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?

Tbf I realised it was a lost cause when it was me versus 20 others including the lecturer. I wasn't that sure of myself. It was what led me to Jolly Phonics though, looking for a different method.

Well, if he really was saying "cut-a-tuh" then he would have difficulties, wouldn't he? I know you have to make some plosive effort with some sounds, but that should be minimised, not camped up to make an inaccurate point.

If phonics is taught to teachers by individuals who make such basic errors as that, it's not surprising there are more than there should be who lack the skills/confidence in what should be a fundamental area.

Zebedeee - it's true that you can't just use phonics, as some words are homographs. And some letter combinations have a small number of possible pronunciations. But the point is that you use phonics first to work out the options and then other knowledge to select the write option. Much more reliable than guessing.

"Someone needs to deliver an intervention - do they not get paid?" technically no as I deliver interventions in my own time, before school or during lunch break, as do colleagues

It was about 15 years ago. I doubt he'd even heard of 'pure' sounds or synthetic phonics. His lack of phonics knowledge was probably the main issue. It was about the time of the release of the NLS and I suspect there was some pressure from the Head of Department to really 'sell' it.

But that session was the only teaching on phonics I received in 4 years. The same for my whole year of 150. 3 weeks really pushing picture clues, reading round the word, context clues etc. and 1 week telling us you can't use phonics to teach reading. I doubt the situation was much different in other ITT colleges at the time. I don't find it surprising that some teachers are having trouble letting go of those ideas.

Did you read the reseach from New Zealand regarding the long term ineffectiveness of RR zebedeee ... there is similar research from Australia where it is also widely used.

Paper - I think it's more like s-e-z? But even if the ay sound were regular, I'm guessing the word is being used before that sound has been taught.

zebedeee Dandelion readers do NOT have sight words!

Yes, say is 'decodable' but not if you have only been let loose with s a t p i n. But 'says' (also 'decodable', and the word that is introduced pretty early on in the Dandelion/Sounds-Write scheme, isn't, in the way I speak at least, s-ay-s but sezz). But it does make for a talking point - if you take the s off looks it is look, but take the s off 'sezz' and you get 'say'.

Comes up quite early in PI, I think. s-e-z is right. Point out the 'ay' is another way of writing the /e/ sound and then blend through the word.

I'm not completely au fait with Sounds-Write and Dandelion readers but am almost certain that would be how they deal with it. I can almost certainly guarantee that they don't teach it as a 'sight' word.

x-posts with mrz

They call them sight words!... Inside front cover of my editions.

Yes I have seen various things put out by/published by Martin Wheldall, Macquarie University in Australia to promote his Multilit programme (which does teach sight words).

From the Dandelion site

"High?frequency words are common words, some of which have complex spellings. Beginner readers may have difficulty decoding them.
To help with these words, point to the graphemes (letters) and say the sounds

Yes, I'm a teacher. And so far I'm quite a successful one In no way am I saying that phonics isn't important. I don't doubt that it is the most important and best way to learn to read and to spell. However, especially when starting out, there are other, in my opinion, valid ways to approach text. Looks like I'm the 'always one' in this case

Kevin Wheldall was one of the original members of the Making Up Lost Time In LITeracy initiative which was set up to research and develop interventions. The research has been intensively peer reviewed ...

www.afr.com/p/national/why_australia_fails_at_education_RRrO0RxwYUWTudYMMghc0K

The New Zealand Massey University research has no connection to that carried out at Macquarie University.

www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Massey%20News/2013/8/docs/Summary-National-Literacy-Strategy-2013.pdf

zebedee,

There must be a rabbit away somewhere in that school you keep quoting; either that or the RR teachers are ignoring their training and using lots of phonics!

I have watched 'exemplar' RR lessons and training sessions, read lesson transcripts, read reports of RR observations and read one of Marie Clay's instructional books. How any child learns anything from RR is a complete mystery to me - if you read Marie Clay you may well find that it's a bit of a mystery to her, too!

The advantage children gain from RR is daily one to one attention. I feel from what I have seen and read that the only children who 'succeed' are children who weren't too bad in the first place. RR does have a very consistent failure rate of 23% of the children they work with.

I suspect this is the school maizieD webfronter.com/towerhamlets/oldfordprimary/other/OFPS_English_policy_2013.pdf

phonicsgovernor
I'm trying to change the things that I can change

I am merely trying to get u to consider if the things u want to change really need changing.

Phonics is a very good way to begin learning to read and write. Having good phonics teaching materials in Reception is essential. But beyond that, with English spelling being what it is, learning to read and write is more and more mainly a matter of learning by rote.

Children can start to learn to read with phonically simple texts, but they gradually have to learn to cope with more and more words in which not all letters have predictable sounds (man - many, on - once, shout - should). - That is not phonics in the normal sense of the word, although phonics evangelists now call virtually all teaching of reading and writing 'phonics'. This has left parents very confused about what phonics actually means.

If teachers teach the tricky words in the ORT books before they give them to children to read, they are still perfectly usable, if the school has nothing else.

The tricky words in each book could be picked out and pasted into each book, with the tricky letters picked out in bold, to help the children, parents, classroom assistants (and some teachers too).

With respect that is utter RUBBISH!

Masha - you are not a phonics expert, which is what the thread title asks for. You have, in fact, never taught any children to read, ever. Your authoritative posts are based on no actual experience of primary school teaching and are all meant to further your spelling reform cause.

I am actually amazed you still post here after your disgusting posts a couple of days ago likening spelling to child abuse. MNers were very upset and rightly so.

Any children's book would be as suitable for learning to read (as they are in all other European languages) if all English graphemes/letter strings had just one pronunciation, if these did not have variable sounds:
a: and – apron, any, father
a-e: came – camel
ai: wait – said, plait
al: always – algebra
-all: tall - shall
are: care - are
au: autumn - laugh, mauve
-ate: to deliberate - a deliberate act
ay: stays - says

cc: success - soccer
ce: centre - celtic
ch: chop –chorus, choir, chute
cqu: acquire - lacquer 19

e: end – English
-e: he - the
ea: mean - meant, break
ear: ear – early, heart, bear
-ee: tree - matinee
e-e: even – seven, fete
ei: veil - ceiling, eider, their, leisure
eigh: weight - height
eo: people - leopard, leotard
ere: here – there, were
-et: tablet - chalet
eau: beauty – beau

• ew: few - sew
• ey: they - monkey

ge: gem - get
gi: ginger - girl
gy: gym – gynaecologist
ho: house - hour
i: wind – wind down ski hi-fi

• ine: define –engine, machine

ie: field - friend, sieve imb: limb – climb ign: signature - sign mn: amnesia - mnemonic

ost: lost - post
-o: go - do
oa: road - broad
o-e: bone – done, gone
-oes: toes – does, shoes
-oll: roll - doll
omb: tombola - bomb, comb, tomb
oo: boot - foot, brooch
-ot: despot - depot
ou: sound - soup, couple
ough: bough - rough, through, trough, though
ought: bought - drought
oul: should - shoulder, mould
our: sour - four, journey
ow: how - low

qu: queen – bouquet
s: sun – sure
sc: scent - luscious, molusc
-se: rose - dose
ss: possible - possession
th: this - thing
-ture: picture - mature
u: cup – push
ui: build – fruit, ruin
wa: was – wag
wh: what - who
wo: won - woman, women, womb
wor: word – worn
x: box - xylophone, anxious

• y-: type - typical
• -y: daddy - apply

z: zip – azure

It's too early for those stupid lists!!!