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?

The instructions are for the adult to say to the child, columngollum. The test is not written - it's a reading test for 5/6 year olds and is oral.

Maybe you could inwardly digest some facts before you gob off?

Oh, no, sorry, you're right. All I have to do is tell somebody that the alphabet consists of 26 letters and they form words and then they can read and spell. Because of course, if the adult reads the instructions the child absorbs them by osmosis.

All you need for perfection in life is an adult. Right, got it.

Or alternatively you could teach a child to read and decode for TWO WHOLE years before asking them to DECODE some words and they will do just that

There's a little picture of an alien beside the fake words
To test reading, and especially English reading, with fake words is the height of lunacy, because the sounds of English letters often depend on the word they are in, they cannot be reliably decoded: man - many, supper - suggar, on - only.

Most children know this already by the end of their first year at school. Therefore, when attempting to decode words they don't merely sound them out but look for sense, because that is a very essential part of learning to read English.

By the end of their second school year (age 6) many children are way past simple sounding out, but the silly phonics test expects them to revert to that early stage again, and many of the best readers don't get full marks, or even fail the test.

The phonics screening cheek is a book (a bit like your earlier example of a picture of a dog with the word for the child to "read") and they get a supportive adult to provide verbal instructions ...takes a whole 3 minutes for good readers.

I assume you have never been a SENCO or Ed Psych masha it's an effective, standardised method of testing decoding ability widely used around the world.

www.spelfabet.com.au/2012/12/nonsense-words/

"By the end of their second school year (age 6) many children are way past simple sounding out" True my very best readers didn't sound out the nonsense words but they correctly read every single word!

an effective, standardised method of testing decoding ability widely used around the world.

In all alphabetically written languages other than English letters / spellings have merely one sound. This means that u can have a reliable decoding test. In English u can't. And learning to read English is certainly not just a matter of learning to sound out letters and blending.

The test could have some use if done a year earlier, to establish which children need help and to ensure that they get it. But teachers know which children are not keeping up. Getting them extra help is the tricky bit.

The test is in English Masha not in other languages ... as an expert you no doubt know that English is the official language in many countries, (the British Council estimate 75 countries /2 Billion people)
Antigua and Barbuda
Australia
Bahamas
Barbados
Beliza
Botswana
Brunei
Cameroon
Canada
Dominica
Ethiopia
Fiji
Gambia
Ghana
Grenada
Guyana
India
Ireland
Israel
Jamaica
Kenya
Kiribati
Lesotho
Liberia
Malawi
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritius
Micronesia
Namibia
Nauru
New Zealand
Nigeria
Pakistan
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Swaziland
Tanzania
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tuvalu
Uganda
United Kingdom
United States
Vanuatu
Zambia
Zimbabwe

not just in the UK.

"But teachers know which children are not keeping up."
yes and the screening check identifies which areas a child is finding most problematic so that the teacher can focus support effectively on those areas. It's called teaching!

'suggar'? What's that?

That spelfabet link is really interesting. I completely agree that as adults we often need to work out how to pronounce new words. But generally they don't look like nonsense words. They're portmanteau words, or they have regular spellings, or they're puns, or names (so we know we might need to check pronunciation) or borrowed from another language (and again we need to check).

But the list the website author made up looked like nonsense words - they looked irregular, like they were designed to trip us up. I'd be really uncomfortable if I were asked to read them in a test. Are there words designed to confuse in the y1 phonics test?

No, they are extremely straightforward.

No the Y1 phonics screening is not designed to confused it is designed to check a child's ability to decode words.

Not sure which words are making you uncomfortable

As Mrz says,
the phonics test is meant to check a child's ability to decode words.
It supposedly also
identifies which areas a child is finding most problematic so that the teacher can focus support effectively on those areas.

The real reasoning behind it is that if teachers know that their pupils will have to do a phonics test, they will use more phonics. It's a stick to make teachers comply.

Many pupils in Y1 are way past the simple sounding out and blending stage. For them, the test is completely pointless. That's why many good readers don't do well in it. They know that to read English well they have to look for sense and not just sound out and blend (plough through rough).

With 40 words, the test is totally useless as a diagnostic tool. U would also be pushed to find a single teacher in the whole of the UK who does not know which of his pupils is struggling with reading and why.

What they have trouble with is getting them the extra help they need.

Yes, masha, you're sort of right, most teachers have been saying the children that they expected to pass do pass and the ones they expected to fail do fail. But support also comes along with failure. So, it's not totally pointless. It might help if the teachers could ask for the support before the test because if they can already predict who will need it then they might as well have it earlier rather than later. I guess the government argument is that the teachers had all the time before the test was introduced and it's only now that they're saying this. So the gov might say the test has done what it was designed to do! I guess it depends which side of the argument you're on!

There has also been the spike around the pass mark, with accusations of teaching to the test, and only just. Hence the withholding of the pass mark this year.

mrz - for instance "breaf" - I initially read it as "bread", but the most usual pronunciation of "ea" is /ee/. I know she did that on purpose, but I found it unsettling not knowing which pronunciation was intended.

I've just looked at a sample phonics check - the nonsense words look like they're straight from Jabberwocky - I don't find them discomfitting.

mrz - for instance "breaf" - I initially read it as "bread", but the most usual pronunciation of "ea" is /ee/

There is nothing wrong with reading it with the 'ea' as in 'bread'. I did just the same thing, probably because the 'br' primes an experienced reader for that phoneme to follow it (bread, breath, breadth). However, it doesn't matter how 'able' a reader a 6 year old is, most of them are highly unlikely to be so 'well read' as to have the same reaction as us. They will be meeting 'new' words all the time in their reading (or they should be) so should be quite flexible in their responses.

Anyway, in the Phonics Check /e/, /ee/ or even /ay/ would be an acceptable response to the 'ea' grapheme.

Many pupils in Y1 are way past the simple sounding out and blending stage. For them, the test is completely pointless. That's why many good readers don't do well in it. They know that to read English well they have to look for sense and not just sound out and blend (plough through rough). absolute rubbish masha ... you really need to get your facts straight! For a start children in Y1 are learning the alternative spellings for the sounds of English and that knowledge is assessed in the check a child taught to use phonics will have no problem with plough, rough or through because unlike you they understand the relationship between spoken and written language.

Then she complains that we're rude to her

"mrz - for instance "breaf" - I initially read it as "bread", but the most usual pronunciation of "ea" is /ee/. I know she did that on purpose, but I found it unsettling not knowing which pronunciation was intended."

The child can answer bref (as in bread) or breef (as in seat) or braif (as in break) any would be acceptable.

Masha I would question your assertion that many Y1 pupils are way past the simple sounding out and blending stage.

I'm sure there are some pupils in this age group who almost never need to sound out. But I don't believe many of them could read e.g. tectonic, reassurance, interminable, fathom and so on, without sounding out.

Certainly, my Y6 class often need to sound out and blend. Even the level 4 and 5 readers.

my Y6 class often need to sound out and blend. Even the level 4 and 5 readers.
Sure, we all do with unfamiliar words for the rest of our lives.
And with phonically regular spellings this is very easy.
But many English words are not like that and cannot be simply decoded.
That's why bref (as in bread) or breef (as in seat) or braif (as in break) would all be acceptable pronunciations in the phonics test.

But in real reading only one pronunciation is usually right (bread, streak, steak), except for words like 'read, tear, lead' and children have to learn to link the right pronunciation to particular words to become fluent readers.

In English, the ability with which children are able to do that differentiates between good and slow readers.

[huge sigh]