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?

"flute" is hard if you aren't familiar with the word in its written form and you have no contextual clues. Why is it pronounced f-l-oo-t and not f-l-ew-t? Mute is pronounced m-ew-t, cute is pronounced c-ew-t...

Oh dear Bonsoir

mrz - I greatly admire your devotion to your pupils and, as I have said repeatedly, I am a great fan of phonics. But in order to judge the effectiveness of phonics teaching, you do need to have a good understanding of language development in the brain.

thanks for telling me Bonsoir I would never have thought of that

I do not doubt your skills and devotion to the teaching of phonics, mrz. But perhaps you could be as respectful towards me for my knowledge of language development as I am towards you for your phonics knowledge.

Perhaps you shouldn't assume I don't have knowledge of language development Bonsoir and I won't assume you don't know anything about the phonics test

mrz - you sometimes very clearly demonstrate that you are not up to date on language development, and there are other things you do not grasp because you are looking at language development from a monolingual perspective. I have not claimed to know anything more about the phonics test that I can have an opinion upon other than the fact that it uses pseudo-words, which, I repeat, are not a reliable test of phonics knowledge.

I'm afraid your opinion on pseudo words differs greatly from that of most researchers and educationalists and those working with children Bonsoir. I agree my perspective is very much from a monolingual perspective because that is applicable to my situation. However the research I'm currently reading seems to indicate that b/d reversals is a phonological issue

Formerdiva - Do know if this will help. Though my dd's reading is at 1a she also failed her phonic screen. She is also a younger one in her year. I think my dd learn to read partly by using phonic and partly by memorising and recognising individual words. Don't worry as long as you keep on reading with your dd she will do fine.

I can't believe that b/d reversal is purely a phonological problem. As we're talking about very young children (60-72 months old!), all in different stages of development, it must also partly be related to immaturity in visual discrimination and/or brain development.
The fact that most children 'grow out' of digit and letter reversal implies that it is a developmental issue.

Why would they reverse b/d in pib and not in desh or chab or thend or baim or flods? (you said they got the other words right) if it was developmental they would presumably have the same problem with these words and real words and in their general reading but these are your "better" readers so I assume this isn't normal for them???

You must have had children in your class who have come into Y2 with a reversal problem. Half way around the year, they start to reverse some of the letters (or numbers). Then, at the end of the year, they have no reversals at all. We're talking about development, not a sudden epiphany!

As regards the phonics test, a couple of the children who read 'pib' incorrectly also read 'baim' incorrectly, but two of the others didn't. The children are in the middle of a learning process.

No, within context, the letter reversal wouldn't have been normal. Reading discrete words seems to have highlighted the problem. (Or is it therefore a problem if they read b and d correctly in a text?????)

Yes I have taught lots of children who confuse b/d/p/q & n/h but they are normally consistent

did they read baim as daim?

Mrz - can you pleae explain or link to something explaining b/d reversal as a phonological problem?

Everything I've read says it's an eye tracking problem.....

(as you know this is an area I'm keenly interested in. If DD could look at b/d/p/q/g and knew what they were it would help immensely)

I'm going to fully check out the actual inaccuracies tomorrow.

Just re-read my post, and it really wasn't clear! I meant that a child with a specific reversal problem (e.g. b/d, 9/p, 6s, 3s, 7s) will start the year reversing, then reverse some, then end the year with the problem resolved. Like they make a gradual correction during the year, with only minor intervention.

I have 2 children finishing Y2 this year who are still reversing b/d (despite more specific handwriting and language intervention). These two children are having problems in all areas of the curriculum, and are both on school action.

This would also seem to support that letter and digit reversal is part of a wider perceptual and/or cognition issue rather than just a phonics issue.

I'm currently reading Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz a neuroscientists and paediatrician who claims from her research at Yale centre for study of learning and attention that there is no evidence that b/d reversal is a visual issue and what she calls "fuzzy phonemes" are an early indicator of possible difficulties.

Children don't 'grow out' of letter reversals. They have to have sufficient practice to remember these correspondences. It is entirely to do with practice and learning, and nothing to do with developing!
Many older learners make similar errors. Errors with reversals of /b/ and /d/ even /p/ seem to be more frequent when these letters are first in a word. rather than last. it certainly impacts on fluency when children have to think hard about the correspondences. I've only ever had one child who muddles /b/ and /d/ saying /'anb' instead of 'and'!The test certainly seems to have chosen some good words to really ascertain this knowledge.

Sally Shaywitz seems to see beyond phonics though, mrz:
'Pretty strong evidence supports a phonologic model of reading. People have to be aware, clearly, that it's a complex issue. We want children to be able to read the word on the page. But we must also remember that we want them to read the word on the page to get to the meaning and the richness of the literature and the language. But if they don't know how to read the individual words, what can we do? The most comprehensive reading program explicitly teaches about the sounds of language. It teaches children that words can be broken up into these smaller units of language, that the letters represent these units of language??phonics. But we also want to teach children about language and to build their vocabulary. We want them to have a knowledge base. We want them to practice reading and to read for meaning. So we want a balanced program. Although phonics is more important for some children than for others, all children can benefit from being taught directly how to break up spoken words into smaller units and how letters represent sounds. '

malaleuca I don't agree. I think most children do 'grow out' of letter reversals, which, by the age of 7 are mostly apparent in writing. Practice, by definition, is developing a skill, and this practice is occurring concurrently with the development of the brain. In my Y2 class, only one child occasionally makes mistakes with b/d in reading, whereas he and another child reverse b/d in writing.
Our phonics test results have highlighted that more children reverse b/d in reading Y1. However, I have no reason to doubt that it will be fully resolved by the end of Y2 (based on experience in Y2 at the same school for the last 10 years).

Obviously novices make more errors than more experienced readers. More experienced readers tend to be older, but it is the learning, not the aging that is the key factor. You're confusing correlation with causation.

I remember reversing bs and ds at the age of 8/9. I was also a prolific reader and became a great speller. That suggests to me that this particular issue is developmental and not an indicator of future problems.

mrz - does the book actually talk about how to overcome dysleixa? Is it worth reading?

I've just come back from more vision testing with DD - who clearly has both auditory and visual problems - and vision is so complicated.

I don't know what studies your book refers to. But lots of the studies I've seen really don't take into account how complicated vision is, how many different ways there are that your vision can be slightly wrong.

DDs been doing various different vision therapy exercises for 6 months now, and we've just been given 2 more totally different exercises! ie there are at least 6 different aspects of her vision we have to fix.

It's certainly counter-intuitive to say kids write b the wrong way round because they can't hear sounds properly. (Or do I not understand what a phonological problem is?)

Lack of practice also seems a very weak argument - given that DD has now spent 5 years learning to read, and still reverses letters when writing them and when reading. She reverses letters in the middle of words as much as letters in the beginning of words.

The eye tracking exercises she has been doing have def improved her reading fluency / speed. She still struggles with b/d etc, but I can't tell if they're getting less or not. Certainly as her reading gets more fluent they stand out more.

If however we do ever finish all these vision exercises and her reversals disappear then I'll know it was a vision problem. :)

Flexybex interesting quote to support your view

"Because the dyslexic reader often gets to the meaning without having first fully decoded the word, there is no true stored representation added to his memory bank. The next time he comes across the word it is as if he has never seen it before, and he will have to go through the same exercise of using context to get to the word's meaning."

"Context also explains a common puzzling symptom of dyslexia. ... Since dyslexic readers rely so much on context, it is often difficult to figure out a small, so called function word whose meaning cannot be gleaned from the context."
p111-112 S Shaywitz

and before anyone points out the quote is about dyslexia that is because struggling readers rely more on context that "good" readers.

Malaleuca But 'learning' (as a stimulus) has an effect on the neurological development of the brain.

I think I deserved a not a for effort and achievement mrz.....

I've just started reading Indigo so wouldn't like to recommend it before I finish.

www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/shaywitz.htm

dyslexia.yale.edu/aboutcenter.html

www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3746,fr_21571361_49995565_19483516_1_1_1_1,00.html

www.greatschools.org/special-education/LD-ADHD/859-overcoming-dyslexia-a-chat.gs

www.yalescientific.org/2011/04/the-paradox-of-dyslexia-slow-reading-fast-thinking/