Advice from phonics experts please

[phonicsgovernor]

I am a school governor with a (second) child in reception. Over the past couple of weeks we have had ORT books home that were not fully decodable. They are still in the single letter sound stages of teaching phonics but the books included the words bike, look and dinosaur.

Now, my child is fine - I can access other materials for him. But the school serves quite a deprived area, with higher levels of FSM, SEN, EAL and MENA children. And I'm wondering if there will be children who are not fine.

I spoke to the head of KS1, who is excellent and lovely, and she couldn't see the problem with the odd word not being decodable. So - is it a problem, and if it is, how should I tackle it?

To be clear, it's ds's school - not mine!

Sorry Feenie - didn't mean to tar you!

The older books are fine once the child has the skills and knowledge to decode the words but many schools send them home before the child is able to read the words without guessing.

'However the one London Borough that did poorly ' letting down over 9,000 children' is Barking and Dagenham.'

What did these 9,000 children do poorly/'failed' in - the phonics check, KS1 or KS2 assessments? Can you clarify please allchildrenreading. I've looked at one Dagenham school so far and they are at the top of the Ofsted dashboard for KS2.

Interestingly they had a higher than national percentage of pupils achieving level 3 or below and a lower than national percentage of pupils achieving level 4B or level 5 (and level 4 or above) in reading

That's in the 2013 KS2 National Curriculum tests zebedeee

and a quick look shows their results in the GPS test was the same

Thanks mrz. Do you have a link? My eyes! Some of the websites for the Barking and Dagenham schools are very poor.

www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=LA&superview=pri&view=aat&set=3&sort=&ord=&tab=3&no=301&pg=1

PaperMover the worst that could happen is they could be closed

It wasn't a problem in the summer because phonics wasn't statutory but it will be from September

Instead of saying to DD, "don't guess" say something positive about the stratagy I DO want to see, so "remember to sound it out". Have I summarised that correctly?

That's fine.

I sometimes would make it a competition, you get a point for every incorrect word, child gets a point for every correctly read sentence. It's amazing how accurate they can become!

The older books are fine once the child has the skills and knowledge to decode the words

That makes sense - would you wait till they all the sounds, or would it be okay earlier than that?

personally I would wait but you could organise books so they only contain words that are within the child's current phonic knowledge

DS3 is in reception, as a class they have finished the phase 3 letters/sounds and are looking at phase 4 words.
So along with single letters they also know:
Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

He is ok reading simple 'look and say' books, I have just had to show him things like i-e, and a-e. Although he definitely finds phonic readers easier and more interesting - as they aren't just repeating the same words over and over.

papermover,

There's a response for you here:

www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5870

Okay, I have had my meeting with the Literacy lead.

There were lots of areas of agreement. She loves Debbie Hepplethwaite, and we are using Floppy's Phonics and Phonics International for the teaching in school. The children get half an hour of teaching each day, and we follow DH's recommendation of teaching one phoneme over two days. The books used in school are entirely decodable.

However, the books used in school don't get sent home because they don't necessarily come back. She believes that 85% of the books sent home will be appropriate, and has binned a lot of the books we were using before. So, some of the books that are sent home are not entirely decodable with children's current knowledge. Partly this is cost related. But she also thought it was fine for "dinosaur" to be in a Stage1+ book for a couple of reasons: some children will be slower to pick up reading, but still want to have books with interesting stories to keep them engaged; and it's important to develop comprehension skills alongside decoding skills (she quoted the Simple View of Reading).

Now, from a layman's position, I absolutely agree that it's important to develop comprehension skills. I do this with DS in his phonics books: they have exclamation marks and question marks which help him to read with expression, and we talk about what is happening in the pictures, as they convey most of the actual meaning at this stage. Developing comprehension doesn't required non-decodable words.

The point about books with interesting stories is harder. She freely admitted that, in an ideal world, she would send home a phonics book and a book of the child's choice to share with their parent. But that depends on both funding and parents who will share books with their children and return the books to school, and we're short of both.

I need to send a follow-up email to summarise my concerns and suggest next steps. She's happy to engage, happy for me to sit in on a phonics lesson, happy to come to a governors' meeting or to work with a sub-committee.

So, generally a positive meeting. Anyone got suggestions about what you would do if this were your school? (Thanks in advance, and for just making it to the end of the post!)

One quick thought, phonics, Debbie's own programme 'Phonics International' www.phonicsinternational.com has decodable text for each teaching unit and as it's completely online you can print out as many copies of each piece of text as you want. They could be clipped in a file to send home.

Thanks maverick.

Also, www.speld-sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=182
Australia SPELD-SA (Specific Learning Difficulties Association of South Australia) provide free books online which follow the Jolly Phonics GPC introduction order. N.B. a couple of these books contain words that some teachers may feel uncomfortable about young children reading e.g. 'bum' and 'spat'