Phonics screening test

[Mashabell]

There is a very good article on the madness of the phonics screening test in todays i (the 20 p version of The Independent) and some of its silliest effects.

I do believe that DD recognises words as a whole rather than sounding them out but I hope that it is because she has sounded them out before a few times and doesnt need to now as she knows it.

OK, but there's a recognised term for that which is autodidact. A natural whole word reader gives the impression that there's something unnatural about other whole word readers.

simpson,

I'd say that was a very good description of the end result of phonics teaching!

This is just what most of my 'strugglers' do. They sound out and blend a word a few times and then they've 'got' it. I often wonder if they've ever been given the chance to do this in the past...

The Government doesn't call it a reading test.

It's called the Phonics Screening Check.

A natural whole word reader gives the impression that there's something unnatural about other whole word readers.

As reading is a completely 'unnatural' process I find the term 'natural whole word reader' very strange.

And what other sort of 'whole word readers' might there be?

Half a day doesn't sound like a lot mrz - I expect she's being brought in to bolster what is already being taught. Let's put that into perspective though. Trainees are in universities for about 18 weeks a year, with roughly 25 hours of lectures a week, plus tutorials etc. so over the year of their PGCE if they go through that route, they'll have about 450 hours, which sounds like a lot. But not if you think that they have to do reading, writing, speaking and listening, drama, PE, geography, history, Maths, science, music, DT, RE, ICT, MFL, child development, learning theory and so on and so forth. In reality, there are about 35 hours allocated to literacy in a year. So how would you break it down? Phonics, Guided Reading, Shared Reading, Reading schemes, S&L, dyslexia training, poetry, non- fiction writing and reading, accelerated reading, VCOP, spelling patterns, punctuation, grammar, EAL, other SLDs, and so on and so on? How would you organise it? You're quick to ridicule, how would you deliver the training in the time allocated and dictated by funding formula?

People who read whole words, maybe.

I've seen much debate about the fact that speaking is natural and reading is not. But I'm not sure that I believe that those things are true. A German boy brought up with wolves couldn't speak. And someone brought up to read and write and not speak presumably does exactly that. And there are people who don't seem to have any learning disabilities who can barely speak because the surroundings in which they grew up are mainly inhabited by people who also can't speak very well. I'm inclined to believe that people grow up being very good at what they are used to and are familiar with.

This is the most interesting article that I've seen on the phonics screening test...

deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/phonics-screening-sense-and-sensibility.html

I understand that the whole idea of introducing nonsense words into the Y1 test seems, on the face of it, to be a little odd. However, it isn't just with single syllable words that children are likely to be confronted with a word they've never seen before. In many, many real but polysyllabic words, the syllables, taken one by one, are, in effect, nonsense. Think about some three- and four-syllable words which children need to be able to read: a rith me tic, mul ti ply. These are common words and yet they contain syllables that in themselves have no meaning.

Interesting points, learnandsay.

Your ideas feed into the the theory I have that the 'phonics' code is a slight misnomer as it places the emphasis on the 'sounds' of a written language as having a superior place in teaching reading over the 'written' building blocks. The examples I give of how it's possible to be a genuinely good reader (silently or out loud and comprehension not just decoding) without being good at 'hearing' the blocks (just 'seeing' them) include the autistic dcs I know who don't blend that well - see ds above - and the two profoundly deaf friends I have who can read and write amazingly well (one has a PhD and one two first degrees) despite not being able to hear anything.

I was worried with DD as I wanted her to learn phonetically and she just suddenly (mid nursery yr) just knew loads of words to the point I was WTF!!!

So I spoke to her teacher ( who she has in reception now) and she said she would assess her and just said she was reading phonetically but they were sounds I had not covered with her (neither had the nursery) so I guess she had worked it out for herself...

Which is fine by me!!!

"OK, but there's a recognised term for that which is autodidact." actually it isn't learnandsay because he didn't direct himself to learn how to read words ...he sees and read never having met the words previously ...no learning involved.

I'm sorry you seem offended by the word natural but I don't think saying a group of children are natural whole word readers in any way suggests other children who have learnt to read whole words are unnatural.

Lots of children grasp the basic idea of phonics very quickly, but also work it out for themselves that phonics is only a minor part of learning to read. My granddaughter who is the top reader in her class and constantly amazes me with her vocabulary told me soon after starting to learn, 'U can't sound out all words. U can't sound out W - A - S. U just have to learn it.'

Maizie explained that her struggling readers sound out and blend a word a few times and then they've 'got' it. Sadly, many will forget them again too, while better readers will imprint the word on their memory after encountering a few times.

Or as the blog deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/phonics-screening-sense-and-sensibility.html claims:
Some children don?t need explicit teaching of phonics - they pick it up spontaneously through exposure to print. But others just don?t get it unless it is made explicit.

And even when it's made explicit, they have trouble coping with 'man - many, ouch - touch' and the many other irregularities.

The main justification for the test has been,
A nonword reading test around age 6 to 7 years will help identify those children who could benefit from extra support in the classroom.

• By that age teachers know very well who those children are. Giving them the extra support, one-to-one - that's the problem.

What is happening is what the blog's author feared:
It would be catastrophic if teachers got the message from this exercise that reading instruction should involve training children to read lists of words, or worse still, nonwords. Unfortunately, testing in schools is increasingly conflated with evaluation of the school, and so teaching-to-the-test is routinely done.

Stupid tests have stupid consequences.

"Half a day doesn't sound like a lot mrz - I expect she's being brought in to bolster what is already being taught."

No she isn't, that is the sum total of the teaching they receive and is in fact much more than some students report receiving ... some reporting their training involved being given a copy of Letters & Sounds to take away

My current PGCE student openly admits she doesn't know much about phonics other than what she has seen on placement

"What is happening is what the blog's author feared:
It would be catastrophic if teachers got the message from this exercise that reading instruction should involve training children to read lists of words"

Isn't that called Look & Say masha?

"As reading is a completely 'unnatural' process I find the term 'natural whole word reader' very strange."

I realise it isn't the best choice of word maizieD but I'm not sure how to describe a child who has not been taught to recognise/read whole words and can in fact read words without previously having encountered them ...perhaps that is an unnatural whole word reader. Any suggestions?

BooksandaCuppa have you seen the work of the Scottish Sensory Centre (among others) ...they teach deaf children to read using ....phonics.

"Development of Phonic Skills for deaf children depends on :"

Age at diagnosis
Level of deafness
Type of deafness
Age at which child was aided
Constancy of wearing hearing aids/CI
Aided levels
Language development
In addition to pre-reading experience etc.

"The acquisition of phonological knowledge does not depend exclusively on hearing. Information from:"

Lipreading
Cues
Fingerspelling
The written alphabet

can be used...

They are developing a method called visual phonics

Then train your PGCE student mrz - they spend over 300 hours on placement and the school,is a partner in training. I'm sure you are a great mentor and your student will learn a lot with you, but you'd be surprised how many see it as an excuse to slope off to the staff room for a cuppa, and then sit criticising the universities for not preparing them properly!

Because it's possible (or might be possible) to teach deaf children to read using phonics that doesn't mean that it's wise to do so. There might be (and probably are) far more natural methods for them.

I think if I had a deaf child and somebody wanted to teach her to read (assuming I'd tried and failed,) using phonics I think I'd be upset and would try to prevent them from doing so unless they could convince me of the benefits of doing this to a deaf child. (I think convincing me of that would be a pretty tough task.)

I truly don't understand the angst that 'phonics' creates in these boards.

For the majority it children, being taught phonics is a stepping stone to independent reading. I honestly don't understand how one can object to this.

What about maths? Is there general agreement that most children need to learn how to count backwards and forwards in 1s, 2s, 10s, then times tables before presenting them with algebra or have I got the wrong end of the stick about this too?

But I think, learnandsay, that might be, as I suggested above, that it's because there are different ways of absorbing the code other than just hearing it and so phonics building blocks are still helpful for non hearing and other (some autistic) children; it's just that they might focus to a greater or lesser degree on the visual blocks made by the phonic sounds - more so than neurotypical, hearing children. I think the term mrz used 'visual phonics' is perfect to describe what some children already do (I think I do - I would never ever muddle up spelling of 'your' and 'you're' because I don't really hear them as homophones, I see them as separate visual words even when speaking.) does any of that make any sense?!

Learnandsay said: "I've seen much debate about the fact that speaking is natural and reading is not. But I'm not sure that I believe that those things are true."
BooksandaCuppa said: "Your ideas feed into the the theory I have that the 'phonics' code is a slight misnomer as it places the emphasis on the 'sounds' of a written language as having a superior place in teaching reading over the 'written' building blocks."
There is no debate over this issue. Speaking is natural in that we come biologically equipped to speak. All people everywhere in the world communicate through spoken language; not all peoples have written language. Written language was invented to represent the sounds of the each language. If it emerged spontaneously then all people everywhere would also have written language. They don't!
So, the code, in the case of English, is driven by the sounds of the language. That's where the word 'phonics' comes from - the Greek 'phonema' meaning 'sound'.
In the words of Steven Pinker of MIT, speaking comes naturally and doesn't have to be taught; writing is a bolt-on extra and does need to be taught - systematically and explicitly.

Well then, Stephen Pinker of MIT is wrong. Children have to be taught how to speak properly all the time. If you're happy to have your children using their own home-made version of the English language then fine. But I'm not.