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.

Malenky - sorry, I still don't understand you. My opinions (not my knowledge of facts, my OPINIONS, to which we are all entitled) are:

1. Teaching phonics is a good idea. I've said that throughout this thread.
2. Most children are not confused by the names of letters and at some stage, most children will find letter names useful. I can understand the argument that children don't need to know letter names straight away, I was just seeking clarification as to how, as a parent used to naming letters, I was supposed to deal with that, because my initial reaction was hostile to it and my subsequent reaction just confused as to how to go about avoiding the "elephant in the room" and was it really necessary to try so hard to avoid it?
3. Making phonics sound complicated and confusing and creating all sorts of rules for how you can and can't talk about letters and sounds (eg whether it is OK to say a letter "says" something or not, whether you are confusing your child to have mentioned letter names in their babyhood, etc...) may not be confusing for the teacher and the children they are teaching, but it sure as hell confuses me as a parent, which is off putting, and it is NEVER a good thing to create a system of teaching that alienates and confuses parents, when they are a vital part in helping children learn to read. So better teaching and explaining to parents of what it all means and why it has to be done in a particular way would be useful.
4. As adults, we do not just use phonics to help us spell. We have other tools to draw on. My understanding was that the conversation had moved on to adult strategies, because you started asking learnandsay what she did once she'd left school and she appeared to be talking about her adult strategies. Hence my comment about using a dictionary - I would, as an adult, use a dictionary and would as a matter of course and without thinking spell words for people using their names, not their sounds.

The whole word 'look and say' was a disaster for my 5 yo DD. It took years for her to read fluently and actually LIKE reading. It was so stressful not to recognise a word and make complete nonsense of the sentence by just guessing at a similar looking word.

I cant understand why its being said reading and spelling are different skills? My (usually) good spelling comes from remembering the written word as I read it.

My lack of apostrophes btw are sheer laziness

1. How did you reach the conclusion that "Most children are not confused by the names of letters" rabbitstew ...
2. there are no phonic rules
3. learnandsay can only spell words that she has learnt and you can only spell words if you have a dictionary handy ...

Another sorry - I obviously have very bad manners and don't think it matters one iota, once the original OP has been answered as much as it can be, if a thread wanders off on another course. It's like a conversation - I have rarely had a conversation with someone where the subject we started with is the precise one we end with.

My reception dts have told me that there are 3 ways to spell 'ay': ai, ay and a. They aren't confused - but they get phonics and have had excellent teaching. They give examples for each which they presumably have memorised and from the amount of (unwashable) board ink on their jumpers have had lots of practice writing examples.
Yes we need to help children with different learning styles in different ways but this isn't always easy to spot in a 5 year old - they don't tend to describe things like 'i see a picture of the word in my head' or 'i memorised the shape of that one'.

mrz - as I have said, it is my opinion. It is based on my personal experience, not scientific research. Your answers are a case in point to my point 3 - I find what you say cryptic and confusing most of the time and am less and less keen on the idea of phonics the more you write about it. And at no point have I said I can only spell words if I have a dictionary handy. If I am not confident about the correct spelling of a word, I will check it in a dictionary.

I know it is your personal experience but I don't know the extent of that experience it could be 1 child or 1000 children

The one thing that is very clear is that some schools need to be doing more in terms of helping parents, there should be a phonics workshop at the start of reception to explain how the school does it and how they would like parents to support. It'd save a lot of confusion!

Unless they're transparent words everybody can only spell words that they've learnt.

Thanks for apologizing, rabbit, it means a lot.

There are lots of books explaining it - I'm not sure which is the best, but I think if you google, you will find them.

I really appreciate you saying sorry.

untrue learnandsay

That's all right, Malenky. An explanation of what you mean would now be helpful, though, as I still don't understand you. I presume you now understand me?

Well, of course there are a few psychics about who are pretty good at spelling difficult words they've never seen before and a couple of ghosts.

no learnandsay there are an awful lot of children and adults who can work out how to spell words using phonic knowledge

I'll give you the first three letters of the word and you spell the rest, OK?

kin

rabbit - frankly, no, I still find it confusing that you're conflating two different learning stages, but please don't worry about it. It doens't matter.

Malenky - ps are you sure the quote you attributed to me, copied below, is mine?... I don't remember saying I was ever taught an old style vaguely phonic alphabet, or in fact typing any of what you quoted below.... Can you point me to where I wrote that? What page is it on?

'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.'

It was daftdame who said it

Malenky - I'm not conflating two different learning stages. At the start of this thread, I was talking about how children are taught and towards the end of the thread, having flogged that one to death and agreed that letter names are less necessary for very young children than they are for the adults looking after said children, I had moved on to talking about adult strategies. That is not conflating, that is moving on.... Why are you finding it so difficult to understand that?

Malenky - I think you will find the way the letters look in "rabbitstew" are very different from the way they look in "daftdame." But hey, I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't read carefully and has difficulty with comprehension?

to be fair rabbitstew's name is at the beginning of daftdame's post.

to be fair, I have been misquoted.

to be fair I think it was an honest mistake

To be fair, it was a personal attack.