - good readers only use phonics when they come to a word that they can't read or read using their usual strategies and then realise they don't know what it is and that they may have mis-read it.

I think it is a question of speaking to the school to see what they are planning. I understand that the purpose of the test is to identify chidlren who need extra support.

I have just seen our schools results (I am a governor), and the Head pointed out that every single child who failed the test had already been identified as needing some level of extra support. Some were making huge progress anyway, and only failed by one or two points. Others only have problems with certain sounds. And the rest have already in the school's reading support programme.

I think you need to work with the school, at least at first.

Please tell me they don't really 'fail' kids as young as five on something?

This education system is shite! Talk about setting children up for a lifetime of feeling shit about themselves

No, BigTillymint, good readers use phonics all the time, but they are so fast and accurate that it is unconscious except when encountering a word they have frequently not seen written before. Or a word they have never even heard before.

In my experience reading with ages from 7 upwards, the poorer readers sometimes sound confident and have nice expression but make silly mistakes such as "start" for "stare" and "the" for "they".

The Michael Rosen who is Children's Laureate, isn't he? and is frequently invited into schools to encourage children to read... I recognise that he isn't a teaching expert but he is involved in the phonics debate, like it or not, and while he is in favour of early phonics to initiate reading, he finds the idea of phonics-only very restrictive.

Don't feel anxious ,but do make an appointment to speak to someone at the school. You may even be able to speak to the teacher who administered the test. On a thread like this people can only speculate, but her teachers will be able to give you some real information about your DD.

My boy failed. I have no idea by how much, because I don't have his scores, just a letter that says "he is still working towards the expected standard" (i.e. failed). So he could have just missed it, or be way off.

No information about what school plan to do about it. Seems like a fairly pointless test to me.

Boy is young (28th August). I think this is relevant - if he did the test again in 10 months time he'd do better, right?

Anyway, I think his reading is coming along, we read with him at home and he's just moved up a level (green to orange).

It doesn't seem very helpful if schools give exactly the same report regardless of whether a child got 31 right or none right.

I've just done a super graph of our results which shows quite clearly that the better readers did relatively badly reading nonsense words.

Could it be, not so much reading for meaning but, that the many of the nonsense words approximated to real words eg looked like actual words with typos? Would the less good readers have done better because they would not have been familiar with real words that the nonsense words approximated to.

Of course the absolute best readers would have got 40/40.

Please don't let the school do nothing if your kids fails!!!!
Start making yourself a naggy Mum now. Yes they probably will catch up in six months, but if they don't do this with no intervention you will find that in six months they are even further behind and will have started to notice they can't read as well as their friends (or be even labeling themselves as "stupid").

If your child got none right then they need a very intensive intervention program.
If they made one mistake, then some revision of phonics will do no harm and could be that crucial help they need to be able to read fluently.

I have 3 children. One was spotted as having some difficulties at 6, he had intervention, he is dyslexic so has struggled but still reads just about okay for his age and most other children who had intervention at the same time are actually pretty good readers now. My second at 7 was on the list for some help with reading, however when a volunteer dropped out, she didn't get that intervention, she now can read but still struggles a bit, and could well have been a more enthusiastic reader if she had just had a little help early on. My third has no problems with reading, and doesn't see reading as a "task" but just something she does (its hard to explain but there is definitely less reluctance to read than her elder siblings, because it is so much easier).

Basically early intervention is best. Done properly it can't cause any harm, and can be a real help even if they only need it for a term.

Surely it is explained to the kids that they are reading nonsense words and that they need to sound them out. I think the ablity to decode words accurately is the bedrock of good literacy.

"I've just done a super graph of our results which shows quite clearly that the better readers did relatively badly reading nonsense words."

I imagine a lot depends on the approach taken to teaching reading in schools. If you have a pure synthetic phonics approach then the good readers will be good decoders. If a school uses predominately look say then the good readers will not learn to decode words. I imagine the reason the weaker readers have done well is that they have been taken out for small group intervention and done more phonics work than the "good" readers.

This test is one situation where it actually good for children to be taught to the test. Once a child can bark at print then all the lovely comprehension and reading for meaning skills can be taught later on in primary.

OP my DS would definitely have 'failed' the phonics test at that age. He really struggled with phonics and his reading/spelling lagged way behind e.g maths etc up to the end of Y2. In the summer holidays that year I bought Toe by Toe and did 20 mins per day with him. It made a massive difference.
He is now at the end of Y5 and has just scored a high Level 5 in reading and writing in the optional SATS.
Try not to worry, but if you are still worried in a year or so I'd definitely recommend Toe by Toe.

Ask the school what they're going to do to support her. DS1 (Yr 1 too) could barely read at the start of year 1 - he's an average reader now (green band I think) and somewhere in the bottom half of his class but did really well on the phonics test, which was probably because they caught him on a good day, so it could have just been an off day for your DD. I remember being really worried about his reading at the start of the year (we've read to him since he was really little)so I invested in a reading chest membership which I'd read about on here - he loves getting books on the post on a whole range of topics and has come on in leaps and bounds since starting on them.

Instead of getting a tutor couldn't you find 10 minutes a day and buy one of the dancing bear books?

www.soundfoundationsbooks.co.uk/

They have flash cards at start of the ten minutes so the get very quick at recognizing the letters sounds and lots of decoding practice.

Would give you an idea if and where she was struggling and would be a lot cheaper than a tutor.

If it was me I'd be asking the school what help for my DC they were putting in place and what they suggest you can do to help your DC and also do something like dancing bears at home.

If you buy the Jolly phonics teachers' handbook it explains how phonics works. I think she is too little for toe by toe. Toe by toe is designed for teenagers or adults who are struggling with reading.

Ruth Miskin books are better for older children who feel that Jolly phonics is babysh. However I think you need to have a chat with the the school to see what they are going to do about it. If they plan to use Ruth Miskin then you are better to use something else otherwise your daughter will get bored.

The problem with tutors is that many of them don't know phonics better than the parents. If you want to along the tutor route then I suggest you post on the reading reform foundation web site. www.rrf.org.uk/

Yes I would recommend Toe by Toe (maybe when a bit older). But before you get a tutor or intervene yourself, do ask the school what they are going to do.

The whole point of this test is for schools to identify those who are struggling and to then intervene. If the school is not helping those who are shown to be struggling it is not a good school.

My son got 20/20 which was on the letter termed as 'standards not met'.

I chucked it in the bin. He is a May baby and in year 1. He is reading books at a higher level than his brother in year 2 who is 16m older. He gets 10 out of 10 for his spelling every week. He is quite bright and all his other school subjects he is doing better than average. His teacher could not understand why he 'failed' this test.

I absolutely agree with the poster who said that maybe, he saw the made up words and because it was not something he'd ever heard, thought he'd got it wrong and said the nearest 'real' word that he could fit to it.

At 5/6 years old children are still learning how to learn. Tests at this age with letters going to parents stating 'pass or fail' are ridiculous.

"I absolutely agree with the poster who said that maybe, he saw the made up words and because it was not something he'd ever heard, thought he'd got it wrong and said the nearest 'real' word that he could fit to it."

This is precisely what children who are highly verbal and able readers do in the emergent stages of reading. They attach, quite rationally, much more importance to their own meaningful spoken language skills than to meaningless decoding.

OP, I think you need to try and arrange a meeting with the school to find out if there were specific areas of the test where she struggled. e.g. was she ok sounding out the simple words e.g. c...a...t but struggled where there were phonics made of 2 letters e.g. th...a....t. Having identified where she didn't do well, ask them what there plan is to improve her phonics. And from there see what you can do to help. e.g. if they are pushing the 2 letter phonemes, find out which ones and practice them at home. When DS1 learnt to read we used to have a letter (phoneme) of the day (or longer if needed). So we would cut out a big shiny phoneme e.g. 'th' and put it on the wall, then find things in the house that started with the sound th (or ended with th), write down words with that phoneme in them, look in books to spot them in words etc.

If she is ok with actually seeing and recognising the phonemes but struggling to blend them together, we used to play a bit of a game where we'd slowly spell things out (using phonemes rather than actual letters) e.g. can you pass me the p....e......n, no I meant the g...r...ee.....n one.

But only for a few minutes here and there through the day, especially if she is struggling with concentration.

My late August DD1 had made massive progress in year 2 but this is partly down to her year 2 teacher identifying her as someone who despite doing o.k with bit of extra help could do very well. I've also done fair bit with her at home and continue to do so.

I think its a very risky strategy advocated by some posters to wait and see if it all clicks by itself based on her being young in her year. If it doesn't you've got more of a gap to make up and possible a confidence damaged DC.

How is her spelling? This was a big clue for my DD1 that despite apparently being good at reading that the phonics knowledge or knowledge of word construction was not as secure as it could be.

Obviously talk to the school and see their take on things but don't discount your view on her progress. I was told DD1 was fine despite our concerns till she started year 2 and her new teacher told me there were issues. I doubt she would have made as much progress if we hadn't given her extra help.