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.

The problem is that some abbreviations are accepted as "words", and it's also worth mentioning that acronyms are abbreviations, and abbreviations are neologisms (new words). Essentially abbreviations come in two forms (plus an extra one): Acronyms such as JEEP, NATO, LOL, GIF; and Initialisms such as BBC, UK, FDR, MA, BSc (the extra one are hybrids like CD-ROM, JPEG; and some abbreviations plus clipped words like MPhil (Masters of Philosophy)).

Mr. is the current English Language accepted spelling of the word "mister", which started life as an abbreviation of "master" and now "master" and "Mr." are considered two separate words! Very complicated.

Basically from a linguistic perspective abbreviations words like any other neologisms (including Eponyms: watt, nicotine, atlas; Onomatopoeias; Back-formations: cherry, grovel; Compound words: hovercraft, bonfire, woman, holiday; Portmanteau words: smog, blog, brunch, sitcom. Etc etc etc), but from a perspective of teaching children this isn't massively helpful.

Presumably when teaching children about abbreviations like Mr. and Mrs. you teach them "mister" and "missus", and explain that they are written thusly. Though I also expect that this is the kind of thing kids pick up well before you'd get to that point since they are surrounded by Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms. Teacher, TA, Head, Deputy Head, Parents, Doctors etc, and already know these abbreviations.

But in some places you will find mister written out in full, and the same with missis. This is when they are used on their own, without the accompanying surname. as in "pardon me, missis, you dropped your bag" or "hey mister, can you spare a dime". The latter is American, but you can still see the former in English novels. And of course the same is true of doctor. That's why I think abbreviations need to be considered as variant forms of words, not as words themselves, in the same way we would regard spelling variations like color and colour to not be two separate words.

Teacherwithtwokids

Loved the Drug A and Drug B analogy!

Agreed - fab analogy teacherwith2kids. Food for thought there.

All that aside (fascinating as it is), to my 4 yr old reading a book it's a word that he's memorised. I've explained what it's short for the same as with "I'm" or "can't", but for practical purposes it's a word in his world.

Hopefully his teacher will teach him I'm and can't are contractions and Mr. and Mrs. are abbreviations before the grammar test is introduced

I expect they will, or we will, but not in reception surely?

proudmama72

I think I can answer in a non techy way. I learned to read using 'flash cards', I happened to have a good vocabulary and although I learned to read and had a good reading age I couldn't sound out words properly. (aslo dyslexic)

If you examine phonics you can see how well a child is decoding / reading, the words you mention we do learn by sight, but that doesn't mean you can read them. Er not explaining this well. OK put it this way most children will recognise things like McDonalds / ASDA / Boots, they are not reading the words they are recognising the logos/colours

Why not in reception?

www.nrrf.org/essay_pseudowords.htm

Nothing wrong with calling things by their proper names I suppose, but I'm working on the assumption they're not at school. Didn't want to push a load of extra terminology on my son at home that he's not used to at school. I'm kind of working on a need to know basis at home, if he asks questions or he needs to know something to read his book I'll tell him, otherwise I leave it to his teachers to introduce things at what they think is the right time. Have seen no sign they are using this kind of grammatical term. I think they've done full stops and capital letters, that's all. I had to explain what a comma was, and speech marks. Do you think they should have done more?

My first DS is in reception, it's a long time since I had anything to do with primary schools. Grammar was very much out in the 80s too! If they now talk technical grammar in reception I'd like to know so I can support it at home.

From a pedagogical point of view, I'd guess it's easier to learn a concept when you already have a large bank of examples to draw on. But maybe I'm wrong. Hence the confused face. ^^

Sorry OP I'm derailing again...

Extending vocabulary? The more words we know the better we can make sense of the world we live in

I think 5 is too young to be drawing distinctions between abbreviations (Mrs. Mrs. BBC...) and contractions using an apostrophe: eg I'm.
I teach children from age 7-18 ( dyslexics) and apostrophe contractions are revised in year 6 , 7 and beyond right up to GCSE.

I appreciate the curriculum is changing but I think I'd point out a simple contraction such as I'm toa five year old in a reading book, when it crops up.

I don't agree though that you should wait for a child to ask questions as a way of extending their knowledge, or wait for topics to come up at school- learning extends far beyond the classroom and imo parents shouldn't be passive but can actively extend a child's learning.

They are also taught to children in KS1 jaffacakesallround

It's in the Year 1 prog of study

Year 1 is fine- year R seems too soon unless it comes up in another context.

Most of my class are just 5 jaffacakesallround

I think Proudmama's original question,
Why not test sight words as well? is a good one.
When i asked which graphemes would be tested in the phonics check, Feenie referred me to Phase 5 of Letters and Sounds - the official UK government guidance for phonics teaching (first published in 2007).

Mrz has since given us the 64 graphemes:
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q(u),
r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z ch, ck, ff, ll, ng, sh, ss,
th, zz, ar, ee, oi, oo, or, a-e, ai, ay, aw, ay, ea, e-e, er, ew, ie-e, ie, ir, oa, o-e, ou, ow, oy, ue, u-e, ur, air, igh, wh and ph* in words with the structures CVC, VCC, CVCC, CCVC.

L&S also recommends the teaching of the following 54 sight words

Phase 2: the, to, I, no, go
P 3 : he, she, we, me, be, was, my, her, you, they, all, are

P 4: said, so, have, some, come, were, there, one, do, when, what.

P 5: treasure, oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked
water, where, who, again, thought, through, work, mouse, many,
laughed, because, different, any, eye, friends, once, please.

So why not test those as well.
Being able to read the most high frequency tricky words easily is probably at least as crucial to overall reading progress as basic phonics.

Masha if you look at the title of the thread perhaps you can work out why the question answers itself?

Phonics testing. Why not sight words as well?

L&S also recommends the teaching of the following 54 sight words

no it doesn't masha ... it recommends teaching the following "tricky" words by decoding NOT by sight!

Phase 2: the, to, I, no, go
P 3 : he, she, we, me, be, was, my, her, you, they, all, are
P 4: said, so, have, some, come, were, there, one, do, when, what.
P 5: treasure, oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked
water, where, who, again, thought, through, work, mouse, many,
laughed, because, different, any, eye, friends, once, please.

So why not test those as well.

because the check is assessing a child's ability to decode less familiar words not their memory.

no it doesn't masha ... it recommends teaching the following "tricky" words by decoding NOT by sight!

The letters and sounds website says:
"During Phase 3, the following tricky words (which can't yet be decoded) are introduced:" ...
If this is the same letters and sounds as you're all talking about?
www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3.html

That's a commercial company, not an official DfE government website - the official document gives the opposite advice which mrz referred to above.

No catkind that is a commercial site this is the government publication Letters & Sounds www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

Teaching ‘tricky’ high-frequency words the to I go no

Resources
?
Caption containing the tricky word to be learned (see ‘Bank of suggested
captions for practising reading’ on page 71)

Procedure

1. Explain that there are some words that have one, or sometimes two, tricky letters.

1. Read the caption, pointing to each word, then point to the word to be learned and read it again.

1. Write the word on the whiteboard.

4. Sound-talk the word and repeat putting sound lines and buttons (as illustrated above) under each phoneme and blending them to read the word.

5. Discuss the tricky bit of the word where the letters do not correspond to the sounds the children know (e.g. in go , the last letter does not represent the same sound as the children know in dog).

if you check the document nowhere does it say sight words

Thanks feenie/mrz - that's really helpful.

Because the original Letters and Sounds training was so poor (and because many teachers haven't ever bothered to read it properly), it's a common misconception - there was even someone recently who claimed to be a dodgy LEA advisor who hadn't a clue that tricky words don't equate to non-decodable, therefore must be learned by sight.