my child reads and write at top level, but her Phonics group is not!!!

[B4r4joon]

My daughter is a very bright child at Y1...she is reading and writing very well...however when it came to grouping them, she is not been located in the top group in Phonics, although she reads the same level and writes the same as those children on the top group. This is very confusing for her amd me, as I dont understand on what basis this happened. She can be at times shy and she observes her peers very well and learn from them as she is bi-lingual. In the gropu she is in now, the difference between the level she reads and the level of some other children is huge...perhaps 7 colour reading band!!!

This has affecte dmy childs confidence as she thinks she hasnt been good enough, or why she is reading the same book as her reading partner, and he/she is in another group. ALl confusing for me, I am gonna talk to the teacher tomorrow, and I dont know how to say it. i dont want to convey that I dont trust their judgment, but this is gonna hold my child back and crashes her confidence, as the groups are gonna stay the same until the end of teh year! Can I ask the teacher to move my child to the other group? Is Phonics the knowledge that they learn to apply to their writing and reading, so how can she read and write higher than her phonics knowledge? She is already reading sounds that she has not been officially taught, by working it out on herself....

The secondary school our pupils move to said none of our pupils required support with reading/writing/maths in Sept.
We achieve high 90s% level 4 or above year on year for reading and our children aren't from bookish households

We've taught phonics in my school since the mid 90s using Jolly Phonics and this year have adopted Sounds-Write.

OK, but I'm trying to understand why a fifth of Maizie's pupils have no obvious signs of SEN (ESL?) and a significant proportion of them are nevertheless struggling to read picture books at age eleven/twelve. They sound almost like adolescents who have never seen a book before.

Because if teaching is not rigourous enough and children will not have learnt to read by the age of 11. They are left floundering and as maizie says, many who are intelligent and mature in other ways, will have come up with all sorts of ways to disguise this problem.

rigorous...typo....

"then", not "and". Really should read what I have written before pressing post .

I understand perfectly what you're saying, tgger, with or without the typos. I think this was one of the problems with my sister. Nobody realised that she couldn't read. Although I'm not sure how many people checked.

But many bookish families write cards, play scrabble and do lots of activities which involve writing and reading. I would have imagined that, in general, in such families it more rapidly becomes apparent when a child is unable to participate. (But maybe not. Maybe children become good at hiding their difficulties from the family too.) I guess my sister was good at it.

In a sense, although it's not a reading test, that's one of the advantages about the phonics check. There's no getting around it.

mam Because of the national emphasis on phonics, the school should have addressed any problems over the last few years, and should have next to no-one in KS2 needing phonics teaching (except maybe for those children with significant learning problems or who are recent immigrants).

I'd be interested to hear what the teacher says to you!

DD has been in a lower guided reading group because she's shy (teacher thought it would help her confidence if she was in this group). It's the story of mine and dd's life shyness being mistaken for lack of progress. Now, after a meeting with the head, dd's in higher reading group and loving the challenge.
For each swimming level I've had to have the swimming coordinator separately assess her because teacher has mistaken shyness for lack of swimming confidence. And hardly any lines in school nativity because teacher didn't perceive her to be confident enough. DD was so disappointed as she'd have loved to have had a bigger part.

What is sounds write??

I read with yr4 kids in my DC school and read with 10 kids today and none of them knew what I would consider basic phonics tbh and were reading books easier than my reception DD.

I know that I was asked to read with the struggling readers though (and yes, they will read/have already read with their teacher too this week).

Personally, I have no problem with streaming phonics within each year group but to put yr6 alongside much younger kids really cannot do the yr6 kids any favours re self esteem etc...

My DC school have achieved 84% level 4 in yr6 for the last couple of years....

84%, so not far off the 20% that maizie sees struggling........things are going wrong are they not simpson if you have 10 Y4 kids reading at less than average Y2 level? Presuming they all don't have SEN. The school I mean?

Which is why the phonics test and the NC levels were introduced, to higher expectations and to say "this is not good enough". Oh dear, think I am climbing onto my horse. Better sign off and go to bed .

I don't really like either, but I hate low expectations more.

16% at 3a would still be 84% level 4 and that 16% wouldn't be struggling to read picture books.

Mathscondundrum that sounds really worrying how childs personality can hold them back acedemically or limit opportunities based on perception.

I will ask and report back.

year 6 sats level 4 last couple years is 86%

I dont know how many year 6s are in lower phonics groups
theres only 20 of them. the year 6/5taught in mixed classse and some year 4 with year 5s.

All I can say is its widened daughters freindship groups and she seems to enjoy it more than when she was just in yearly groups.

I don't know if any of these kids have SEN.

I definately think a child's personality can impact on how they do at school (certainly in the earlier years).

DS is very shy and quiet (although as he has got older he has improved). It was so bad that his first parents eve in reception his teacher made me cry although I managed to get out of the building first!!!

He would not answer questions in class even if he knew the answer because he was afraid of getting it wrong

He was reading really well at home but it not feel confident to read as well at school (took me a while to work this out tbh).

But his fab teacher he had in yr2 (although only for the first term as she left the school) saw through his shyness and lent me books from her own kids collection and worked on his confidence etc and now in yr3 he is doing well (although still quiet and his teacher now works on getting him to smile more and even when he is enjoying himself he looks like it is torture -I saw this at sports day!!)

DD on the other hand, does not shut up and the school have quickly picked up on how bright she is but I do think a lot of that is because she is so confident...

OK, but I'm trying to understand why a fifth of Maizie's pupils have no obvious signs of SEN (ESL?) and a significant proportion of them are nevertheless struggling to read picture books at age eleven/twelve. They sound almost like adolescents who have never seen a book before.

If you can't understand it, lands, it is because you have never worked with children who struggle with reading at secondary school and you don't understand how powerful teaching by phonic principles is and how much not teaching by phonic principles can impair children's reading skills.

The bit about 'struggling to read picture books' is a figment of your imagination.

It is extraordinary that it should be assumed that children who haven't learned to read competently are SEN. Most of them are perfectly able children (maybe not as highly intelligent as MN dcs, but still quite able). Perhaps if people had actually worked with these children, instead of assuming that their experience of attempting to teach their own child makes them an expert on 'reading' and reading related problems they might actually believe that I know what I am talking about.

Apologies for ranting, but when I come home every day after working with poorly taught children and have to fight my corner on MN over the necessity for good phonics teaching right from the start, for all children because you don't know which ones are going to be damaged until they actually are damaged, I, just occasionally, get cross about it

"OK, but I'm trying to understand why a fifth of Maizie's pupils have no obvious signs of SEN (ESL?) and a significant proportion of them are nevertheless struggling to read picture books at age eleven/twelve. They sound almost like adolescents who have never seen a book before."

I suspect like many children they have seen lots of books over the years but have never worked out how to read the words. They will have been told to look at the picture, to look at the first letter,to remember lists of useful words like Biff, Chip, Floppy, a, the, said ... but they won't have been taught what to do if they meet a new word beyond stare at it until an adult gets fed up and tells you.

Yes, Maizie, you're right. If one fifth of my eleven/twelve year old pupils didn't know how to read I wouldn't have the first clue what to do about it. I think I'd sit in the middle of the group and cry. You did say further up the forum that "many of them had become experts at guessing the words from the pictures," or words to that effect. So, since we're talking about Y7 I thought you were explaining that you were reading picture books with Y7. (I don't know what you're doing. I've never seen it.)

mrz, that description of Look & Say isn't one that I recognise. Apart from my brothers, who went to a Montessori nursery, (discounting today's children) I've never known anybody, except my sister who couldn't read. And to the best of my knowledge none of the people I know well have been taught to read using phonics. The reading that I know doesn't involve staring at a word until some angry adult tells you what it is! It involves making words with wooden letters, reading rhymes, reading favourite books. having words written on walls, spelling, playing word games, reading Ladybird books, Janet & John, Dick & Dora (or whatever those books were called.) The Cat in the Hat, and endless other books. It's a happy time. In my sister's case her pre-school life was chaotic. I can't help but think that if most of Mazie's 20% had gone through the same Look & Say process that I went through most of them if they had no SEN would have learned to read. If the environment is nurturing stable and has learning to read as a serious goal, as mine had, I fail to see why it can not be successful. It was in my case and in the case of so many others. I'm not discounting phonics as a great way to teach. But I don't see blaming other teaching methods as being correct. They may or may not be partially responsible. I don't know. But I'm willing to bet that there are far more significant features than teaching methods to blame for intelligent children not being able to read.

Oh dear, lands. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your last post

learnandsay you mentioned impoverishment, immigrant background (as far as I can remember so forgive me if I am a bit inaccurate!) as your guess for underachievement.

Last year I read the report of a local secondary. It said that the school was making steady progress. However, the students who didn't make any progress at all, especially in literacy were WHITE BRITISH. According to another local primary school's report the students making the best progress were of Black African and Pakistani background. Also how many times haven't we read about excelling Chinese students in free school meals? It seems that quite a lot of immigrants have high expectations of their children expecting them to become doctors, lawyers, engineers taking full advantage of free (certainly not universities any more ) good quality education in this country along with good prospect of finding such jobs.

Unfortunately what a lot of local people do here is blame the immigrants for taking their jobs while they do nothing to encourage their children to try hard apart from walking their dog in the morning

ninani, I think the phrase you're referring to was "from communities with low academic expectations." I did mention (ESL?) That was trying to get somebody to suggest well known reasons for the 20% struggling. I had no idea if the pupils had ESL or not. Maizie did already say they did not have SEN.

To be honest, unless somebody gives me more than generalisations I'm never ever going to get my head around this 20%. I just don't get it, not by a long way. (I know Maizie's going to shout at me again.) But I don't get it. I really don't. And there has to be more to it than lack of phonics. There has to be something about the way these children are being brought up. There has to be.

You may not get it, Lands, but it's there and it's been there ever since I began teaching in the seventies.
Everything that mrz and Maizie say chimes exactly with my experience - a huge long tail of underachievement and children who constitute that tail who can't read and write because of the multiplicity of maladaptive strategies taught them by teachers who don't know how to teach reading and spelling.
Amongst the SENCos of large secondary schools who attend our trainings, they report the enormous numbers of children entering Y7 with reading ages lower than their chronological ages. Over 60% is not unusual. Of course, not all of those children will struggle. The commonly agreed reading age required to cope with a secondary curriculum is about 9:6 (though that's hardly anything to write home about). Naturally, the number of children who have reading ages below 9:6 is lower than 60% - anything from around fifteen percent to as much as thirty plus percent depending on area. And, what do we see in these children, all the things that mrz highlights.
You might also ask yourself why you never come across people who are illiterate. You see I don't either in my social life. In my professional life as a teacher, a teacher trainer, and a tutor, until recently, of early years students on a degree course, I see this kind of thing all the time.
I'll never forget the woman who rang me about her husband, who couldn't read. Every time they went to a restaurant, she would read the menu to him by saying things like, "Hmmm. I don't know whether to have the soup or the salad to start. Or, should I have the XXX?" of course, in this way, he was making a choice without losing face. He'd also go to work every day with a copy of a red top and pretend to read it. He was so embarrassed about his plight, she couldn't persuade him even to come for a consultation.
In other words, people who can't read and write very well or not at all go to enormous lengths to hide it!

I think what lands is asking and still nobody is answering is that why are those particular children part of that 20% and not part of the other 80%. Why does a 'multiplicity of maladaptive strategies' effect them but not the other children? If they have no SEN, no ESL, there must be something.