DS1 failed the Year 1 Phonics test. Is he alone?

[AnnieMated]

Shocked and upset actually. Trying my hardest not to be, but he's a pretty good reader and is finishing ORT level 6 and reading fluently with no trouble.

He got 28 out of 40 and the pass mark is 40.

What I most concerned about is that the school didn't even inform parents their children were going to be tested, we just got a bland, round-robin letter today in their book bags with the results.

Anyone like to reassure me? Don't want to ask the other mums from the school but will have a chat with the teachers tomorrow if I can...

It's not the nonsens ewords that are the problem, it's the nonsense words that look like real words e.g. blurst. Even if a 6 year old has a good grasp of phonics, they will perahps want to say ehat they think it should say e.g. burst because they recognise that word and they don't want to get it wrong.

Mashabell - that has NOT been the case at the school I work at. None of our 91 Y1 children were confused by pseudo words - they were all able to distinguish between the real and non real words and all understood their teachers explanations of what would happen and what they all needed to do in terms of blending sounds to make either a real word or an alien word.

If a child at our school was working securely within our current phase 5 phonics then they passed. Below that they would struggle to pass - one look at the words told us this would be the case. There were no real surprises and NONE negatively.

Mashabell why would a child who is a fluent reader struggle if they are told that the words are nonsense/alien words? I would expect a Y1 child to be capable of following a basic instruction.

mrz - we did introduce all the sounds to all our children, but those not secure at phase 5 didn't tend to pass. Although they have been taught all the sounds we have children still working at phases 2-4 also.

DD failed just, 30/40 scored. Of the 10 mistakes, 9 were nonsense words. According to DD ( not always the most reliable of witnesses it must be said) she has never been asked to read nonsense words before and although given instructions that the words were not real, didn't really believe it and tried to find real words. I think DD is a very normal average child and I can see a lot of 5 and 6 year olds finding instructions about the nonsense words confusing, and so having scoring poorly on the nonsense words. Surely 5 and 6 year olds often muddle instructions and get things a little wrong? Particularly in an unusual test environment?

If a child reads burst for blurst (which wasn't one of the words in the check for those interested) then they are probably going to have problems later when they encounter real words that are similar to other real words.

milk.... - why did the school not introduce the concept of non-real words in advance? We have known that the test would include them for a long time now. The school could have prepped children by introducing them. Many schools have included these in their phonics for a few years anyway, often through games found online on phonics sites if nothing else.

Going all the way back to Playing with Sounds /Progression in Phonics published by the DCSF in 2004? there were pseudo word decoding and encoding assessments.

If the school had introduced nonsense words in their teaching of phonics then this wouldn't have been an issue if the child is at the required phonic level.

I really can't see its anything other than a positive thing if dealt with in the right way. If a child needs extra help then great as it means this is identified, if a child has purely misunderstood instructions then they may start getting some extra help but teh teacher will realise its not necessary.

At the end of the day a good teacher will already know all the children who may need extra help anyway!

Milk the instruction was repeated wither every set of pseudo words and I would be concerned that a 5 or 6 year old didn't really believe it

Thanks so much for all your responses.

I had a chat with DS1 and he said that there were loads of words he knew by sight, but there were lots he knew were not real words, and he tried to make them sound "right" like many of you have alluded to also.

What concerns me most is that one of the things they are now planning is to group children regardless of age/year group to give them more phonics teaching, so when he goes into Y2 in September, he may well find himself alongside Y1 or Reception children which would be soul destroying for him.

And, surely once you are earmarked at this level, it's got to be so difficult to move on surely? His school motto is "a philosophy must greater than the next set of test results" but tidying your pencils away at the end of the day isn't going to get you very far in life, especially as we're in Kent and have the hideous fight for grammar school places ahead.

Hey ho. Interesting to hear what the teachers have to say tomorrow...

I think some schools are having a knee jerk panic reaction to the results rather than plan effective strategies.

AnnieMated - ask how frequently they will check children are in the correct phonics group, how they will assess and if there will be movement between groups.

We have groups across the year group (3 classes) but the groups are assessed regularly and children move between groups depending on their own progress. They can move between groups at any time in the year.

especially as we're in Kent and have the hideous fight for grammar school places ahead.

In which case you should be very glad that your son's weakness in phonics has been picked up now when there is plenty of time to do something about it.

Not to mention his strange belief that all the words he meets should be 'right' according to his very limited (because he is only 6) vocabulary knowledge. Though I'm willing to bet that the school has instilled that belief in his head. I can just hear his teacher or TA when he reads a word wrongly saying 'Does that sound right?' It's a very common, and misused, 'prompt'.

so when he goes into Y2 in September, he may well find himself alongside Y1 or Reception children which would be soul destroying for him

He probably won't be the only Y2 in the group...It's up to his teachers and family to treat this sensitively, not as a disaster. It's only at school that people are expected to learn only with their own age group. If an adult were learning a new skill (or brushing up on one) they'd be likely to findthemselves in a group covering a very wide age range.

I think it is incredibly sad that anyone is looking at the children who fail to reach the standard as 'failures'. They haven't failed anything. They just haven't been taught it well enough, if at all...

I really don't think it would be soul-destroying for a child of that age - lots of children thrive being the oldest in a group and if they are being taught at the correct level they move on extremely quickly rather than struggling and struggling in a group too high for them. It could be a really good thing as long as the school are assessing them frequently in order to move them on.

Many schools have mixed Y1/2 classes and its not soul destroying for the older children in anyway. They get used to working in ability groups and it never seems to worry them.

mrz - my Y1 child is not 6 for another month yet

I can assure you she is capable of having an off 3-4 minutes

So she scores 30/40 but I'm told she is "above expected age for writing and spelling" and "at expected age for reading" (end of year report)

And she's had extra support for literacy... (which has obviously been brilliant for her )

Hence my not really 'getting' the meaning of the phonics results

OP - my DS "failed" -also about 29 - I don't think he is a good reader as your DS - orange bookband - not sure what number that is - he does a lot of guessing when he reads to us so sure that was what he was doing in the test
school was also rather anti- despite I think doing ok I thought in phonics teaching

Mrz- my DD gets very set in her ideas! She not easily turned off a chosen path. And repetition won't necessarily help, you don't get it the first time, you are nervous, you are not told you are wrong and encouraged to alter your approach...

Hulababy - I agree and I don't think the school is fully committed to phonics, lists of high frequency and sight words to learn, DD says the TA does not make her sound out if she doesn't know a word but tells her straight away , original ORT scheme books to read both in school and at home.

Though I repeat I'm relying on what DD told me and she isn't a reliable witness, she tells me what she thinks I want to hear.

My dd is one of the better readers in her class (black bookband), and in her school report got the highest possible mark for phonics. Yes, she did pass this test - but she only got 34.

Reading this thread, it's not at all clear to me whether I should (a) shrug and think that overall there doesn't seem to be much of a problem, or (b) worry that although she is reading well right now, her lack of sound phonics foundation will hold her up later.

I think I'll go with the shrugging and let the gobbier parents take this one on

My ds failed the test only getting 23/40. In reply to mrz our school uses biff and Chip and also weekly sheets of high freq words to memorise so probably not teaching phonics as they should be. However.... They do get consistanly high KS2 results and have the opinion that their methods are tried and tested. I hope my DS will get additional help to improve his phonics and will be asking about it next term when I meet his new teacher.

OP: your child has not failed. Your child has been failed, by teachers, who have opted not to use the most effective strategy for enabling children to read. At this age, passing the test or otherwise doesn't tell you much for an individual child, but the rates for the school as a whole will indicate whether they're using effective literacy strategies or a different method.

As has been said on other threads. It is very likely that if your child seems to be doing well with reading but fails the check it is because the school encourages guessing from pictures, first letters and shapes of whole words over decoding using phonics(which may be taught but not in a way that makes it the primary approach to word reading) It is hard for 6 year olds to override this ingrained approach to words even when told to just for the test. They will need to overcome this habit to become successful readers. While using these methods they will inaccurate in their reading. Imagine how accurate your own reading would be if you relied on these strategies...

You do rely on these strategies. Every successful reader does. I just read your post without decoding a single word of it, which means that I was doing something else. I was using a range of strategies to extract meaning from a text ie reading. Yes, you can train children to bark sounds at nonsensense words, but what is the point, when you can be using the time to teach them to read? I would urge anyone whose child has failed the test to stay calm. This is not an indication (necessarily) of how well they will be reading in a years time (or even how well they are reading now). Sorry, phonics evangelists; phonics is an important skill, but it's not all there is to reading. Phonics and literacy are not the same thing.

Warrah when was the last time you used the pictures to guess a word?

They certainly aren't strategies good readers use

DS got 36/40. He says he got two real and two pseudo words wrong (but is not necessarily a reliable witness...!), but wasn't told every time about pseudo words, just about the aliens at the start of the test.

My sister has been told that just over 50% of her son's school passed the screening test, but the national average is closer to a third...

The important bit is surely what schools do with the information: eg one of DS's classmates who did very badly (and has always struggled with reading) has been told he will get some additional support but not until November...