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?

So, testing reading with fake words is the height of lunacy, Y1 readers are way past the simple sounding out and blending stage but we all do [sound out] with unfamiliar words for the rest of our lives.

Masha, I'm glad you're around to clear these things up. It all makes perfect sense now.

Really? Masha makes no sense to me as a Y1 teacher, Literacy coordinator and SENCO Using "non word" is the best way to check that children can decode accurately and aren't relying on memory (which obviously has limitatations) ... it is a phonics screening check NOT a reading test so does exactly what it is meant to do!

Some words are known as 'sight words'. These aren't to be fully decidable. However, they're the shorter and more commonly found words essential to reading even the most basic sentences in stories (e.g. the, said, etc.).
Longer, polysyllabic (many syllables) words don't fall into this category. If the school don't have enough of the phonic readers most suited to your child's reading level, a chat with the teacher and a visit to your local library (ask the children's librarian there for guidance) will be able to help you.

mrz- I was being sarcastic. I'm in complete agreement with you.

Some words are known as 'sight words'. These aren't to be fully decidable.

It's a fallacy. All words can be broken into their component sounds and all the 'sounds' have a letter or letters representing them.

Can you please tell me what the component sounds and letters in one and two are?

o/ne = /wu//n/

tw/o = /t//oo/

Papermover
My daughter, will be taught to read using mixed methods and will learn lists of the high frequency words.
And u will probably find that with your support she will learn to read very quickly.

Because despite what phonics evangelists tell u, children still learn the high frequncy tricky words, like 'said, one, two' as sight words. For as long as they rely on phonic decoding for those, they struggle with them.

As i've explained before, many high frequency words are as decodable as rarer ones, e.g. ^a, and, as, at, had, has, that, an, back, can,
in, is, it, if, did, him, his, with, big^,
but the following are not:
he, of, the, to, was, all, be, are, have, one, said, we, you, by, my, call, come, could, do, down, into, me, now, only, other, right, she, some, their, there, two, when, want, were, what, where, which, who, your.

No, of course they don't "struggle" what nonsense. They are taught the rules that link the sounds to the squiggles.

It's much more laborious to learn whole words by rote.

No one (except Masha) says that there are one-to-one correspondences between sounds/writing. Competently taugh phonics covers the words she lists, and does so far more effectively via the rote learning of 'learn and say'.

Because despite what phonics evangelists tell u, children still learn the high frequncy tricky words, like 'said, one, two' as sight words. For as long as they rely on phonic decoding for those, they struggle with them

Yes, ignore all those pesky phonics evangelists who actually teach children to read successfully every single day and listen to me, Masha, who has never taught any children to read but can still make as many sweeping statements as I feel like, totally unbacked by anything approaching experience or research.

You know it makes sense

"As i've explained before, many high frequency words are as decodable as rarer ones, e.g. ^a, and, as, at, had, has, that, an, back, can,
in, is, it, if, did, him, his, with, big^,
but the following are not:
he, of, the, to, was, all, be, are, have, one, said, we, you, by, my, call, come, could, do, down, into, me, now, only, other, right, she, some, their, there, two, when, want, were, what, where, which, who, your."

[shakes head and wanders off muttering]

Masha I know some HFW contain letter/sound correspondences that are uncommon (some more uncommon than others), and therefore might be seen as 'tricky', but you have to be taking the piss including 'down', 'now', 'right', 'when' and 'which' on that list.

Here is a quote from D McGuinness one of the early gurus of the recent phonics revival, a widely respected phonics expert:
‘It’s difficult for us to imagine what it’s like to have a transparent (or nearly transparent) alphabet code, like those in Italy, Spain, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Teaching a transparent alphabet is incredibly easy ... With only one spelling (or nearly) for each sound in the language, if a child can ‘sound out’ a word, he will always be able to spell it correctly. Learning this is so easy, that children start to read late (age 6 or older) and finish early, by the end of the school year. So easy, that no country with a transparent alphabet tests reading skill by decoding accuracy. Everybody can decode. In English-speaking countries, tests of decoding accuracy (word recognition, word attack) are the major tests (often the only tests) that educators and researchers rely on to measure reading skill and to define ‘dyslexia.’

In English-speaking countries, tests of decoding accuracy (word recognition, word attack) are the major tests (often the only tests) that educators and researchers rely on to measure reading skill and to define ‘dyslexia.’

Evidence to back this statement up, please.

She continues
"There’s a lesson here. Our reading problems are largely a product of our opaque alphabet code and the way it is taught ,"

and
"There is also evidence that learning to spell produces higher scores on a reading test than the same amount of time spent learning to read, a result that confirms Montessori’s insight about the greater generality (transfer) of spelling over reading."

o/ne = /wu//n/

tw/o = /t//oo/

and other examples of o=/wu/ are?
and tw = /t/ are?

once

Very clever, and a word which is unrelated, maybe?

Not clever at all you're a fan of etymology ... surely you know related words have the same spelling columngollum

Indeed, but the point is utility. Should it be necessary only to remember one and once as being the sole instances of o=/wu/ then memory is more necessary than anything else.

Paper - I'm really sorry to hear the meeting didn't go well. But your daughter won't be taught by just mixed methods, because you are doing a fab job of teaching her phonics. If you can keep building up her confidence at home, hopefully school won't do too much to dent it.

has anyone said at any point that memory isn't necessary. The point is memorising a million words by sight is an impossible task whereas learning 180ish spellings for the 44 sounds is quite achieveable.