Phonics testing. Why not sight words as well?

[proudmama72]

Just that really. There's was extra effort put into phonics data collection. Would it not also to be beneficial to test knowledge of sight words. They seemed to impact my kids reading development.

Phonics is important, but just wondering why all the extra resources and emphasis solely on phonics.

But they are decodable,cg. It's just that a lot of teachers are as ignorant as you are.

The normal people just get on with teaching hundreds of children to read successfully - others who haven't will spend time on forums arguing about why it is impossible to do so.

Totally agree with Feenie's comment above. (Still laughing at "oh, the irony...") Don't remember ever "failing" anybody, frankly. If changing methods to suit a child's needs means you've failed a child then every teacher is failing children every day. I thought finding the most successful method for each child is what a good teacher does..... At no point did I say I continued to use sight words beyond the VERY early stages of reading, phonics then takes over as the most successful method. At no point did I suggest that phonics teaching wasn't the most successful method, I agree that it is. Please don't suggest that I banged on doing the same old thing regardless or that I am unaware of the failure of learning to read and its effects on older children. I spent many years of my career working with children with these problems and for someone who had been doing it wrong for so long had an alarmingly high success rate. No idea why Mr Gove bothers with teacher-bashing, there's more than enough from teachers on Mumsnet to go around.

I do not know why you are fighting this so hard.
Believe me, I've asked myself that too. I just like to understand things really. I want a narrative in my head that explains to me why this is right and that is wrong. I haven't got there yet, though one of your other comments may be a help.

No, it is not. It is doing precisely what you describe, just reading words immediately without having to sound them out. But there is a neurological difference between 'learning' words as global wholes and 'learning' them through the decoding and blending route. It activates different neural pathways in the brain. 'Whole word' learning also, whatever you may believe, confuses a great many children.
I think this could be the crux of it. So they do know the word as a whole, it's just the way that goes into memory that makes the difference? If they learn the word the phonic way as described in Letters and Sounds until they can read it immediately at sight, can they then drop the particular unusual phonics they needed to learn it until a later stage?

If that is the way it works I would certainly be fascinated to read the research behind it, what exactly has been tested and how.

Intuitively I'd expect there to be a big difference between "this is a word you can't fully decode yet, look it begins with th which you know, this word says the" and "here's a flashcard, you need to just learn it, this word says the."

A lot of the arguments made by the phonics purists (if that term's okay?) here seem to be against the latter type of teaching, so I'd like to know if they also apply to the former, and if that's evidenced or just assumed.

Hoping that my 'oh the irony' post wasn't misread - it was directed at c.f. who hadn't read properly to get the 'gist' of the thread.

Well, yes, everything is decodable if being decodable is defined as being able to decode everything.

Assuming that accusing someone of being ignorant is quite factual (which of course it might be) maisie, and not a personal attack, do please explain to me the precise method in which the words

Mr.
Mrs.
Wymondham
St John (pronounced sinjen)
and
sword
are supposed to be decoded. And please don't include any crap about "that's not really a word..., or we read half the word."

I can't do it,cg, as you continually demonstrate that you don't seem to understand English very well. Nothing to do with teaching reading, just your ability to comprehend what is being said to you. There is no point in explaining something over and over again to someone who is clearly struggling to get to grips with the meanings of words, let alone the concepts the words are communicating.

Perhaps it's a flaw in Look & Say /flashcards that some people who learnt that way can't understand simple words like mixed

I understood the explanations about some words not being words at all, and other words being only half read. Those explanations were rubbish, as was the one about remembering being completely different from memorising.

Unfortunately you haven't understood the explanations many people have given time after times if that's what you think has been said CG. It seems you read what you believe regardless it's a definite flaw in the Look & Say method

Berating a body on account of some perceived or imagined lack of understanding is no method of improving deficient arguments, mrz.

You misunderstand CG no one is berating anyone for their lack of understanding just identifying the problem ... Unfortunately Look & Say has a great deal to answer for

Doing the same thing over again and expecting it to have a different result is the definition of insanity.

I'm not insane yet.

I see, so when my neighbour berates me for beating the dog, I shall explain politely that I'm not beating it; I'm simply identifying the problem. The dog ate the piece of chicken.

Just noting this down. mn logic differs somewhat from the kind I learned in school.

I see, so when my neighbour berates me for beating the dog, I shall explain politely that I'm not beating it; I'm simply identifying the problem.

QED?

I would explain that when the neighbour mentions beating the dog they have identified the problem ... you! but I fear it would be lost in the reading

Msz & Maizie, i suggest please do not feed is the best motto here. Just post the information that corrects the distortions and misinformation and leave it at that. People here are clever enough to work out what's going on.

Good advice from kesstrel that would seem to apply to much of the Primary board over the last few weeks.

Thanks kesstrel

catkind
Intuitively I'd expect there to be a big difference between "this is a word you can't fully decode yet, look it begins with th which you know, this word says the" and "here's a flashcard, you need to just learn it, this word says the."

But are such different approaches really ever used by anyone in practice?

Don't all teachers and parents start with the sounding out and blending of simple words like 'a cat on a mat' and 'Tesco'?

And after that, isn't the difference between phonics fanatics and everyone else simply that the former claim that phonics alone is enough for the teaching of all reading, while everyone else thinks that phonics is not quite enough - that children learn tricky words like so do go to partly with phonics, for the letters which have their regular sounds (s, d, g, t), but not for variable sounds, like that of 'o' which depends on other letters?

By claiming that children can learn to read with just phonics, which to most people means sounding out and blending', are phonics fanatics not deliberately preventing all sensible discussion of how best to deal with the letters/graphemes which have more than one sound?

And isn't that all that parents want to know?

Don't all teachers and parents start with the sounding out and blending of simple words like 'a cat on a mat' and 'Tesco'?

Simple answer in NO!

The big problem Masha and CG have is they are approaching english as a second language and do give children the credit if having existing vocabulary and inbuilt grammer rules long before they started to learn to read and write.
They will know words such as go, do and so etc and apply the correct phonic code to the word naturally

do not give children the credit

I think that's a marvellous idea. People should just put forward their ideas and leave it at that. Splendid.