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.

Nobody told me you need to be smoking a lot before coming on these threads.

have you been smoking learnandsay ... another nasty habit!

No need to be rude.

If you are referring to what you do, that's fine. If you made a mistake and intended to describe what children do, that's fine too. It's just good to be clear which you meant.

mrz - yes, when talking to a hotel in France. I had to use the French alphabet, so that they could spell my English name properly.

Malenky - no need to be rude. At no point did I say I was a child. I said you were treating me as a child to suggest I couldn't use a dictionary to check my spelling of words.

I wasn't being rude.

I didn't assume you were a child until you said you were describing that.

I think perhaps you should read your posts over? Then you will see how incoherent they are.

I don't think that's true at all.

No, sorry, I didn't say I was describing a child, I said I was describing what I do myself because I thought we'd gone on to talk about what people do as adults (what with you having asked learnandsay what she did once she left school). Where do I say I'm talking about myself as a child? And perhaps you should read your posts over - they are not a shining beacon of clarity, either!

Interesting, isn't it, rabbit, when we look back?

'How on earth would I help them sound out words, if I didn't know myself how I was and wasn't allowed to talk about the sounds and which letters made them???? '

Oh, here you seem to be saying children learn like you do.

'if phonics helps you learn to grasp the mechanics of reading more quickly, it can help you start to read more, more quickly, and if you are reading more, you are likely to start understanding more, more quickly, and you will be seeing more words more often, so will start recognising them as whole words more quickly. Most children don't have to be taught every tiny detail of reading and spelling to be learn how to read and spell. After all, how many of you remember being given spelling lists for every word you know how to spell?!!!!!'

It's almost like you're using the second person to talk about ... children. By mistake? Or because you were talking about children?!

'What I mean is: imagine the sounds that make up chair, /ch/ and /air/, then thinking of the letter combinations that correspond and making your attempt is not the same as saying cuh, huh, ah, i, ruh (as in 'old style' vaguely phonic alphabet I was taught), which is where the confusion you have described could lie. I do remember being taught letter combinations but my initial alphabet was how I labelled the letters when I was small.'

Obviously, you didn't intend to refer to your childhood here, I must be misunderstanding.

Do you want me to carry on, or is it obvious you've forgotten that you did start off talking about children's experiences? Whoops.

OK when did you last use the "English" alphabet rabbitstew ... someone reversed into my parked car and all the UK companies I've dealt with over the past few weeks have wanted everything spelt in the NATO alphabet ...

Um, you can speculate about children's experiences without being autobiographical, merely curious.

Why are you going back to posts before the point the conversation explicitly moved on to adults?????

Or are you under the impression that after 19 pages, things still haven't moved on????

This is true, and none of us had an issue with it. But you claimed you weren't speculating, and it's been demonstrated you were mistaken.

If you meant, you were mistaken - oops! - but now you want to reclaim the situation and explain you had a good reason after all, of course, no-one minds if you do.

It might not shed the best light on your arguments about reading comprehension, though.

What I don't get is why you wouldn't just say 'yeah, I misremembered, oops'. What do you think you gain from pretending it was deliberate?

they haven't really have they

rabbit - yes, most of us do manage to hold in our heads both the OP, and other sentences. This is called 'comprehension'. It's really useful, IME.

Talking about children's experiences isn't the same thing as talking about one's own experiences.

Yes, that's absolutely true, learn.

My own feeling is that this thread has been trashed now and it's time to start a new one.

None of this is helping to answer op's question, that's for sure!

will starting a new thread change anything learnandsay ... you will still be driving along with your eyes closed

I'm very sorry you feel it's been trashed.

From my perspective, what seems to be clear is that you feel any questions are unacceptable, and anyone like me who is dyslexic, should not be allowed to talk to properly literate people. I would suggest that you need to think about the ramifications of that idea. I'm sure we're not the same as you, and I'm sure it is upsetting to find that what you imagine was true, was not a universal experience. But I don't think that excuses you suggesting that dyslexics or anyone who doesn't learn like you should therefore be unwelcome.

Btw, my initial post on this thread was to say that some form of phonetic teaching has been around for centuries. I thought that might be helpful to the OP.

I thought the OP had been answered by about page 2 of the thread. Her child either doesn't know how to spell /ch/ or isn't hearing clearly.

Some people find spelling easy ... some find it hard! I am one that finds it hard ... I didn't do phonics!

Phonics is for both reading and spelling - the two are linked!

Reception and Year 1 to some extent should be about phonetic spelling with year 1 and year 2 transitioning to actual spelling. Daily phonics teaching should teach alternative ways of writing different sounds - this is something a fair few of my year 2s find hard. We try and think of rules and then does it look right - this comes from reading experience.

So no OP I don't think phonics stops children trusting their instinct. ch - she has heard the wrong sound.

I love phonics!!!!! but there are always going to be people who find spelling hard!