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?

Oh dear!
I don't see the problem with the odd word not being decodable.

Put simply, one can either take a practical or an impractical approach to this problem. Of course in life it's nice to have everything one wants. But it's also very rare. If one hankers after phonics purity of course it would be nice, but not particularly practical, to do away with all basal readers not considered pure enough, even if they only contained the odd irritating word. But, life being what it is, it's useful to have the skill of making do with what's at hand. It's usually not too difficult for an adult to read the odd tricky word. (And if the adult can't read it) it's often not wildly difficult to imagine what the word might be, or to ask the supervising adult in school the next day. Hopefully she can read it. I know that's not a perfect solution. But life is full of imperfect solutions. Better get used to it and learn to deal with it.

I do so agree with you columngollum

column - I do largely agree with you.

Except, our children are attaining below national average at KS1, despite excellent value-add, because their entry level is so low. They need all the help they can get. Some of them won't be getting much help at home, for whatever reason. And then we give them books to read by themselves that they can't read by themselves.

I don't know. Maybe my son is the only child in the class to get discouraged by a few words that were slightly too hard. Maybe if I hadn't spotted it, his teacher would have done when she heard him read, and made sure to give him books he could decode by himself. I just want to be sure that we're doing the best that we can by all the children.

Phonicsgov
If your school is providing excellent value-add then it's doing pretty well, but some children do get discouraged by a few words that were slightly too hard, especially boys with particularly logical brains.

It's because my son was one of them, that i detest the inconsistencies of English more than i can say. That's why i will keep advocating, for as long as i am able to, some sensible amendments to the pointless spelling inconsistencies that are chiefly responsible making learning to read and write English so excruciatingly slow and difficult (e.g. gave - have).

But here and now, it is as Column says, get used to it and learn to deal with it.
Dealing with the tricky words in a book before expecting children to read them can be very helpful. I found respelling them more simply, as i mentioned above, also helped. Dealing with the tricky words is the hard part.

And i certainly think that understanding this and knowing which words are tricky, which ones absorb far more teaching and learning time than the simpler ones, and why, is also helpful.

@phonicsgovernor

The definition of madness is doing the same thing over again and expecting it to have a different result.

Is there any way that you can persuade your 'lovely' Head of KS1 that it might be worth 'just trying' to eliminate books with 'the odd decodeable word' in them for the children you feel would be the most at risk from these books? Just as an experiment to see if it would make a difference?

I'm afraid her rationale for using books with words beyond the current phonic knowledge of these children to me sounds no different from the 'I was beaten at school and it never did me any harm' argument. have you tried not beating them?

To people like marsha and gollum I would say that your lack of understanding of the fact that the method of teaching a child gets can very significantly affect how and what they learn is utterly horrific.

In fact, I learned, over years of helping these children, that tiny differences in approach can make a huge difference to their learning. Extraordinarily, people like you, of the 'they'll just have to put up with it' school of thought, are the first to moan about the 'imposition' of SP teaching because it is 'rigid' and because 'there isn't a one size fits all' and 'all children are different and learn differently'. Where the hell does all that fit in with 'You'll just have to learn to put up with it'?

@phonicsgovernor, there was a phonics conference yesterday and Gill Jones, the Principal Officer for Ofsted Policy and Guidance in Primary Schools, spoke:

She made it absolutely clear that Ofsted would be looking closely at the phonics screening check results, how schools were teaching reading (i.e. whether they were using decodable readers to build fluency and whether the decodable books were broadly commensurate with where children were in their phonics instruction), and whether phonics was being used as the primary strategy for writing.

maizie - I now have a meeting scheduled, and I will suggest exactly that. Thank you for your help; I don't really like conflict, and especially not when I'm challenging on a subject where I'm far from an expert, so your guidance is really useful.

maverick - that's really useful, thank you. We were above national on last year's phonics check, and we've upped the amount of phonics that we're doing in the reception class, because the leadership team recognise that the children need that boost right at the start. So I think mostly we are doing the right stuff and doing it well. Hopefully we can do it even better.

Do let us know how your meeting goes. Good luck [thumbs up]

"If one hankers after phonics purity of course it would be nice, but not particularly practical," actually it's far more practical to teach the 180 most common ways to spell the 44 sounds in English rather than have to try to memorise 40,000 words (av written vocab of educated adult) or the 1 million plus words in the OED.

I had an interesting conversation about the phonics test recently - how the inclusion of nonsense words means that some of the more able readers don't do as well because they try to pronounce them as real words. Which makes sense - we want them to learn the skill of trying alternate sounds for a grapheme if the first one doesn't make sense, and then expect them to work against that in the test to prove that they've been taught phonics properly. Had never occurred to me before that that would be a problem.

Papermover, here are the conference details;

www.insidegovernment.co.uk/event-details/phonics/214/

It isn't a problem phonicsgovernor. The child is continually told the words on this page aren't real words just read what is there my excellent readers (reading age 11+) scored 40/40.

but it is a good excuse

Interesting

So they're told which words are real and which aren't? That would cast a different light on the situation...

IME the only people I've heard use that excuse are people trying to diminish the validity of the test to excuse poor results. There are plenty of school where 95-100% of children passed the screening check and their more able readers all passed.

For me, it's the sort of statement that would raise a red flag about what might be going on with the teaching of reading.

I'll bear that in mind, thanks.

The following text provides an example of how you could introduce the check.
•
In this activity, I am going to ask you to read some words aloud.
•
You may have seen some of the words before and others will be new to you.
•
You should try to read each word but don’t worry if you can’t. If it helps you, you may sound out the letters before trying to say the word.
•
This practice sheet shows you what the words will look like.
•
Have a go at reading out loud these four words which you should have come across before [ at, in, beg and sum ].
•
The words on this side [turn over practice sheet] are not real words. They are names for types of imaginary creatures. You can see a picture of the creature next to each word.
•
Can you read out the words on this page for me [ot, vap, osk and ect ]?
•
Ok, now we are going to start reading out the words in this booklet and I’m going to write down what you say on my sheet.
•
In this booklet there are four words on each page. I will tell you at the start of each page whether they are real words that you may have seen before or words for imaginary creatures.
•
The first page has words for imaginary creatures and you can see their pictures.
•
Can you start reading the words to me?

It is important to tell the child whether they are real words or types of imaginary creatures on each page.

You can point to whole words to indicate which word comes next but you must be careful not to point to the words in a way that indicates how to decode them, for example, pointing from left to right or hovering over letters

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/221769/2013_KeyStage1_CheckAdministratorsGuide.pdf

Thanks mrz. Might ask for the data from the test and take a closer look.

There's a little picture of an alien beside the fake words, not exactly being constantly told anything. I suppose for a fake test to test fake reading it's as good as it can be. To be honest I wouldn't bother with it at all. I'd just get a book. Either the child can read it or she can't. I don't really care if she can sound out sluck. I'm not an alien.

There's a little picture of an alien beside the fake words, not exactly being constantly told anything

Count how many times the word 'imaginary' appears in the instructions, columngollum.

It's constant.

How many children are there out there who, when given tests of various kinds, read all the instructions including the one which says check your work before moving on to the next question and don't turn your paper over until you are told to do so and still make and leave stupid and obvious mistakes and still turn their paper over early?

Instructions schmuctions.

At least if you gave them a book they'd know what to do with it. No instructions needed.