Sounding out, whole word and phonics question

[Shattereddreams]

My dd is doing well with her reading. Y1.
At home we read more extensively than school books so I am aware there is an element of pushing her above her school ability so to speak. But her school books are not particularly challenging ORT Level 7.

When she approaches a long unknown word, she basically panics. Small words if unknown don't cause problems, just long ones.

If phonetic, I ask her to sound out. But she can't. I think she reads in a whole word way, and she tries to make a word that she does know without really looking at the word.
Eg
Tethered she wanted to read as teacher.

She has a lazy supply teacher this year so hasn't made much progress in school, plenty at home though.

Is this fear normal progression?

I wondered about the phonics test because if she can't sound out unknown words then this could be a problem.

Compulsory universal education only began in Britain in 1870 with the Foster Act.

Look Pascal's invention up, cecily.

Right, so I've lurked over this thread for a while and I now have a couple of questions. I can tell posters have some passionate feelings so I hope I don't offend anyone.

1. When debates start about phonics why is "The Rose Report" always thrown up? I know it is the government white paper and is where the "decree" came from that synthetic phonics is mandatory in schools, but none of the posters who bring up the report actually refer to any of the content in support to a point they are making. They just seem to use the title.

2. This is for the teachers. Is synthetic phonics the only way used to teach your children/adults to read? I'm not talking about mixed methods and "whole word" etc, but just wondering if there are any other components taught such as comprehension?

Compulsory education made education available to the poorest because it became free. That doesn't mean that there weren't an awful lot of people who had some education before that time. I will look up Pascal, lands, but I can't see how he invented phonics, exactly. I mean, the ancient Greeks already had it long before Pascal's time.

I think the Rose Report pointed out how diabolically teaching reading had been done up to that point and suggested what to do about it.

If you can show me an Ancient Greek phonics primer then so much the better. Merely having sounds for letters isn't the same thing as having a sound for combinations of letters. My understanding of the Greek inheritance of the Phonetician alphabet was that the letters had sounds and words were spelled using them. As far as I know nobody split language up into phonemes before Pascal.

^CecilyP- you ask various questions which are a bit odd
When you say "I never did" do you mean you yourself, or you as a parent?Whichever, it only shows that some children learn more easily and work out the counding out for themselves and do it silently in their heads.^

Thats me - odd! I mean as a parent. DS didn't appear to have worked out decoding for himself as he would pause at an unknown word, I would supply it and he would know it next time. I assume he was eventually taught some phonics by whoever he learned the expression 'sound out the letters' from.
In those days you just got reading books home - no advice was given on what to do with them. I assumed the extra practice was worthwhile.

No, I can't show you an Ancient Greek phonics primer, lands, interesting concept as that is. Surely having sounds for individual letters or combinations of letters is just a matter of how words are represented in that particular language - the alphabetic principle is the same.

Having phonemes is a separate idea because it means that you can use combinations of letters to form single sounds but they don't need to look similar. I'm sure all alphabetic languages have them. But pointing that out is another matter. I think Pascal was the first person to point it out.

Haphazard I am not a KS1 teacher, I am a specialist teacher plugging the gaps with children who haven't learned(yet) to read. I know hoever that comprehension is part of the curriculum so no teacher is going to just teach phonics without adding in writing and reading for meaning.

I think we need to go back to basics here.

The point is that in a westernised, civiilsed society, we have a huge number of people- children and adults- who are illiterate- functionally illiterate. At least 20% of boys leave primary school below the level they should achieve.

Some have general learning difficulties or low ability ( Bell curve distribution) some have specific learning difficulties- dyslexia. Add to that Aspergers, dyspraxia etc.

It is a scandal that after 11 years- and soon to be 13 years- of compulsory education, a fifth of the population cannot read or write well.

Some children pick up reading and spelling easily. Just as some children run onto the football pitch and have the talent to be a D Beckham, without loads and loads of training.

Others struggle to read and need structured, on going, teaching.

There is a huge amount of evidence and research by people like Debbie Hepplwhite, Sue Lloyd, Ruth Miskin etc which shows the success of SP.

This research has been enough to convince the government to suggest that SP has its place and should be used in schools.

Many enlightened schools have used SP for years. Some- where the teachers were trained in the late 70s and 80s- went for the Look and Say /Mixed/Real Books methods. They were usually trained by lecturers who rarely went to the chalk face and liked to experiment with their theories on the way to get children to love books- and, they hoped, read.

Those methods failed millions of children- many of whom are now in prison .
Huge % of prison population is illiterate for all kinds of reasons but poor teaching is a factor.

I am not going to add any more to this thread. I have experienced all methods of teaching- as a child myself, as a parent and as a teacher for over 30 years.

I know what works best but if anyone else wants to say SP is not the best way, that's up to them.

Manic, when you do come back, and I hope you do soon, of course you're doing your daughter a favour by reading with her. I think some teachers get a bit confused between teaching reading and telling the rest of the world what to do, when to do it and how to do it. You mustn't let that get in the way of being a terrific mum and reading lots with your daughter. Do the best you can. You're doing a terrific job. Lots of parents don't read at all with their children. Those are the children who really suffer.

Professionals often get things wrong. not as wrong as those who think that training and experience count for nothing.

Maybe it's not a dog at all. Perhaps it's a hamster disguised as a dog. so it definitely isn't you in the video?

learnandsay Wed 23-Jan-13 13:11:45

Look Pascal's invention up, cecily.

Perhaps you should follow your own advice learnandsay then you would know that Pascal is credited with discovering that it was possible to split the syllable into smaller units - phonemes, and in doing so created the synthetic phonics method. Phonics had been around for many, many centuries prior to this discovery in different forms.

Haphazard - no teaching of reading ignores comprehension.

Everything has been around somewhere, including the wheel. Columbus didn't discover America in 1492 it was already there and people were living in it. Let's all generalise about everything for ever and ever.

Perhaps you should follow your own advice learnandsay then you would know that Pascal is credited with discovering that it was possible to split the syllable into smaller units - phonemes, and in doing so created the synthetic phonics method.

I very much doubt that Pascal 'discovered' how to break syllables into phonemes; maybe, 'rediscovered that it could be done' might be more accurate. It is an indisputable fact that the Greek (and previously, the Phoenician) alphabet is based on a one to one correspondence between phoneme and symbol. So the Phoenicians and Greeks must have been well aware of phonemes. It was the Greeks who introduced the symbols for the vowel phonemes.

Many languages in the past had regular patterns of syllables which made it straightforward to teach reading by learning to 'read' and blend syllables rather than phonemes but this wouldn't work very effectively for 'mongrel' languages like English that didn't have a regular set of syllables. I believe that French isn't particularly 'transparent' either, which would make Pascal's ideas very useful for them.

So you agree that you were totally wrong in your statement regarding Pascal

I also suggest you look up "hornbooks" ...15thC phonics instruction

Having phonemes is a separate idea because it means that you can use combinations of letters to form single sounds but they don't need to look similar.

Lands. I'm sure this sentence made sense to you when you wrote it but it isn't making any sense at all to me. Can you clarify what you intended it to mean?

We don't know what Ancient Greek sounded like. It's a matter of debate. And as for Phoenecian is concerned, I'm not even sure if anyone is even debating that one.

We don't know what Ancient Greek sounded like.

Are you a Classical Greek scholar?

I guess you were around in those days to hear it.

I'll take that as a no then learnandsay

Whether I am or not makes no difference. I wasn't there. So my best analysis would be an educated guess. (Unless I'm a very, very old scholar.)

OK a firm no it is then.