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.

Rabbitstew there seem to be many teachers who do not know how to teach phonics effectively in Central London, at least in the private schools with which I'm familiar. I do not know exactly what happens in the classrooms but I do know that many or most of the children I know at a large number of schools do not refer to the names of letters when they spell aloud and I have heard teachers use letter "sounds" rather than letter names when spelling aloud to children. For example, I've heard children spell "chair" as "/kh/ /h/ /ah/ /i/ /rh/" rather than "c - h - a- i -r" (I'm sure I haven't represented the sounds correctly but assume you can follow what I mean it sounds something like kh-huh-ah-i-rh" bearing no relationship either to the phonetic spelling nor to the "letter name" spelling). I have heard this sort of spelling from children as old as 9 children who can read and write but who identify letters only through sounds -- and only through one of the sounds associated with each letter. Hence my impression that the teaching method can lead to some absurd results.

Does it matter that children spell aloud in this odd way if they are able to put the correct letters on paper? Perhaps not, but it just seems very odd to me.

From many of the posts above, I assume I have just witnessed bad teaching and/or teaching by teachers who have not learned how to teach phonics effectively.

If a child asked me how to spell chair I would say what sounds can you hear when I say chair? and hopefully they should be able to tell me that chair has two sounds /ch/ & /air/ and know how to write the sounds.

If a child asked me how to spell chair I would tell her.

I want the child to be able to spell words when there is no one around to ask rather than be dependent learnandsay. Telling is the easy option but not a great teaching strategy.

My son knows the letter names (and sounds) and uses them. I think they were taught to them in reception, I thought it was part of the curriculum now. If someone spells something out loud to him he understands the letter names and uses them himself when spelling out loud and with acronyms.

If he cannot spell something, he sometimes asks (because it is easy to) I usually would answer, 'Well have a try'. If it has been wrong, it has usually been a good guess (for example 'hare' instead of 'hair') and I would discuss other ways of making those sounds with examples. He can use a dictionary and spell check. However he is good at spelling and usually remembers how words are spelt quite easily. Lower down the school some teachers gave words out to learn regularly and he never had any problems.

I remember it taking me longer to learn letter names, used to sing the alphabet song to myself for them and the order. I don't think we were explicitly taught the names at school, my mother just taught me the song.

Most young children will sing various versions of the alphabet song in nursery and reception.

I'm not really sure how my daughter is doing it at the moment, but she seems to know how to spell many (albeit simple) words. I think if she asked how do you spell such and such a word she really means just that.

The debate, rabbit stew, was not about the teaching of phonics but about the introduction of letter names in the early stages of phonics teaching.

The opposite of 'lucky' being 'unlucky' it seemed appropriate to use the term when talking of children who can be muddled by the early use of letter names. Just because a few children can cope with this it doesn't follow that all children can; it's better not to risk confusing these initially.

I just asked her how to spell school and she said

ess, cu (I asked which cu and she drew a c in the air) oe, oe el

and I told her that the word school actually has an aich in the middle of it. That's one of the things that you have to remember and we talked about the German word which she's already familiar with. I'll ask her again in a couple of months time. But it seems as though knowing how a word sounds often only gets you so far when it comes to spelling it.

No, at first she said both cus, and then changed her mind to one cu, but didn't specify which, so I asked her.

maizieD - you're just confusing the issue again. So you really, truly don't ever mention letter names? mrz does, and agrees that most children already know them from alphabet songs at nursery school, anyway.

A quote from mrz: "I don't know any teachers who can't bring themselves to say the names of letters or indeed any children who don't know the names of the letters of the alphabet rabbitstew." She also says (for the avoidance of doubt): "children are taught that is the spelling (and yes letter names would be used not sounds) for the sound /ay/ in day and is the spelling for the sound /ay/ in eight..."

Do you therefore disagree with this? Or do you agree that this is not in any way confusing????? In which case, why on earth are you suggesting that knowing the names of letters is confusing?

Do you think mrz confuses the children she teaches?

maizie hasn't said that she doesn't use letter names, she has said that if they are introduced too early they can be a problem for lots of children, causing confusion as I said earlier in this thread.

I would confuse them if I introduced letter names too early.

So you disagree with the teaching of the alphabet song in nursery, then? When would you teach the names of the letters of the alphabet? Clearly before you start teaching phonic spelling, given the way you have described it.

Phonics isn't pointing out patterns at all rabbitstew.

I avoid them wherever possible, rabbitstew because I work with the muddled secondary children and I have to make the connection between letters, and the sounds they represent, extremely clear so that children don't perpetuate the misunderstandings they have acquired. I particularly don't use them for spelling because it is news to these children that spelling is just writing down the sequence of sounds in a word with the letter, or letters, which represent those sounds and they need to forget about memorising letter strings.. Letter names bear no relation to these sounds and they are left floundering trying to remember a meaningless srting of letters.

None of the SP programme developers or trainers that I know would approve the use of letter names until the principle of letters representing sounds is firmly established. On the other hand, the alphabet would be taught by way of a chant or song as it is useful later for tasks requiring alphabetical order (though I don't really see much rationale for that, either; it's just as easy to sequence /a/ /b/ /k/ etc. as it is to sequence ae,bee, see etc.).

I'm surprised at mrz, but then, she teaches slightly older children (i.e she doesn't teach YR now, though I know that she has in the past).

If you spell using sounds you're going to end up with some things which don't make sense like "school has got a hu in it." Well, it clearly hasn't, but there is an aich in it, clearly. And apple has only got one pu in it but two pees.

P.S. I'm not surprised at mrz now! She posted while I was writing and confirms what I said.

No I don't disagree with teaching the alphabet song being able to recite the alphabet isn't confusing but it doesn't mean you know the relationship between the letter and the names you are reciting just as being able to recite the number names to 10 doesn't mean you can recognise the numerals or relate the name to quantities.

School hasn't got an 'aitch' in it either if you're using that logic, LandS...It has /s/ /k/ /oo/ /l/ and we spell the /k/ sound with these letters (pointing to them) 'c' 'h'...

The third letter in the word school is an aich. That's a fact.

rabbit I think knowing the correct names of the letters and sounding out words when trying to think how they are spelt can be two distinctly different things.

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.

In my head I knew the letters had correct 'grown up' names but I did not remember them all easily until I was older. I did know the alphabet song from being quite young but had to say it in my head to find the correct letter name IYSWIM.

I don't think anyone has ever tried to explain to my daughter that the second sound in school is k spelled ch and I hope they never do. What a load of rubbish! In German the whole sound in "sh" covering sch and the word is pronounced shoole (with a stress on the final e) That actually makes sense.