Phonics Test Year 1 Query

[NigellaEllaElla]

DS is doing the "Test" next week. I did a few flash card words with him last night and just have a query.

He sounds out the word but if it has a "y" at the end he sounds it as "yu" as in the letter name, not sound. (Not sure yu is best way of explaining it but can't think of alternative) rather than "ee" but then still says the word correctly.

So for "Happy" he might say "H a p p yu - Happy"

Because he is saying "yu" not "ee" when sounding will this count as a fail even though he knows the word correctly?

Bloody stupid test. He's a really good reader for his age, possibly a little too good cause I don't think it will do him any favours in a test like this!

Thanks in advance for your help.

[daftdame]

learnandsay So you agree that your daughter's phonic skills help her? (sound out unknown words). She has improved since receiving phonics teaching.

[learnandsay]

Of course, any instruction has helped her. But she switched to sounding out words of her own accord before she started Reception.

[learnandsay]

Incidentally, my problem with phonics isn't that it's being used to teach children to read. That's great. My problem with it is that some people want to use it as a theory to explain to other adults how our language works and in so doing they skip over or ignore places where it doesn't work. It's a method for teaching children to read and if it's left at that then that's fine.

[Elibean]

mrz dh has that NATO app, and thinks it's supercool

[daftdame]

I agree with you in that the phonic rules of our language have changed over time. If you read very old texts you cannot help but notice this.

However this does not mean there are no phonic rules, just that they have not been completely static. The letters / combinations of letters do represent sounds (we do not have pictograms in the English language). There is much less variance now that we have standardised spelling, although there is variance.

When learning to read and write I think you have to start somewhere, just because there are exceptions does not mean a general rule is not useful.

So here is where we question phonics should be the primary method of teaching to read.

Other skills which people can use are sight recognition and context. However when these skills are relied upon with exclusion of phonics, problems can arise (decoding unknown words in isolation, being able to begin to write an unknown words etc). Added to this sight recognition may not have to be taught, may occur naturally. Using context for decoding unknown word is also unreliable (without any or very limited phonic skills).

Do people build on phonic knowledge naturally, without being explicitly taught synthetic phonics? I would say very definitely people can do this, as you can see up-thread it has happened in my family. I don't know how common my experiences are though. The reason my mother was keen to teach me to read was because she can remember not being able to read at 7yrs old...her sister eventually helped her when she admitted this to her.

[pickledsiblings]

How come we don't need a scientific approach to learn how to speak?

Whilst teaching analytic phonics does seem to 'work' it must be remembered that it is a 'tool' or approach rather than the definitive description of our language - I know people don't really think this but I'll try to explain what I mean by giving an example.

My DS (6) asked this morning, 'mummy, why does 'ay' have to say /a/? It made me think that there is too much emphasis on phonemes/graphemes and not enough on whole words. In fact, at one point, DS was writing with finger spaces between graphemes. I told him that the words and how we say them came first and that learning 'phonics' is a way of trying to find patterns in words and sounds to help us read and write them.

People didn't make words by consciously combining phonemes/graphemes - language isn't synthetic in that way and we need to make sure that our DC know that.

[daftdame]

pickled Interesting, I think in Hebrew letters do have individual meaning as well as the words...I don't know enough about this and you have set me thinking....

[pickledsiblings]

daftdame, I don't know very much about it either but I am curious too

[mrz]

People didn't make words by consciously combining phonemes/graphemes

Just the opposite pickled they assigned "symbols" (letters or combinations of letters) to represent the sounds in spoken words. The spoken word came first then the written.

[Hulababy]

First class at my school did this year's screening today. Very positive results so far. 84% pass rate from today's class which included a number of children with learning delays/difficulties.

[IsabelleRinging]

The year ones at our school did really well today, including one boy who finds it tricky and works with me for extra input. Only two children out of the 30 didn't score enough to pass and they were only a few words away from passing so they did well, but school has a very systematic approach to teaching phonics which works well.

[mrz]

How come we don't need a scientific approach to learn how to speak? well some children do - that's the job of speech therapists and speech pathologists but in general speech is a natural process written language is artificial

[Hulababy]

Today's class achieved 80% iirr. 6 didn't reach the required level, but no surprises again today.
Have a third class tomorrow, then about 30 Y2s who did not achieve the required level from last year to do theirs on Thursday.

[mintyneb]

I've no idea how she did but my DD had her assessment today. I had a feeling the teacher was doing them so on the way home from school this afternoon asked if she'd had a good day and done anything interesting? Yes, we did some writing. Did she do any reading with her teacher? No, she was busy doing 'jobs'.

Over dinner dd was chatting about something else to do with school and then said 'I had to do some obb and bob words with my teacher'. And that was it! I asked her a bit more but basically she wasn't bothered by it one way or another.

So, although I don't know how she did I'm pleased the teacher handled it in a lovely low key way.

[wigglywoowoo]

I may be a little confused but do the children have to say the sounds then the word or can they just read it? Also is it possible to pass the phonics check if you can read all the real words but can't sound out the alien ones or only a few of them?

[HarumScarum]

I think they can just read it. They're allowed to sound the word out if it helps them. The only thing that matters is if they read the word in a phonetically plausible way. I think half the words are alien words so no, you couldn't pass it if you could only read the 'real' words.

[Pozzled]

Yes, HarumScarum is correct. Children can just read the word without sounding it out. I think last year the pass mark was 32, so a child would have needed at least 12 alien words correct.

[Pozzled]

Posted too soon... If a child can only sound out a few of the alien words, that would indicate that they had difficulty with phonics, so that's exactly what the check is designed to pick up.

[Hersetta]

My DD did her test yesterday and passed withflying colours. The school did send home a sheet of Alien words for her to read with us over the weekend and as she sounded them all correctly I was hopeful she'd do OK. We were also asked to look ound for diagraphs over the weekend so did some work with her using ou, oi, ar, ea sounds.
Have to admit I am a little pround of her as she is a 31/8 birthday and sruggled for the first half of the year but something clicked about 3 months ago and she has come on really well.

[mrz]

the "pass mark" was 32 this year too

[wigglywoowoo]

Thanks, I did wonder how easy it would be for a sight reader to pass.

[learnandsay]

Give me the test and I'll tell you.

[mrz]

wigglywoowoo it is a phonics screening check - purpose to check if a child can use phonics to decode words they have not previously met. A child who can only read words they have learnt as whole words will struggle to reach the expected level

If you were 6 and a sight reader then if might be a worthwhile experiment but you aren't learnandsay

[ClayDavis]

I've seen many posters on MN say they are visual learners and read by sight not phonics. It might not be worthwhile but I'd be interested to see how many of them 'passed' the screening check. I suspect most of them would have no trouble with the pseudowords.

[Hulababy]

There are many sample screening checks online for anyone wanting to have a go.