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.

It's not a firm anything. The question is irrelevant.

I realise you like to make statements that are not actually based in fact learnandsay and then dismiss anyone who questions your assertions but if you want to be taken seriously you need to back up your ramblings.

Funny how irrelevant becomes an excuse reason from some posters when they simply want to dodge a tricky question.

I'm more inclined to believe you are the star of the video than to consider for a moment that you know anything about the history of reading instruction.

You'd do well to stop denything things which are self-evidently true too. We can all give advice freely.

There is nothing more hateful than bad advice.
Sophocles

Don't hate yourself, please.

I'm not giving advice ...are you?

Don't bother answering it's irrelevant

You were indeed.

You are wrong ...again!

I believe you were writing on what I need to do. I think on your way to your next posting you should pick up a dictionary and look up the word advice. Don't tax yourself too much worrying about denying the self evident at the moment. One thing at a time, eh?

Really I thought we were discussing your video performance and expertise in Ancient Greek ... perhaps you are also unsure on the difference between instructions and advice

Who are you in a position to give instructions to?

You would be surprised

Hmmm, maybe. But if accepting your "instructions" is voluntary then all you are doing is redefining advice as instruction. We can all make up our own private definitions.

I had noticed you have a talent for it

A "defintion" even if private- if there is such as thing is always preferable to a series of evasions when questions are asked.

Yeah, right! What was that Sophocles quote again?

What has Sophocles got to do with KS 2 phonics? I think someone like to drop in the references to classics to try to impress.

Twas me and I wasn't trying to impress

Coming back to this because it's been going round in my mind - this thing about 'memorising whole words' as a way to learn to read. What this would really look like if a child did it, vs what it looks like if a child 'is told what a whole word says' and uses the pieces of that word (the grapheme / phoneme correspondances that it contains) to add to a personal store of such knowledge in order to read other words?

A child who genuinely only learned to read by whole word recognition is a bit like an Egyption looking at a 'pure' heiroglyph - that picture means X God. Whe it is seen again, that picture can be recognised and re-named 'that's X', but it doesn't help in reading any other heiroglyph. So such a child, taught the word 'know', would only be able to read the word 'know'. A child TOLD that 'know' says 'know', but using such information to add to the store of phonics knowledge in their brain, and would be able to use the new information about 'kn' to subsequently read e.g. knight, known, knowledge in the way that a child only 'knowing the whole word' would not.

That is why I believe that even children who APPEAR to learn through whole word recognition IN MOST CASES show through their later reading behaviour that they are in fact using those 'taught' words to add to a store of 'known graphemes', not as 'whole word pictures'.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if different children react differently. When my daughter was only sight reading she would read the word hat. But if you put an s on the end of it she would say I don't know that word and refuse to read it.

A child TOLD that 'know' says 'know', but using such information to add to the store of phonics knowledge in their brain, and would be able to use the new information about 'kn' to subsequently read e.g. knight, known, knowledge in the way that a child only 'knowing the whole word' would not.

I agree that it might be possible, tw2k, but you couldn't rely on it happening. I feel that it is better not to waste time on possibly damaging strategies when it is no real hardship for the child to sound out and blend the word; even if they need a little help with an unfamiliar grapheme.

As I frequently say; you don't know if something is causing harm until the harm is evident and then it is too late...

Sorry Maizie, I was not ADVOCATING this approach in any way - I am a firm believer in proper phonics teaching.

However, I know that some people say 'oh, but my child learned through learning whole words', and I was musing on what 'only learning through whole words' would REALLY look like and trying to suggest that in fact something else is likely to be going on.

The beauty of phonics is that it makes this 'invisible magic' visible and explicit to EVERYONE, which is why the percentage that learn to read using phonics is so much higher than through look and say methods, as the latter requires some 'invisible magic' to take place which is never made explicit.