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.

daft -- glad to make at least one person smile!

Nobody suggested that you shouldn't post and certainly not on the grounds of dyslexia, that would be very wrong.

Just.... At my dts school they do as mrz suggested with phonics lesson but in handwriting will refer to it as the letter 'see'. They aren't confused, kids are much more accepting than adults!

read my posts, try to understand my posts.

Why?

I'm terribly sorry you're depressed.

I don't quite follow what I've done wrong, other than questioning the orthodoxy ... but I do see that's very upsetting.

May I make a suggestion?

If you are so very happy with the way you learned - how's about you keep patting yourself on the back? I'm sure you will feel good about yourself.

Then, you can let everyone else who is actually worried about children not learning to read, discuss that issue.

I do see that this means we may spend less time discussing how brilliant you are.

It may even be you'll have to put up with no praise for whole days together.

Possibly, children who struggle to read will be prioritized over you.

But - just keep your head up! I know it's not 'normal'. Thanks for reminding me. If you just steel yourself, you can ignore it all, I'm sure.

babies - erm, actually, someone did.

pat pat pat pat pat pat pat

Well done, me

pat pat pat pat

well done, me

Well, let's be fair, the thread does read rather like that, learn.

I get that you are thinking of children who don't need much teaching, but it is important to think about children who actually need help.

Malenky - I'm terribly sorry you're depressed, too. Obviously, you are the only person on here who has been mortally offended. We aren't really worthy of you and your helpful suggestions, which are centred around your superior knowledge of how all children learn and not at all biased towards your own childhood experience like ours are. You are a genius and so incredibly good at keeping your cool in a difficult situation, rather than making a spectacle of yourself.

But - just keep your head up! You can ignore us all, I'm sure!

Oh, grow up.

I started out saying I might well be wrong. Did you not read that, or do you just prefer to make up stories?

Come on.

Is it official now, there's no point to this thread any more except in order to have a go at each other?

I don't know. All i know is, I started commenting politely. If you feel bad about how it's turned out, that really is your problem.

OK, it's my problem. Goodnight.

Oh, you can't ignore us all, then. Thank you so much for all your helpful advice. I must try to grow up and behave more like you. You do, after all, read everyone else's posts incredibly carefully, in just the way you would like others to read yours, it's just that your understanding of what I have said does not tally with my own. You are obviously right, though - your understanding of what you have said is correct and your understanding of what I have said is correct, and anyone not understanding things in the same way as you is barely literate and therefore wrong.

Right, I have had a quick look through some of the posts (23 pages is too many...).

My apologies, Malenky, you were polite to start with and my posts can be very provocative (and not always intentionally! I should think more about the tone of my writing before I post). I have a bad tendency to start out very provocative and questioning, but will happily temper my opinions if people who obviously know what they are talking about explain things to me in a way that I understand. Sometimes it takes a while for what someone else is saying to sink in and sometimes what someone says gets me interested in something not entirely related to the original post, which is no doubt confusing for anyone joining a thread after a break. However, I never pretend I meant one thing when I meant another. I am always as brutally honest about my own mistakes as I am of others'.

Basically, I still do not understand a lot of what you have tried to explain about how you comprehend letter shapes and sounds, or how you think children comprehend them, and I do not appreciate you attributing that to an inability on my part to comprehend basic English. Also, on pages 16 and 17 of this thread, the thread quite clearly started talking about learnandsay's and justtalking's adult strategies, or lack thereof, for learning how to spell new words. When I then commented on my adult strategy for spelling a word I didn't yet know, you then accused me of conflating one idea with another. You were the one doing that, I was not - I was commenting on my adult strategy for spelling a new word, because that was what was being talked about at the time, I was not talking about what I thought a child might do, or linking it in any way to what a child might do, because the conversation at that stage was not actually about children. Obviously, I can see that you would have wanted it to be a conflation, because your whole argument was that I couldn't tell the difference between how children learn and what adults do, but I most definitely was not the one conflating anything... You also complained that people were conflating reading with spelling. However, the original OP did that, so it was an unfortunate thread to be commenting on if you didn't like the two being mixed up.

Finally, who told you that you shouldn't be on this thread because of your dyslexia? I saw that learnandsay suggested you should start another thread summarising your "difficulty," but my comprehension of that, given the context (ie nobody was talking about dyslexia) was she meant your difficulty in dealing with the conflation of reading with spelling, because that's what you were both talking about at the time. If you interpreted that as a dig about your dyslexia, then I think you were being paranoid, although to suggest you should not be on this thread for any reason whatsoever was not acceptable - it's up to you where you post and what I have understood of what you posted on here, I have found very interesting. I just don't find it any easier to get my head around nameless letter shapes than you do to get your head around giving letter shapes names. That's no reason to tell me I don't understand basic English.

mrz - how do you teach children to write the letter c?

The only way you can teach young children ... by modelling and demonstrating the starting /end point directionality and lots of practice. and no I don't say "see" I say "start at the top, round, stop"

And my cat just scratched supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in her cat lit tray. Ain't it great?! as usual you are talking the contents of litter trays learnandsay

mrz - do you get them to practise writing the letter c on its own, or is it in the context of words? Why do they try to copy what you are doing - ie what have you explained they are practising that shape for? Is your explanation always in the context of the words the letter can be used in? And when do you teach them, or start referring to, the letter names? Did you find it tricky at first to avoid referring to the letters by name, or did that come naturally to you?

We always teach phonics in the context of words and text never in isolation.
Correct letter formation is taught separately in "letter shape families" so c, o, a, d, g, q, e, s would be taught because with the exception of e they all have the same starting point. Letter formation is taught as single letters then in the context of words.

As I said children will have been singing the alphabet songs since nursery, if not before, but we don't teach letter names as a "label" for a letter shape until children are secure with initial phonics knowledge ... and that varies from child to child.

I have never found it a problem not using letter names

Ah, OK. So even when teaching children how to write individual letters, you don't attribute a name to the letter they are practising? Do you just tell them "you are practising this letter, today"?

So presumably if you want the child to show you the letter you say show me that letter you were practising yesterday, and then show me that letter you were practising two weeks ago, and no, not that one, the one you were practising two weeks and two days ago, no not that one, the other one.

I still don't understand, MRZ. You teach them the starting/end point etc ... but don't tell them it's a letter called "C"? If, as I said before, the child later can't remember how to write the shape and is inquisitive enough to ask "Miss MRZ, could you please show me again how to write (meaning the shape or the letter C)", how would the child fill in that blank? "Please show me how to write that curvy thing that makes the sound /k/"? Isn't it simpler to say "Please show me how to write a C", given you have explained or are explaining that this curvy thing called C is a associated with various sounds.

Isn't it important for children to understand written words are made up of letters? (and spoken words are made up of sounds)? When my son was very little and I read books to him (yes, he is one of the fortunate ones to have parents who read to him!), I made a point of talking about the book having words and pictures and I'd ask him to point to the pictures and point to the words and, as he got a bit older, to point to the title. I then proceeded to tell him the words were made up of letters.

When he received cards in the post (yes, again, he's one of the lucky ones who has uncles and grandparents who write to him!), he learned to identify his name and would look through the post each day to see if he could find an envelope with (the letters of his name).

While my son is fortunate to have literate parents, I don't think the approach we took is difficult and I think it can be replicated easily in a classroom (the book part; not necessarily the letter part -- though it might make for a fun "post office" game!). Compared with his friends (almost all from literate families, but many of which left the teaching of reading to schools) my son had much less difficulty learning letters and sounds because he understood letters are the building blocks of words and letters can be associated with various sounds.

You seem to be a very effective teacher, MRZ. I just can't believe you really show children shapes and don't discuss the fact that those shapes are letters -- do you?!?!?

MRZ -- some pages back on this thread, you said "there are an awful lot of children and adults who can work out how to spell words using phonic knowledge". Using "phonic knowledge", how would a child work out how to spell the large metal things people sit in to fly? ere-plane, eir-plain, air-plain, ear-plane, air-playn, air - plane, or some other variant of the /air/ and /pl/ and /ay/ and /n/ sounds (or perhaps /ah/ and /r/ as well?... I don't know whether /air/ is considered a sound in formal phonics). If the child used anything other than airplane, would you correct her in some way, even though "phonic knowledge" was applied? If so, would you do so without speaking and simply show her how to write the word? Or would you continue to instruct her by saying /air/ /pl/ /ay/ /n/, leaving her to work through various possibilities until you affirmed she had spelled correctly. Or.... could you tell her that in this case "air" is spelled a-i-r and "plane" is spelled p-l-a-n-e? Or is there some other method??

(One could, of course, argue whether it matters if a child spells "correctly" or not since spelling is just a convention and changes over time. From reading your posts on various threads, I assume you would not make this argument.)

Regarding use of NATO's alpha-bravo-charlie over the phone: my own experience is that most people even airline agents for those old-fashioned enough to speak with them use modified forms to clarify letters over the phone ie "P as in Panama" or "B as in Barcelona" which presume both an understanding of letter names as well as an understanding of how various words are spelled. I know few people who can recite alpha-bravo-charlie all the way through to Zulu and fewer still who can recite the old Western Union "alphabet" (adams-boston-chicago...zero I had to look it up myself!); but just about every person I know is familiar with A-B-C-D...

Checked with a 5 year old just...

he spelt it

Air o plane (saying we've done /air/ in phonics and plane has a split digraph).

I think what would be really helpful is for parents to have an idea of spelling age ie what age you would be expected to spell certain words at. Clearly aeroplane is not a year r word but i would expect cvc words spelt correctly... Most of the 800 children i have taught (yikes didn't realise i was so old) have taken 2/3 years at infant school to master the basics of reading (then after that just improved vocab and comprehension) whereas they would take 5/6 years to master standard English spelling rules "pupil can correctly spell polysyllabic words, homophones, regular prefixes and suffixes"

I teach in a very different context to mrz- high level of family support, high level of spoken English on entry, some children reading before entry - but it still takes a long time to learn to spell!

Isn't that because spelling all words correctly is not just about understanding phonics, Babies? Just as reading fluently, with comprehension, is not just about understanding phonics, it's simply the best place to start the process?

True - phonics helps with decoding - the first step to reading - and is a starting point for spelling. You need other skills too, knowledge of patterns, etymology, context for homophones... It takes time. But learning spelling without phonics is frankly a nightmare. I teach a child whose phonic knowledge is poor (y5) because he accidentally learnt to read pre school when his older brother was learning. His mum said she put no effort into it, he just picked it up easily. Attitude wise he's the kind of child who won't learn something that he doesn't see the point of so he paid no attention to phonics -why would he, he could read... Also this was pre y1 screening (which i am sure would have picked him up) and before school really taught phonics first. Now his spelling is atrocious, think he got 3/20 on the y5 qca test because if i ask him to sound it out he looks blank and has no starting point. I sent him for sen screening but all came back clear. It's hard to build without this block being in place.