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

Cmmon, mash,

Can't understand garbled English, decode it, decode it. It means literally what it says. Here let me show you.

Copy put her wagon itself before tulips in breakfast.

Copy is clearly a person's name.
The wagon is called itself (using non capitalised English.)
Tulips is obviously another non capitalised name and breakfast is clearly a place.

Failure to understand garbled English is plainly caused by a lack of effort and not enough emphasis on decoding.

I can decode that sentence perfectly.

And know the difference between phonetics, phonemics, phonics, semantics and semiotics. And also recognise a strawman argument.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously?

masha if your bliddy lists made any sense I wouldn't have a problem with them but they just serve to demonstrate your complete confusion with the English spelling system!

I was going to write I'm sure masha has the best intentions but putting all that effort into those bliddy lists something that isn't going to happen isn't exactly sane behaviour. but I thought that was a tad cruel so refrained however given your response you may as well share my original observation!

Here is the Research report on the phonics test by the Assication that represents English teachers if any of you are interested.
www.nate.org.uk/index.php?page=8&paper=11

www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/YOPC01/YOPC01_home.cfm

Mrz: Nice to see that u ar actually trying not be as gratuitously nasty as u often hav been in the past. But IMO u ar very much one of the many people who see nothing wrong with being cruel to children.

U think that's it's perfectly ok to keep bamboozling children with nonsense like 'so - dO, on - Only, gave - havE', although u can see every working day that this makes their lives harder than need be - especially ones at the lower end of the ability range.

U ridicule me for suggesting that we should consider reducing such nonsense.

I advocate modernisation of English spelling, i am an advocat of spelling reform, spelling because i would like to see children in the bottom quarter of the ability range, and also those who get little educational help at home, being givn the chance to lern far mor than they currently can during their 11 years at school.

This would of course help others too. But it's a bit like increasing the personal tax allowance - it makes a much bigger difference to those at the bottom of the income scale.

Modernisation of English spelling would help children in the lower half of the ability range far more than those in the upper. And that's why it will be difficult to get off the ground: articulate, educated people whose support is needed for such improvements are in the upper half, and are not really that bothered about the rest.

It will only happen when the UK and US begin to understand that less divided societies are nicer to live in for everyone, including the better off.

If English spelling was made more phonically consistent,
having a phonics check might more sense,
but there would be far less need for it, because far fewer children would have trouble with acquiring decoding skills.

There would also be far fewer disputes about how best to teach reading, because with phonically regular systems nobody ever considers using anything but phonics for teaching children to read.

It is that, 3toms! You'll be reading David Crystal next...
However, it's too late for spelling reform. English is spoken and read by millions of people worldwide. They have a huge range of accents. They 'say' English words differently (hell, I had a problem with understanding and being understood when I moved from Essex to Yorkshire!). They associate different sounds with the same grapheme "I say tomarto, you say tomayto'". Which 'accent' do you respell to and what about the millions of confused people who would no longer find English easy to read?
At the moment the same English words can be read and understood world wide whatever accent they are 'read' in.

I am highly amused at marsha's latest attempt to win over the doubters; respelling would end the reading wars! In your dreams, marsha

I gave up on Masha's posts when she started with the childish "U"

It is that, 3toms! You'll be reading David Crystal next...
However, it's too late for spelling reform. English is spoken and read by millions of people worldwide. They have a huge range of accents. They 'say' English words differently (hell, I had a problem with understanding and being understood when I moved from Essex to Yorkshire!). They associate different sounds with the same grapheme "I say tomarto, you say tomayto'". Which 'accent' do you respell to and what about the millions of confused people who would no longer find English easy to read?
At the moment the same English words can be read and understood world wide whatever accent they are 'read' in.

I am highly amused at marsha's latest attempt to win over the doubters; respelling would end the reading wars! In your dreams, marsha

Apologies for double post; posting from tablet which appeared not to be connecting to MN. Isn't tecnology wonderful (not)?

Spelling is being reformed everyday in text messages. Masha's u is only odd in this forum because it's unconventional here. But it's a mainstream concept elsewhere. The Concise Oxford dictionary even contains gr8.

Well I would be the first to admit I would hate spelling reform as I know I would struggle to read and write English. For example, Masha proposes the use of onely. I cannot read that as only, I read it as one-ly, and I doubt I would ever remember the change of spelling unless consciously thinking about it as 'one-ly'. If I were to change the word I would make it ownly - at least that uses the 'right' phonetic ow sound.

Maizie
Using the fact of different accents as an obstacle to spelling reform is a red herring. They have not prevented German spelling being repeatedly modernised. And i can't help wondering if the many weak links between English letters and sounds lead to greater divergences between accents?

Moreover, Current spelling differences, such as 'blue shoe flew through too' don't serve any accent well. We could easily standardise on what i call 'world English' - the comprehensible English used by the vast majority worldwide.

respelling would end the reading wars! In your dreams, marsha
There are no reading wars in the rest of Europe.
I am certain this entirely because no other European orthography tolerates the use of identical graphemes for different sounds, such as 'go - dO, supper - SUgar, when - WHo'.

I've never seen onely as only, but it's not a logical change, I agree.

logically it's

ownlee

You're quite right. There is no point in making spelling changes which are as difficult to understand as the original word!

Maybe we should congratulate children who spell phonetically in school and admit that they understand the concept of spelling better than we do. And, in fact, instead of correcting their spelling, we should in fact copy it ourselves.

Masha has been using this forum long enough to know U is not acceptable. U is only acceptable by text, and then it is not often the norm. My teenage dcs don't even use text speak very much even when they are texting and my ds friend's even correct his spelling on facebook.
We also have lovely spell checkers which rule out the need for spelling reform

no idea where the rogue apostrophe came from

I suspect that masha types u here precisely because it's not acceptable. If she used gr8 and all the rest of it as well, then people wouldn't see her protest, but only somebody who was using text-speak instead of English in a forum. Limited abuse is a form of legitimate protest.

Limited abuse is necessary because, although people argue that conventional discussion is taken seriously, in many cases it is not. People who argue conventionally are, by and large, ignored. But people who use some limited form of disruptive protest need to be considered, even if it's only temporarily. The use of u is not hugely disruptive.

ThreeTomatoes,

Nice to meet someone without a firmly shut mind.

If u want to understand how English spelling ended up so chaotic, u need to look at the history of English spelling, rather than the history of the language.

The two are often lumped together and much is made of English being a fusion of several languages (although its main sources are just German and French) and the vague notion of a Great Vowel Shift, but its spelling is in a mess mainly because it was deliberately messed up.
Accidentally a bit too, by the first printers of English books who spoke no English.

The widely admired David Crystal is a nice guy, amusing speaker and an entertaining and incredibly profilic writer, but what he says about the history of ES is not worth reading. Same old. Same old.

The problem of fusion, masha, would be considerably lessened if English anglicised its loanwords. The fact that English, consciously refuses to do that (in opposition to languages which go out of their way to do so) means that English not only is a disgusting mongrel of a language, but looks and sounds like one too!

"u" doesnt even sound like "you" anyway. It's "uh" It's the letter name not the sound.