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.

So if someone asked you how to spell a word you didn't know you wouldn't totally helpless.

Why would anybody ask me to spell a word I didn't know? That's about as smart as asking for a French translation from someone who can't speak French.

You must know what you mean by that gnomic utterance, LandS, but I'm sure as hell puzzled

Sorry, posts are coming thick and fast. My last post referred to this:

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

because they want to write it down and don't know either?

Wait until your daughter gets to secondary and is using technical language that isn't in your vocabulary and says "mum how do you spell?" ... and you say "why would you ask me that's about as smart as asking ..."

Well, usually when you are an adult, you come across new words quite a lot.

Do you just ignore those, or what?

Is your vocabulary still the same as a child's?

I'd suggest using a different word that they did know. In just the same way as if someone wanted to buy an expensive ticket and couldn't afford it I'd suggest buying a cheaper one instead.

My OH asked how do you spell helicobacter pylori which I assure you isn't a word I was familiar with ...

Using a different word that someone does know is great, but I think it's limiting.

It's not comparable to the plane ticket thing - if you use sounds and shapes, you can teach a child how to spell a new word, so it's not comparable to not having the money.

What you are basically saying is that learning as you did put a limit on what you could learn, right?

I can understand why this might be true (though I think you are actually being unfair to yourself here), but I don't see why it's a good thing.

Yes that's what some very young children do learnandsay, stick to the safe words they have learnt to spell by heart and produce the most boring writing you could imagine. [yawn]

I'm not a child.

No-one said you were.

No but you are adopting the same tactics as some 4 year olds

I don't think she is adopting the same tactics.

I think she has simply forgotten what it is like learning to read, and honestly believes she does it this way. Lots of people do think that.

Well sure! I'm hoping that if I came to the edge of a cliff I wouldn't walk off it. Probably a four year old wouldn't either.

Well some young child only ever use words they can spell when writing independently and it seems that is the tactic learnandsay adopts too

Eh?

What on earth has walking off a cliff to do with it?

I don't think spelling requires that level of risk learnandsay

mrz - I'm sure spelling doesn't require that level of risk, mrz, but it also requires more than a childhood memory of your phonics teaching.

Personally, having had a good stab at spelling out a word I wasn't sure of, I would check it in the dictionary.

No, it doesn't require more than phonics. Why would it?

How would you know to check the dictionary if you didn't know the word? You would not know where to start.

Don't be silly - there is more than one plausible way of writing out many words "phonically." So you can check in the dictionary whether you 've got the right way. I'm really not the only person in the world capable of checking my spelling is correct using a dictionary am I?!...

Well, there isn't really, is there?

They look different. That's why we have letters.

I'm sure your way works for people who weren't struggling much anyway, but how useful is that? I worry more about people who were struggling.

So how would you start to have a good stab at it rabbitstew ? and assume there isn't a dictionary/spellcheck/phone/ipad/computer to hand.