year 1 phonics check

[SmileAndNod]

Does anyone know if this is done in the summer term, or is there no set time for it? Also what exactly is it they check? That they can decode a word rather than read? It was mentioned at the start of the year but nothing since!
Thank you

Chikdren were struggling to read and write which was why synthetic phonics was introduced. All the research shows that children improve rapidly with phonics.

Just google functional illiterate to see what damage was done previously

Some phonics blog explained that the nonsense words are there to win any potential argument about children having seen the words before and just remembering what they are.

Personally I think that's a pretty friggin lame reason for using nonsense words! Why not just use rare and esoteric words (like esoteric) instead? If the purpose of decoding is to teach children how to deal with unknown English words then why not use unknown English words to do it with?

Seems logical to me!

And why has it become fashionable for politicians to pronounce the word secretary

secketery?

Even Michael Portillo does it. And I listened extra carefully to him, thinking that if there's one person in the universe who is going to say it properly it is he. But, nope!

The English language can be decoded if you know enough of the phonics. Not knowing enough phonics is unhelpful but using phonics to read is not. Evidence shows that skilled readers use phonics to work out new words. Less skilled readers use a couple of letters and then guess or skip over the word.

Children with good visual memories can go very far with reading in primary. The issue for them is usually when they are given more academic text books with lots of unfamiliar vocabulary later in secondary. It can really hamper them if they haven't worked out how the alphabetic code works for themselves. All this screening check does is to identify those that might have fallen through the cracks and rely on visual memory to hide the fact that they cannot blend.

collum of probably right. There is no reason why we couldn't use some very obscure words English words that won't be in the children's vocabulary. There isn't much difference between that and a pseudo word, except that with the pseudo words you know they are unlikely to have come across it before. Either way it's a short list of words (and IMO not a particularly difficult list) and and halfway decent decoder should be able to reach the required standard without too much trouble.

It's too late now, but I think some people could have been brought round by using real words. But the die-hard critics would have just objected even to that on the grounds that the reason why the children couldn't read the words is because children of that age would not have had exposure to words like that!!

I think in the end you can't please all the people all the time, so alien words is as good a solution as any will be (given that the problem being solved is by definition an artificial one.) And, in the end there are no good reasons. It's just the way it is because it is the way it is. It's not so much of a big deal anyway!

Well, yes. Not all children are daft!

And how did children who were taught without phonics, as was the case when I was growing up, learn to read new words?

Phonics isn't wrong. It's great. But it's just not the big cheese that some people are making it out to be.

Tbh I don't think it's going to make much difference. Any child that can't read a pseudo word because they change it into a real word is going to change an unknown unfamiliar word into one they know any way. Since this form of assessment has been used as a screening check for years they probably didn't see the need to change the format of the test. And like you say, the critics would have complained anyway.

I get the feeling that there are so many children failing the test that there is a bit of a need to discredit it to save face. I suspect there is a strong correlation between those teachers/schools who have very low pass mark and those that are making the most noise about how pointless it is as a test.

We need to see what the failure rate is this time round. It's not surprising that the failure rate the first time was high. It was a new test. But it's had a while to bed in and mountains of support/pressure behind it. So, we shall see...

wxactly rafals

Well, Ken Goodman has nothing to do with Look & Say! The reason that those schools of reading teaching have different names is because they are different!

I suppose the author could complain that some shopkeepers call cheese cheese and have a different name for ham. I suppose he could argue that it would be better if the shopkeeper gave both products the same name.

If he did I wouldn't use his shop and if he jumbles teaching reading methodologies up as much I wouldn't use his view of reading either!

Sorry on phone "exactly"
Link shows just what happens when encouraged to guess

ThreeTomatoes
My daughter learned to read the way yours has done - 40 years ago. She has always been a very good speller too. Unlike my son.

And u absolutely right about
best way to learn to read, and to write, is to, well, read, read, read and read some more. Early phonics teaching makes sense because, well, you have to start somewhere,

And phonics is no by no means useless, because the spellings for consonants have fairly stable pronunciations, and their sounds are also spelt fairly regularly (apart from the totally unpredictable use of doubling in 2-syllable words and longer, e.g. shoddy body). - And nearly every English word contains more consonants than vowels. Some have many more, e.g. sing, spring, string.

So learning the main pronunciations for the spellings/graphemes of consonants well to start with is very useful indeed.

If it wasn't for the many beastly spellings of vowels, learning to read and write English would be much easier and take far less time than it does.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay

The English language can be decoded if you know enough of the phonics.

That is simply not true.
Because i know German, i can see that 'cough, through, although' are of old German origin and are related to moderne German 'keuchen, durch, obwohl'. Ditto for French 'double, couple', but i know how pronounce them only because i have learnt English.

Children with good visual memories can go very far with reading in primary. The issue for them is usually when they are given more academic text books with lots of unfamiliar vocabulary later in secondary.
That is also simply not true.
During my 20 years in secondary i never met a pupil that started as a good, fluent reader and then went downhill. They generally went from strength to strength.

I met many weak readers who never became very good - because they never quite got to grips with the insanities of English spelling.

Well, Ken Goodman has nothing to do with Look & Say! The reason that those schools of reading teaching have different names is because they are different!

What an extraordinary statement, cg.

There are only 2 basic ways of teaching reading, one depends on phonics and the other on learning words as 'wholes' or 'pictures'. There may be some variations within this, such as throwing a bit of bad phonics into 'Look & Say' or a bit of 'whole word' learning into 'phonics, but essentially, those 2 'methods' are it. Ken Goodman promotes 'whole word' learning and has very little time (if any at all) for phonics.

braille, morse code, signal flags

I'm sure there are loads of ways of teaching reading if somebody bothers to actually think about it.

And while they're actually bothering they might like to find out, that like braille, look & say was invented to teach a certain kind of person how to read, within a certain kind of institution. It has sod all to do with Ken Goodman. (Neither does braille and nor does morse code.) And I don't think Ken Goodman was in charge of flag signals in Nelson's navy, but he might have been.

Enjoyable as your leaps of fancy are, cg, I thought that in this discussion we were talking about the method of teaching children to convert the alphabetic symbols which make up the written word into something meaningful which allows them to understand the purpose of the writer.

In which case Ken Goodman's wacky ideas are very pertinent.

Of course you could start a thread in which to express your unique viewpoint on how all the other methods of communication you mention should be taught. I'm sure everyone would be rivetted by it.

These threads remind me to put aside my ideas of ever becoming a primary school teacher and reveal what in my opinion is wrong with the education system. As a 'Lay person' who taught my children to read my view is that there are too many theories, too many conflicting ideologies (and accompanying egos) bounding about. Teaching children to read is simple. Get a book. Read it with the child. Read aloud every day so child hears new words. Child has a go by simple sounding out of letters. Do this every day even for a short session. Practice again and again. Make it fun with lots of praise and stickers. Build confidence by trying new books. Engage child's parents to help at home.

My child's school has engaged parent volunteers to spend 40 minutes a week with struggling readers, one to one, and it's making a huge difference. Children light up with one to one adult attention. No theories. No systems. Just reading. Shouldn't teachers be given more time to do just reading in the classroom?

Lovely idea, MyPantsAreGreen.

And what do you suggest we should then do with the (approximately) 20% of children who fail to learn to read through following your method?

Similarly, Threetomatoes, what would you say to those parents who 'read, read and read some more' with their children, but their children just don't ever really become independent readers? Is that because they're just not trying hard enough?

Don't you both think that if reading were so easy to teach, we wouldn't be failing any children?