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?

and a bit

I would have been horrified if my children had left reception, let alone year 1 unable to read a simple CVC word.

How much harder it must be for those children as they would be unable to ask for help without showing the page. As opposed to a decoder, who can: eg if they're reading a book about a ship, encounter a new word and cannot say out loud "what's a 'jib'? It must be part of a ship, but which bit is is?".

I think anyone who thinks that wider literacy and reading for meaning is not co-activity with a well-run phonics programme is missing the point. There is no inherent reason whatsoever for a competent decoder to be lacking in comprehension skills.

Why do they what? Some children revert to sight words and get lazy - using pseudo words makes sure that they are 100% looking at the word and using the sounds, instead of looking at say the beginning and end and guessing. There is no hiding when using pseudo words - they are either using their phonic knowledge or they aren't.

Are you not still listening to children read at this stage? And would they still not be encountering new words in the material that they read? OK, I appreciate that if they are great guessers, you would be none the wiser, but are many children such great guessers that they would be able to fool the teacher.

Did you miss an earlier comment from a teacher CecilyP "Does that really matter Feenie? Whenever are these things 100% 'accurate'?"

That's how they "fool" the teacher

Yes, mrz, but the other teacher is not feenie. I would not expect a teacher like feenie to be fooled.

I know the other teacher isn't Feenie but perhaps it explains why the other teacher had 33% of her children failing to read a simple non word

Surely no one actually believes that it's acceptable to blame a child's inability to decode pib on the fact that it isn't a real word

I don't think Flexybex is blaming anyone. I think she is just reporting an interesting, and possibly unexpected, phenomenon, that makes her doubt the validity of the test.

BTW, Flexybex, what did they read instead of 'pib'.

I think I'd probably spend the summer playing a couple of phonics games a day rather than paying out for a tutor - then its fun for her but still valuable - go back to basics - start with cvc words like cat and dog - when you're sure that's established move onto 4 letter words and introduce some letter combinations like ch and sh. Can give you some ideas of games if you want.

Perhaps you should read what I wrote CecilyP ... I didn't say that Flexybex was blaming anyone she was blaming the fact the word was a non word for the fact that 33% of her children were unable to read a cvc word
I was in fact being polite ... if our Y1 teacher had made that claim I would have called it an pathetic excuse

I think you're getting hung up by this. The 5/15 gold-lime readers could decode at least 75%of the 2nd set of nonsense words. Therefore, I'm not going to get hung up on the fact they made a mistake on a cvc word.

Cecily - I didn't run the tests, so my next job is listening to the recordings. I'm also interested in what they said for 'pib'.

pickledsiblings Sat 07-Jul-12 08:12:45
Flexybex, did you plot a graph of book band (or even better, teacher assessed level) against non word score and compare that with a graph of book band against real word score?

No, I plotted a graph of percentage non-words correct and percentage real words correct against reading book band, so I got two bars for each reading level.

I'm also going to do percentage n-w and percentage r-w against nc level.

Well you were certainly making a big issue of the fact that only 67% read it correctly flexybex ... Did the check administrator not make a note of wrong replies?

Hung up? Hung up on the fact that any of your children couldn't read 'pib'?

It's a massive red flag. I don't know what else to say to you, I really don't. I am speechless.

Cecily, it's a standard technique which works well, and is more efficient than waiting for a child to make that kind of mistake in their reading. I take your point though, a decent teacher would notice it elsewhere aswell. It's also a way to check how a child deals with an unfamiliar word - so we know way in advance if a child can't read 'pib', for example, and can intervene straight away.

Feenie, these children got 11/12 of the other words in set1 correct, so no, I'm not going to get hung up on it. That, in itself, shows that they can use phonics to decode. If they were getting all of the simple words wrong, I would, of course, be worried. I think you have to be a tad realistic.

How many of your children couldn't read 'pib', exactly?

And why?

It's important to find out why - that's realistic. Is it your job to just collate the data, or analyse it as well?

So 5 out of your high achieving readers couldn't read pib how many across the whole cohort couldn't read it?

Because 1 or 2 children might not constitute an issue - but the kind of numbers you are suggesting would point to something which definitely needs addressing.

OK, so I have a DS in R who is at the early stages of reading. I asked him to sound out p-i-b which he did but was uncomfortable with and tried to change it to pin with a confused look on his face. Obviously I didn't explain non words to him etc. I think there is the potential for the whole nonword thing to go over some of the children's heads - especially if it is explained to them by a teacher who thinks it is a nonsense in the first place.

I would say only if it is explained to them by a teacher who thinks it is nonsense in the first place, and therefore isn't using it as a teaching strategy so that children have the confidence to use their skills to decode any unfamilar word they may encounter.

As a previous poster said, jib is a word which may not be in a Y1 child's vocabulary - do we want to teach them so that they try to turn it into a real word that they know instead? How will they ever increase their vocabulary then?

I don't think Flexybex is blaming anyone. I think she is just reporting an interesting, and possibly unexpected, phenomenon, that makes her doubt the validity of the test.

It might have been unexpected by teachers who believe that 'meaning' is paramount in early reading instruction, and who teach 'other decoding strategies', but it was certainly not 'unexpected' by those who have said all along that correspondence knowledge and sounding out and blending should be exclusively taught until children are rapid and automatic decoders of all words that they encounter.

As the 'check' was devised to highlight children who are either insecure with their correspondence knowledge or who don't use sounding out and blending to work out unfamiliar words it seems to me that this is precisely what it is doing and it is therefore a valid test.

It is notable that teachers, both here and on TES, who report their 'good' readers as having problems with the pseudo words invariably mention 'other strategies' and /or 'reading for meaning' as being of equal importance; while teachers whose pupils had no problems with the pseudo words teach sounding out and blending and no other strategies for word attack.

I agree that having the non words is one way of differentiating decoding verus sight reading but is it possible that some DC are getting tripped up in the application of their decoding strategies - phonics is not taught in a vacuum after all. This does not mean that they haven't been taught properly how to decode or the correct phoneme/grapheme correspondences etc.

There is still much to be understood about how we learn to read and it would serve us all well to remember that.

If a Y1 child cannot read 'pib' then something is wrong, and it needs addressing now. That's what the check is for. To ignore it, or just highlight it as a 'phenomenon' and blame the test instead is poor. Really, really poor.

What is the point of collating data, highlighting on a potential issue - but then discounting it?

Someone is not doing their job properly. It needs investigating. Now!

What is the process that goes on after a 'word' has been sounded out and before the sounds are blended together to read the word aloud?

I'm quite sure you don't know the answer to that one Feenie?

There are many things that could be happening such as searching for picture clues etc but you can't rule out the possibility that there is some mental scanning of ones own lexicon, not necessarily in an attempt to attach meaning but just to 'match' with...who knows?

What is the process that goes on after a 'word' has been sounded out and before the sounds are blended together to read the word aloud?

Go on then - enlighten me.

There are many things that could be happening such as searching for picture clues etc

God I hope not.

but you can't rule out the possibility that there is some mental scanning of ones own lexicon, not necessarily in an attempt to attach meaning but just to 'match' with...who knows?

That's fine, as long as a child doesn't land and stick on a word they find in their own lexicon, which is incorrect, instead of finding it, checking the word, and discounting it because that's not what the word says.