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.

That's really interesting. If an innate or taught understanding of phonics is not the only way to learn the mechanics of reading, I wonder what other processes are going on; whether it is possible to have poor phonic awareness but still be good at spelling; and whether you have to have a superb visual memory to be good at spelling if you have poor phonic awareness. Does your y5 boy have difficulty with anything else, eg, breaking words down into syllables, or understanding rhythms and rhymes, or are these skills unconnected?

All of the children who were taught L&S and how to spell properly had poor phonic awareness and good spelling.

My guess would be that you need a superb visual memory to be good at spelling if you have poor phonic awareness; it surprises me that he had clearly memorised so many words pre school with a poorer visual memory unless memorising for reading recall and writing recall are less strongly linked than you'd imagine. His syllabic knowledge i would also class as poor in that he often uses two syllables - approximation of the first and last - to represent four. By october i'd spoken to his mum and told her from his presentation in class i'd guessed he was an early reader who had suffered from glue ear. She thought i was psychic. What i have failed to do is fix the problem, maybe i'm too late, certainly his attitude doesn't help and he gets by well enough... In y3 and 4 he had new teachers neither of whom picked it up as being unusual. He seems fine with rhythm and rhyme.
lands i'd love to see the research on this!
I myself was taught to read pre school by dm using peter and jane and flash cards, presumably look and say, although she did ask me to sound stuff out too. I was an early reader and very good at spelling, one of those annoying types who never needed to practise for tests - and i do tend to 'see' in my head words i am spelling so presumably good visual memory.
I am finding it fascinating watching dc learning phonics. My feeling is they would have learnt to read anyway but they are doing it quickly. Dd is my clone in many ways, reading easily and spelling well already, she often tells ds which words he has made errors on and what it should be. Ds is more like his dad - his memory amazes me and although he has learnt all sounds early on he had clearly memorised words which dd was sounding out. His spelling is phonetic - cvc, cvcc and ccvc words fine - and i loved his shape spelling of 'trighngl' and the instrument he labelled 'tambreen'.

All of the children who were taught L&S and how to spell properly had poor phonic awareness and good spelling.

Have I missed something up-thread, LandS? Where does this statement come from?

In the post above it someone wondered if it's possible to have one without the other and I said not only is it possible but lots of people did.

"Do you just tell them "you are practising this letter, today"?" no I say this is how we write the sound /c/ in cat ... or this is how we write /eigh/ in weight

" 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?..." well hopefully if they know the word they would know none of the above are correct juststartingtothink and recall that when they were taught the sound /air/ they learnt that in the word aeroplane it is spelt ...

Not if you're American it isn't. There it actually is spelled airplane, which actually makes sense. aerius is a bit too far back for most of us to remember.

So they would have to be taught the specific spelling for the word aeroplane and after that they would just have to remember that instruction to get it right. I think for most of us who have not had specific instruction in how to spell the word aeroplane, we would perhaps use our prior knowledgeto get as far as airoplane and think, 'something not qute right there' and possibly look it.

In the post above it someone wondered if it's possible to have one without the other and I said not only is it possible but lots of people did.

I bet you have never met one L&S.

Babies, I know a child like that too. Her school (in Ireland) taught reading but without much emphasis on phonics beyond very basic words. They relied far too much on the (mainly professional) parents doing the heavy lifting at home and filling in the reading journals, imo. The result was some children reading and spelling very well and some like the one I know taking a pretty wild stab at spelling and a bit put off reading because they can't sound out words in reading material aimed at children over 8.

Systematic spelling lists to learn could have ameliorated that (as Learnandsay suggests) but sadly this was not done either.

My own DCs picked up reading before exposure to formal phonics in school but their school was one where phonics was also taught and spelling tests were administered with very systematic lists followed, based on phonemic awareness, etymology, homophone awareness/context, and they are all good spellers. They are also good readers though two of them didn't read much from the time they initially learned to read until about age 10 (one said that was the point where books got interesting; one discovered technical books about weapons and planes and historical non-fiction 'The Navajo Code Talkers' at that point).

Malenky -- '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.'
That is one of the pitfalls of trying to teach roomfuls of four year olds in a way that doesn't take all week to cover one topic and results in most children learning in the time allowed. Classroom practice is loosely based on factory systems, less so now than in decades past, but the element of teaching in a way that most children will learn remains. The extremes at either end are bored or struggling. Interesting article on the topic of 'one size fits all'. There are elements of 'wave a magic wand' to policy-making.

but you aren't American and neither am I or the children I teach

No cecilyP they would not have to be taught the specific spelling of aeroplane just that is an alternative spelling for the sound /air/

That could be because the letter is a schwa sound so not pronounced /o/ mathanxiety

My guess would be that you need a superb visual memory to be good at spelling if you have poor phonic awareness; it surprises me that he had clearly memorised so many words pre school with a poorer visual memory unless memorising for reading recall and writing recall are less strongly linked than you'd imagine.

I think you need good visual memory to be good at spelling, even with good phonic awareness. I wouldn't think word memorising for reading would be strongly linked with word memorising for spelling at all. It's like we generally recognise the people we know, but how many of us would be able to draw them from memory? And trying to spell words without reference to letter sounds would be like trying to draw the word. When you say your pupil's screening for SEN came back clear, what did the screening involve? Surely he has a real difficulty, or are they implying that he could do it if he wanted but just doesn't want? Do you think it is his attitude or do you think the attitude is a front masking real problems?

I'm not saying that we're American, I'm just saying that the US has obviously put a bit of thought into the spelling of the word, whereas we obviously asked the last emperor just as he was scuttling back to Rome to shore up a crumbling empire.

No cecilyP they would not have to be taught the specific spelling of aeroplane just that is an alternative spelling for the sound /air/

But mrz, in your previous post you said that

well hopefully if they know the word they would know none of the above are correct juststartingtothink and recall that when they were taught the sound /air/ they learnt that in the word aeroplane it is spelt

which to me sounds remarkly like teaching them the specific spelling of aeroplane.

I wouldn't know, Euphemia, you haven't said what age he is!

No learnandsay the US simplified their spelling system where we retained the root spelling aer as in
aerate
aerator
aerial
aerie
aeriform
aerify
aerily
aero
aerobatic
aerobe
aerobia
aerobic
aerobics
aerobiosis
aerobium
aerobrakes
aerodrome
aerodromes
aeroduct
aerodynamic
aerofoil
aeronautics
aeroplane
aerosol
aerospace

No CecilyP that isn't what I said ... I said they would recall that when they were taught the sound /air/ they learnt that in the word aeroplane it is spelt ... which does not mean they will have learnt how to spell aeroplane just how to spell

Not in his dotage then, so I suppose the 2 things could have a connection.

But mrz if they learned how to spell aer with reference to the word aeroplane, they have pretty much learned how to spell aeroplane. Or are you saying that they would get the aer right but still might spell it aeroplain?

They could learn aer by reading lots of words CecilyP
aerate
aerator
aerial
aerie
aeriform
aerify
aerily
aero
aerobatic
aerobe
aerobia
aerobic
aerobics
aerobiosis
aerobium
aerobrakes
aerodrome
aerodromes
aeroduct
aerodynamic
aerofoil
aeronautics
aeroplane
aerosol
aerospace

but would not be focusing on learning how to spell the specific word aeroplane