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.

But as i mentioned earlier spelling rules are taught weekly at ks2. We look at things like the use of root words to help spell longer words, common endings, hard c vs soft c, homophones, common prefixes and suffixes...

Most of you are focusing on ks1 and while it is true that some learn to spell well at ks1 about 50-60% of the children who i have taught gradually acquire the rules during ks2. We have 4 years worth of spelling lessons prepared at school because it takes time to acquire for most, several of the rules are revisited for children who missed it first time around... We do use sounds to help with spelling but there are other elements too, eg we teach them to say wed-nes-day to help with spelling it.

The old fashioned spelling rules (going much further than I before E --) are of course phonics related since the letters of the alphabet are related to sounds in words, but they are often also based on etymology, homophones, etc. Sometimes all you have is context to tell you whether your word is their, there or they're. Phonics can only take you so far. Relying on phonics alone would mean your spellings would be wrong a lot of the time. My DCs learned sight words in Grade 1 (age 6ish) along with phonics training (they were reading already however)

Wrt knowing which sounds the letter makes if you learn the name first?
I think despite the best efforts of teachers, most children are aware of the names of the letters. I also think most children are capable of knowing the letter name and the letter sound at the same time and that this does not slow down the process or confuse them. If you are calling a shape by the sound it makes is that not a form of naming it anyway?

My DD is in Y1 and has weekly lists of spellings which help her to notice spelling patterns or differences. For instance, she might get oo sounds and get something like roof food boot school and group soup route troupe or perhaps ruby rude flute rule or something. Those aren't real examples but it's often something like that. This week she has 'focus on past tense' so looking at adding either -ed or just -d to words and noticing the difference between what you do with eg look and smile to form the past tense. The spellings aren't tested, she just has to write them out a few times and think about them. It's worked very well for her and he spelling is largely very good. When she doesn't get it right, phonics works brilliantly because at least it is obvious what she means.

How can it possibly be 'context', math, 'their', 'there' and 'they're' look different.

If you prefer to think about the names, of course you should do that. But I don't see why you are ignoring what the words look like.

We teach the children they're in a sentence should be replaceable by they are - so they have to plan out the whole sentence to be able to work out which spelling it is. Similarly their is for when it belongs to a person....

That means we are teaching the children context. Some can of course visualise it - the chances are that they won't need many of my spelling lessons, ime they are the minority...

My class primarily spell out words using letter names but use phonics (those who know it - they were pre phonics revolution at our school) to help sound out harder words. And fwiw i don't see the use of 'ah' 'buh' 'cuh' to help - it's either the name or the sound and 'cuh' is neither...

Oh, I follow what you mean, sorry. I didn't think of that as context, but I understand - you teach them what the different spellings mean.

They are spelled differently but they sound exactly the same. Phonics and the way a word looks are not the same things at all in this case. When a child is spelling and deciding which spelling to use, context is key here. Otherwise they could spell correctly but use the wrong one.

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Yes ... but the context doesn't necessarily have to do with letter names.

It's the letter names bit I really don't get. You describe something that isn't to do with letter names and then conclude that the names are really useful. Well, sure, I see that. What I don't see is why you think they're necessary, especially at the very early stage.

I know 'cuh' isn't the correct way to pronounce the sound that c makes when you are teaching phonics, but its difficult to write the sound you make in the back of your throat to sound out a hard c, excluding any vowel sound, without just writing 'c' or 'k'...

Well, of course, malenky, you could dispense with the letter names altogether and refer to the letters by their shape but that wouldn't be very practical when talking about spellings, especially to someone remote.

Ok. Sorry, I'm obviously not being clear.

I am not saying we need to dispense with letter names.
I am not saying we need to dispense with letter names.
I am not saying we need to dispense with letter names.

I am asking why people think they are essential.

Arguing 'oh, but they're very useful' or 'but maybe doing it a different way would be difficult' is not the same thing as demonstrating that letter names are essential.

If they're not essential, then perhaps we could accept some people who struggle with them also need help, instead of taking the attitude that letter-names must be used and therefore anyone who can't cope, simply doesn't deserve to learn to read.

They're not essential.

In order to spell you need to uniquely identify all 26 letters. How you do that is up to you, (but sounds alone aren't sufficient because at least two letters have the same sound)

Then you need to identify the correct sequence. How you do it is up to you.

Thanks. That's a bit different from what math was saying, which was why I started asking her about it, as I have said a couple of times.

Sorry to get frustrated but it worries me that this is so similar to the attitude my parents had to cope with when we were learning to read - the assumption (with no evidence to back it up) that what was convenient and helpful for most children must be necessary for all children. And that if a child struggled, it must be because they were trying to do things wrong, not because the system wasn't working for them.

Doesn't deserve to learn to read? We're talking about spelling.

Yes, ideally teachers should be flexible if the system isn't working. Parents should also try other things and some do. One parent who tried other things wished she had done so earlier.

Again, I obviously wasn't clear.

I started asking math about the original subject of the thread.

I have been trying to understand what she means while the discussion has been moving between spelling and reading. I think this is not a helpful conflation, as I have said. Several times.

Perhaps then it's time to start a new thread summarising your difficulty because at 16 pages long and without resolution I'm not sure how easily your answer will come in this one.

Gosh, thanks.

I had no idea that my 'difficulty' meant I wasn't allowed to participate in threads.

Maybe if you and others learned to comprehend what you read, you'd struggle less with basic logic and understand my really-not-very-complex posts?

justthinking perhaps you could explain how knowing the letter names help you to spell a word you have never seen written down ... or even how you would go about tackling spelling a word you didn't know.

perhaps learnandsay would also like to explain how she would start to spell a word she hasn't memorised.

"In other words, there's a slight difference between what a child needs to know and understand to read and what they need to know and understand to write" no there isn't

"To hold up this "shape" C and call it "curling cuh" is absurd," which why we don't do it ... but is it less absurd to hold up the letter and say this is "see" and then the child writes I can c the c

Spelling a word I didn't know? Exactly the same way I'd drive down the road with my eyes shut!!

So you never learned to spell words? Or you never learned to spell words after you left school?

Doesn't sound terribly productive, does it?