Does anyone think phonics teaching has any harmful effects?

[housework]

I am happy to be persuaded either way but would be and would be interested to hear all views. Am thinking about dd and whether phonics has worked for her.
DD is 7, reads very well and comprehends what she is reading on the whole. She passed the Y1 phonics test getting the magic 32 so many children got. However, she's a poor speller to the extent that an Ed Psych has suggested testing for dyslexia. I'd like to do some more spelling work with her over the summer holidays. Today I did a bit of the Alpha to Omega placement test with her. She spelt crash as 'Krash' and chip as 'thip.' I let her do the next words 'splash' and 'thrush'. She spelt these correctly. With chip, I think she knew there were 'th', 'sh' and 'ch' to choose from and just picked one of them.
The above and other incidences make me wonder. Does phonics stop a child trusting their instincts? In her case, I think she is not considering how a word looks to help her spell it. She will always fall back on a phonetic spelling unless she already knows the spelling. If school had focussed more on rote learning, regular and rigorous spelling tests, would she spell better. At the moment they're all still ploughing through phonics because the failures have to re-take this year. But there are no expectations re spelling, barely any spelling tests, no words given to learn. And dd is the type that will only do the work if school have set it.
I'm just wondering where to go from here. Thanks for reading.

Days, weeks, months, years?

No, math, it wouldn't. They look completely different. They include different shapes.

You can't seriously mean that when you saw a correction from your teacher with a red line through the incorrect word, you didn't actually know what the difference between the two words was until you said to yourself 'ah yes, that one is es-kay-oh-oh-el', it's wrong'.

Surely you just looked at the differences? Else what is writing for?

Sorry, I should say, I totally respect you may have done just what I describe and spelled out the names to yourself, I'm just surprised (and fascinated) by the idea of it.

Since these words comprise approximately 75% of the words on any given page a child will encounter in any reading material aimed at children aged 8 and under, they tend to be learned pretty quickly if a child is being exposed to the written word.

You didn't actually read the research I quoted, did you math?

No, am I not talking about exceptional children who remember words after one exposure and I am pretty sure I did not say that.

I didn't say that you did. It's just a common claim here on MN

I believe that the US has an even higher rate of illiteracy than the UK...

I do think what I have described, in terms of how my mother taught me, is very similar to phonic teaching now, although not explicit lessons. My visual memory is almost an aside.

The flash cards and words on the board is what the school did alongside with practising writing different letters on a worksheet with a picture of an object beginning with that letter.

I do remember using phonic skills when sounding out words and when spelling unfamiliar words. Visual memory only helped for the words I had seen before.

"Searchlights" the UKs mixed methods based on what was/still is happening in the US was done in a very systematic way ... but it failed an awful lot of children.

Mrz-- Dolch words 'all the Dolch words can be taught before children finish the first grade in school. Words in the second and third grade lists are more common in books for those age groups, but they do appear in books for earlier grades, just less frequently.' First grade means age 5-6 with children all turning 6 during the year. In the DCs' school the Dolch words were mastered by the end of first grade. Along with a strong focus on phonics this is what their first grade consisted of, plus other elements of reading fluency and basic grammar. The aim of teaching the Dolch/sight words is to make text accessible to even beginner readers and it is assumed children will read outside of the classroom. More reading brings more fluency. Fluency makes reading more rewarding and children likely to do more of it. All the elements of the reading programme complemented each other.

Malenky, No, I did not look at the differences, and doing so would have been pointless since both s-k-u-l-e and s-c-h-o-o-l are pronounced the same ('skool'/'skule'/'school'). When it comes to spelling, pronunciation is sometimes more of a hindrance than a help. Only one version of the word 'school' is right and to get it right, memorising the right letters by some means and writing them in correct order is necessary (As Learnandsay said). The two versions don't just 'look different'. The difference is accounted for by different letters. The letters have shapes and the shapes have names - A, B, C, D, etc.

There are studies suggesting that when reading as a fluent reader, the eye recognises the general shape of a word in a very fleeting way, and the brain does not decode from left to right through each word, but I don't think this is what you're saying here.

Having taught 1st grade in the US, the method math describes is not more successful there than it is in the UK.

no more, not 'not more'.

'Malenky, No, I did not look at the differences, and doing so would have been pointless since both s-k-u-l-e and s-c-h-o-o-l are pronounced the same ('skool'/'skule'/'school'). When it comes to spelling, pronunciation is sometimes more of a hindrance than a help. Only one version of the word 'school' is right and to get it right, memorising the right letters by some means and writing them in correct order is necessary (As Learnandsay said). The two versions don't just 'look different'. The difference is accounted for by different letters. The letters have shapes and the shapes have names - A, B, C, D, etc.'

Sorry ... I don't follow at all. I didn't talk about pronunciation. I asked about the shapes.

I'm interested that you found the letter names so useful, but I don't see why you didn't just look at the letter shapes.

The names don't 'account' for the shapes. They describe them. It's the shape that I would use to distinguish one written letter from another. I had no idea this wasn't normal.

How do you cope when US friends refer to 'zed' as 'zee' - do you find it really throws you? Or do you just learn it as an extra letter, if you see what I mean?

Btw, I am familiar with the studies - it's called 'bouma shape', btw. But no, that's not what I'm talking about, as I am not referring to fluent readers but to learners.

People are capable of having multiple names for the same object otherwise learning other languages would be impossible. (And there wouldn't be so many slang names for certain body parts.)

The US has large disadvantaged areas and large immigrant populations that are illiterate even in their own first language, and often in English even if literate in a first language. That results in problems that are seen even in a country like Finland among similar populations (illiterate or sub-literate, poor, immigrant groups and groups whose culture does not value formal education or communities that have become alienated from the system), which normally sits atop the league tables for educational performance.

The US also has a completely decentralised education system and while my own DCs were successfully taught using the method their school used, children down the road could have been taught using another method entirely. Or they could have been badly taught using the same method. Just as in the UK, inconsistency is the norm, though variety is built into the system in the US because of the decentralisation (and the plethora of teacher training institutions, differences in quality from one university to the next, and the existence of many avenues into teaching doesn't help either).

When 'what is done in the US' is talked about you need to understand that education there is completely decentralised and that therefore 'the US' is not a very useful term. Public school districts operate independently of each other and private schools are separate again, and independent of each other. Even within the same district some schools perform well while others don't. Schools tend to be sensitive to the demands of the communities they serve. Systematic mixed methods might serve one community very well but the assumptions behind such a method (especially the assumption that what children do in school will be reinforced at home and that children have access to books and parents who value education) might be misplaced for another community and would therefore need tweaking or scrapping in favour of another approach. Increasingly, for communities who have not benefited from what schools have to offer, more community and parental outreach is being tried. This has been done in the UK too and has been found beneficial.

Teasing out exactly what accounts for illiteracy in the US is a political minefield 'difficult', just as it is in Britain.

I remember things by names.

It's a handy shorthand. I remember all shapes by name. DD1 has a name, DS has a name, DD2, DD3, DD4, the cat has a name. I appreciate that my mother has a name and is also known as Mum.

If you can remember the names of people and things in your environment (chair, table, desk) or more abstract shapes (square, circle, triangle) then it's a short hop to remember that the shape A is called Ai (and also in my brain acknowledge that it can make different sounds within a word and even on its own as the indefinite article).

I translate my zed into zee when in the US and when the DCs say it I know what they mean. American English I treat almost as a different language that I can speak and understand, read and spell. I can change pretty easily from one way of speaking English to another. My own first language is Hiberno-English (with a south Dublin accent); speaking American English in a way that can be understood by Americans without distracting them by the cuteness of how I speak requires a different accent and cadence. I don't treat any of it as extra, but equivalent (CAP-illary in the US, vs cap-ILL-ary in Britain; VY-tamin vs VIT-amin) or a translation in cases where different terms are used.

My DCs say Aitch which is normal American English, whereas I was brought up in a mixed Aitch and Haitch household and adopted Haitch as that was the norm in school. I now find myself using Aitch except when spelling something out for my mother (the Haitch parent). Both Haitch and Aitch are accepted in the UK in general (though with pockets of deep distrust towards Haitch) but Aitch is considered somewhat alien in the Republic of Ireland. When I say Aitch the same letter comes to my mind's eye as used to when I said Haitch. Equally, the DCs know what my mother is saying when she says Haitch.

But the method you described doesn't work all that well in a predominantly white, middle class school with parents who support their children at home. I doubt it works any better in a school with a more diverse intake.
I think there is a move towards well taught synthetic phonics with no 'sight words' or Dolch list though. Whether that will be any more successfully implemented than it has in the UK I don't know.

'But the method you described doesn't work all that well in a predominantly white, middle class school with parents who support their children at home. I doubt it works any better in a school with a more diverse intake.'

Says who?

math - fair enough.

I remember letters by shapes, so I suppose it comes down to personal differences. I wonder how many people do it like you, how many like me and how many a bit of both? I'm guessing a bit of both is the most efficient but I wouldn't know.

Though, FWIW, I think they believe babies recognize people before they attach names to them, and from what I've seen, this is true. I think attaching names is useful for a different reason, so that when you talk to a third party, you all know who you mean by 'jane' or 'bob'.

Btw ... sorry, going way off-topic, I just find this fascinating ... in those tests where you have to remember a random irregular shape, do you find it difficult or do you sort of temporarily assign a name to it?

Says an ex 1st grade and KS1 teacher. I've had far more success with systemic synthetic phonics programs in getting all children reading. From my experience I would say systemic phonics works best, followed by phonics mixed with Dolch word list, and the 'searchlights' strategy a long way behind.

Have Dolch lists been updated since 1936?

And yes, there is a move towards phonics and scrapping of the sight words, but with great variety in quality of teachers and resources of schools, to say nothing of differences in home environment, I would guess that some children will do very well and some won't, just as the situation stands right now.

Schools in England are meant to teach phonics very few do!

I guess the phonics check in Y1 is supposed to identify the ones who aren't (amongst other things.)

Malenky I haven't done any tests where I had to remember a random irregular shape but I did learn Russian as an adult, which involved a different alphabet as well as vocabulary, and when learning I used the letter names. Maybe there are similarities? When initially learning to decode I used a lot of worksheets where a passage was written in English but using Cyrillic script. I also speak and read Irish, where some letter combinations are are not found in English and pronunciation is different from what an English speaker could guess at using the rules of English 'mb', 'gc', 'bhf' for instance. I was never taught any Irish names for letters (this link illustrates pronunciation of all 26 letters in the English alphabet) so when spelling, used English names, but fewer of them. (Irish uses 18 letters of the alphabet.) Same letter names then, but different pronunciation.

Mrz -- no, afaik, no update since publication in 1948.

CD -- My own observation (as a parent) was that exposure to phonics in kindergarten followed by Dolch words plus phonics in first grade (plus other language arts activities) worked well for the majority of children in each of the DCs' classes. Some children were already reading fairly fluently before they got to kdg but the rest made great strides.