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.

Of course it was obvious but their attitude was
I was worrying about nothing as he was such a good reader he'd get there given time

He was such a good reader that he obviously wasn't trying with spelling and he was a typical lazy boy

That keeping him in every playtime would force him to write which he obviously could do if he wanted as he was such a good reader

do you notice a theme?

Finally in secondary school they decided that perhaps he really did have a problem and suggested he should just word process his work because obviously that would fill in the gaps in his knowledge (or do I mean hide his difficulties)

Yes, I get the theme now, mrz, though I am surprised they still thought it was just laziness right up till year 6.

Did the word processing help? If his poor writing was because of his lack of phonic knowledge, I am not sure how that was supposed to work.

No the word processing didn't help but at least he had a spell check that sometimes supplied the correct word if he was close enough with his attempt to what he wanted to write and he could produce a side of A4 that was partially readable.

It's his spelling that is the main problem he doesn't know what the write to begin writing the word.

He did see 6 different EPs over the years who eventually suggested phonics around Y9/10.

Thanks for the full reply, mrz. Is his problem lack of any sort of phonic knowledge or inability to do anything with it if he had it? How was he with a game of I-spy when he was wee?

He could play I spy with letter names but not with sounds.

Ah, I see my 'speculation' was accurate. Thanks, Missbopeep.

Yes, but you couldn't tell me if bopeep was talking about her own children.

And I said I understood where her frustration 'probably' came from. I don't think that was unhelpful on a thread like this.

Interesting. There's a thread going on on TES Primary (called Reading in Y6) at the moment about a teacher teaching Y6 who has some pupils who are still learning to decode.

Presumably something is going very badly wrong if pupils are still learning basic decoding skills in Y6. (She does say that it is the first time that it has happened to her.)

L&S,

I had a pupil who will still be learning to decode at the end of their compulsory education, such is the nature and degree of their SEN. At Year 4 age, they had reached the point of being able to decode their name, and CVC words, but no digraphs as yet.

Nothing 'went badly wrong', but the child in question had specific learning needs and despite daily lessons and 1 to 1 support, the process of acquiring the ability to read is always going to be a slow one for some children.

From the way that she's phrased her problem she hasn't made it apparent that the stragglers have SEN. She just points out that they are not very good at reading. And from the way that she has written her post it looks as though she needs to teach them all together as a group (which she is finding difficult.) If the stragglers have SEN it might make more sense to teach them separately. But if they don't I can see why she might want to teach the whole group together.

Bad phonics teaching lower down the school may well be at least part of the answer if there is no specific severe SEN [the group thing does not rule that outl, of course, I had 'a group' of statemented children in one class] - as I have said above it may well not be phonics as a method for learning to read that has failed, but phonics BEING TAUGHT BADLY that has failed.

It is highly likely that a child in year 6 has missed the systemtic, synthetic phonics which is now recommended as a method of teaching, unless the school was enthusiastic and incorporating it 6 or more years ago- and many were not and still are not.

That too, Missbopeep. I certainly wouldn't take a small number of Year 6s, who possibly didn't have systematic phonics teaching as their primary method of learning to read, as evidence that 'phonics is going badly wrong', more that the 'mixed methods' which preceded phonics and in many cases are still in use is going badly wrong...which we knew...

Something having gone badly wrong applies to anything having gone badly wrong. Regardless of what went wrong these children still can't read very well in Y6. Secondary school seems set to be a challenge for them phonics or no phonics.

Have you missed all of maizieD's posts? She teaches secondary age pupils who cannot read and write! Thousands of children have been failed by mixed methods. If you've taught to read by looking at pictures what exactly do you do when there aren't any!

you've been taught

But mixed methods may not be to blame. Perhaps the children just aren't very good at reading.

at learnandsay.

Why are you so keen to condemn synthetic phonics? After many years of millions of children being failed by trendy methods which didn't work terribly well, SP is now the recommended method in schools. Your condemnation of them is pointless- so why do you persist?

Is this based on your own experience as the parent of a child who has been at school for one term?

With resepct- and I am trying not to patronise- that does not give you much experience in the teaching of reading and writing.

For the record, I have spent half my career as a secondary English teacher, when i admit I knew nothing about phonics or reading though I was pretty hot on Shakespeare :) and the other half as a literacy specialist working across all age groups. For the latter I had to have further training. I have seen how mixed methods failed children.

There will always be the bottom 20% of children/population who are slow to learn. They have either general or specific learning difficulties. So it is nigh impossible to get 100% children up to level 4 KS2 for instance.

But what has been shown- is that SP works for more children more of the time than any other mixed methods. It works for children who are less able, have difficulties ( it's the method dyslexia teachers have always used) and the research has been done to show this.

Learnandsay, if you knew what my more tha averagely intelligent dh went through at school went through at school because of lookandsay then you would realise what absolute crap you are talking.
Lookandsay left a good percentage of children functionally illiterate. Ie they can get by on a day to day basis, but dont have the skills to take. A very high proportion of the prison population are functionally illiterate because of methods like lands.
My dh probably does have a learning difficulty,as does my ds.
My dh was finally taught phonics when he was 10 and learnt to read but the damage was done.
My ds was taught synthetic phonics from nursery and learned to read well, but still has memory recall problems.
My dd absorbed reading and would have learnt using any method. By your dds age she was ahead of your dd,without any hothousing.
There are very few who cant eead through phonics and there is plenty of evidence that phonics improves reading ages by months and years in a matter of weeks

What crap am I talking? All I said was these children can't read very well. That appears to be a fact.

You are right learnandsay. It's not about me at all.

It's about research, training and experience which other people more expert than me have passed on and I have learned and taught over decades with pupils/students aged 6 to 65.

No, it's not about research either.

They cant read well because they d have not been taught the skills to read well, not because they dont have the ability. Whole word methods dont give children the skills to read. Children like my dd will work the rules out for themselves, children like my ds and dh will look at the word and not get it, they will struggle to even remember the word the next time they see it, lt alone work out the code. They are equally intellilgent children. Even children with specific learning difficulties can be taught to read usually using phonics