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.

Well, missbop, it rather looks as though the children in question have invented their own memorisation method. That's not look and say. But it is memorisation. There's context and familiarity too which can be used for reading.

How do you know they will not have need of them at some point in the future learnandsay. I don't have a crystal ball, unfortunately, so can't predict if a child will struggle in later years. I can however, with hindsight say as a parent I wish my son had been taught phonics regardless of his reading age.

Oh I see- you don't have any real ideas about this. You just want to slam phonics, accuse anyone who teaches that way as being a sadist and ignore all the years and years of research.

I will tell you how children learn by not using phonics. They learn through sight memory. Or they break the words down automatically without needing to be taught- they have the ability to do this themselves.

But many many children can't and won't learn that way. My DCs were at school in the 1980s and learned though the mixed approach. They were given Real Books and supposed to learn to read somehow. It was the fashion at the time. It failed many children who were poor readers for years. Usually the children whose parents couldn't help at home or didn't want to. It was an educational disaster. My job at the time was teaching adults who had dropped through the net and were illiterate. They were taught using phonics.

I am not going to carry on posting in reply to you because it is a clear waste of time.

However, I'll finish by asking you one question- if, as an adult, you come across a word you don't recognise, how do you read it- which strategies do you employ in order to read it?

Now, do be fair, Missbobeep. Learnandsay has taught her YR daughter to read and has read lots of posts on mumsnet. Don't you think that qualifies her as an 'expert'?

It probably does actually, since that's at least one more than Masha

LOL Feenie

I will not add much to this already-lengthy debate. However, from personal experience, I would say:

• Not all children who APPEAR to learn through whole word recognition actually do so. My DS appeared to learn to read in this way, but luckily he was then given good synthetic phonics teaching in Year R and it turned out that in fact he had simply worked out the phonic code for himself (so starting out from a word and unpicking it, then using the 'bits' to read other words).
• Until phonics is really well-taught in all schools (by teachers who have been trained to do it well and doi not do 'a little bit of what we used to do' as well), and supported by proper phonic reading materials at all levels (rather than ORT appearing a few weeks in), then it seems very likely indeed that it is poor teaching / insufficient good-quality practice that is really the issue.

I mean, if children fail to add up well, we don't say 'ah well, we should get children to memorise the ansswers to all the possible addition calculations instead', we realise that there must be gaps in their basic knowledge and understanding, or poor teaching, or insufficient practice, and go back through it again, rather than saying 'teaching addition doesn't work'.

Oh I see MaizieD- I had missed that fact.

You are right. Yes, an expert.

My DCs were at school in the 1980s and learned though the mixed approach. They were given Real Books and supposed to learn to read somehow. It was the fashion at the time. It failed many children who were poor readers for years.

Were your children poor readers because of this, Bopeep? Is this why you feel so strongly about it?

I imagine, like most teachers, that she feels strongly because many children were failed.

When you know, as a teacher, that there IS a method which works and, because it isn't taught properly/or at all then children are STILL being failed, it's very frustrating.

At the time I had not done much phonics teaching myself and it is only now that I realise the gaps. I have tried to make it up as much as possible but at his age I fear I have missed the boat. My aim now is to get him interested in phonics and him to study it himself.

I don't think it is ever too late, but does he really need to study phonics? Does he mis-read words completely randomly, or does it approximate to the word but get it slightly wrong. If it is the latter, just encourage him to look more carefully and have another go.

Many thanks for replying on bopeeps behalf, Feenie. But I was more interested in her response, rather than your speculation regarding her motivation.

Well, that's me told!

Did you miss where she said she wasn't continuing to post on this thread and learnandsay told her to dip her head in a bucket CecilyP ? so you may not get a reply from her.

I thought she was just refusing to reply to learnandsay. Though you are probably right that she is away now.

I could have written both of the posts you quoted CecilyP
and lack of phonics knowledge hasn't been a major handicap to my son's reading but certainly a barrier to spelling/writing and I'm afraid for him when the gap was recognised as he had switched off.

If your DS was reading the FT at 2, I doubt there was a very wide window of opportunity to teach phonics before he could read, but how was writing/spelling taught at his school and how did he miss out there?

with the assumption that if he could read the word he would be able to spell it.

I am back to answer those questions but not to engage with learnandsay.

No my children were not poor readers. But what they didn't get at school they got at home through my professional training. Not all children are able to have that.

I have spent a lot of my career remediating - both children and adults-
poor reading ( and spelling) ability.

I become very frustrated with people who base their opinions on what has worked for 1 child without knowing much about the subject at all.

And I would agree with another poster that children who appear not to have learned through synthetic phonics have in fact cracked the code themselves. Not all children can do this which is why synthetic phonics- taught properly - works.

And in a class-situation, the teacher has to go with what works for most of the children, most of the time. Children who have managed to decode without formal instruction ( ie synthetic phonics) are fortunate and if they are bored etc than that is a case for differntiation- not throwing the baby ( phonics) out with the bath water.

But if he couldn't, I don't understand why was it not obvious to them that he couldn't.