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.

Catkind, what you're saying is obviously true. But the problem phonicsy people have with irregular words, in general, is: that if you admit that it's useful to memorise certain words like:

the, eye, Mr., Mrs., yacht
(and so on)

then their claim to universal phonics starts to look a bit shaky. So, it's better for them (or so they think) to put up loads of plainly ridiculous arguments in support of phonics than it is to admit:

OK, phonics doesn't work half the time. But it's still better to be with it than against it. That's at least a normal argument.

OK, phonics doesn't work half the time. But it's still better to be with it than against it.

This

so the number of repetitions they get for building it into long term memory is the same.

Point is not the number of repetitions but the way they are repeated. 'Whole words' not as efficient as sounding & blending. That is why 'Look & Say' method doesn't work.

There are actually hundreds of words with an indeterminate /uh/ in them It's a schwa. Can be spelled with any vowel letter.

I'd argue that phonics works quite a lot more than half the time.

It probably depends how much of the code you teach though. I saw a teacher on a thread the other week say that there were 90 ways to represent the 44+ sounds in English. If you are only teaching 90, quite a lot of the English language is going to be difficult to decode.

My dd would still struggle with phonics now if she had to read like this.
For her it has been a long battle but she recognises most words now.
She will occasionally sound out unfamiliar words but she will invariably pronounce it wrong.
Reading lots of books, flash cards and lists of words has really helped her. She loves reading and writing for pleasure now, not because she is told to do so, now its the dreaded spelling, but she'll do it when she's ready.

Late reply to MaizieD: as you quoted, I originally said, "if it works and children enjoy doing it, what's "wrong" about it?". I only said IF it works. Obviously children who get muddled by mixed methods, as you quite rightly point out, would continue with the method that suits them best. I have to stick by the fact, however, that in the umpty -ump years I taught for, it worked for the vast majority of children in the early stages of learning to read, BUT if it wasn't working, I tailored the method to suit the learner.

But it isn't good enough to use a method just because you've always used it and it works for the majority. Particularly if there is another method that would work with a larger majority and you would have to use that method to remediate the children you'd failed in the first place.

Have you seen what happens to the 7 year old that comes out of school upset and frustrated because they've spent yet another 6 hrs in school failing to do what everybody else is able to do? Who throws his book across the room telling you he isn't going to do it because he's too stupid to be able to read. Who won't listen to your platitudes that he's tried really hard, and he's doing really well and that doesn't matter because everybody is good at different things. Who's stopped trying to do new things because he might be too stupid to do those things too and that's one more assault on his self-esteem that he isn't prepared to take.

We can't stop that for every single child. There will be a small number of children who don't learn to read using phonics. But we can sure as hell make sure that we don't inflict that on any more children than we have to.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay:
I saw a teacher on a thread the other week say that there were 90 ways to represent the 44+ sounds in English. That may have been me.

There are 91 main English spelling patterns, but altogether English uses 205.
For reading, children have to learn to recognise/decode 123 of those. The 60 (+ ff, ll, ss and zz) which are used in the phonics test amount to merely half of them:
a, -able, a-e, ai, air, al, all, ar, are, -ary, -ate, au, augh, aw, ay,
b, ca/o/ut, cc, ce/ci, ch, -cial, ck, -cy, d, -dge,

e, -e, ea, ear, ee, e-e, ei, eigh, eir, er, -er, ere, -et, eu, ew, -ey,

f, ga/go/gu, ge-/gi-, -ge, gh, gn, gua, -gue, h,

i, -i, -ible, -ic, ie, i-e, -ie, igh, -ign, -ind, -ine, ir, is, -ite, , j, k, kn, l, -le, m, mn, n, ng,

o, -o, oa, oar, o-e, -oe, oi, ol, oo, -oor, or, -ore, ou, ough, -ought, oul, our, -our, ow, oy,

p, ph, q(u), qua, r, -re, rh,

s, sc, -scious, -se, sh, -sion, -ssion, -sure, -sy,

t, -tch, th, -tion, -tious, -ture,
u, -u, ue, u-e, -ue, ui, ur, -ure, -ury,

v, -ve, w, wa, wh, wo, wor, wr, , x, y, -y, --y, y-e, z

The L & S guidance for teachers says that by the end of Phase 5 children should know the alternative pronunciations for these 13 graphemes too:
i (fin, find), o (hot, cold), c (cat, cent), g (got, giant), u (but, put),
ow (cow, blow), ie (tie, field), ea (eat, bread), er (farmer, her),
y (yes, by, very), ch (chin, school, chef), ou (out, shoulder, could, you).

So shouldn't they be tested on their knowledge of those directly too?

We use phonics.
But we also gave 'tricky words' , that we just learn. Such as 'the'.

I like this method and think it is fine.
English is not particularly phonetic.

That's not how you do L&S columngollum we are talking about Letters & Sounds - L&S

Yes RafaIsTheKingOfClay you're right less than 1% of the population won't learn to read using phonics.

Research shows that those children who seem to thrive on mixed methods often hit a brick wall around Year 3/4 PottieLottie ... the same problem is seem in all English speaking countries around the world (yes I know fuel for masha's spelling reform)

Oblomov
Some words all children learn to read as wholes - even when taught by phonics fanatics - because it's more efficient.

They don't learn to read tricky words like so, go, do, to, who, you, through with phonics. - They memorise them as tricky words. They can't really read much until they are able to do so.

They don't ignore all the letters in those words and just learn them as pictures, but for as long as they have to stop and think what the sound of o in the likes of 'so do go to' is, they are not yet able to read those words.

Mashabell, every single word in that last post is wild conjecture on your part, and has no basis in either experience or research.

Definitely wasn't you Masha, it was someone who works in early years.

There are in fact 44 sound in English (+ or - depending on accent) and 176 common ways to spell those sounds RafaIsTheKingOfClay and that is what is taught in school - some of the more obscure spellings are taught disctretely when needed. If a school is only teaching 90 then they aren't teaching phonics.

discretely

I agree with Mashabell. I think memorizing some tricky words is fundamental to early reading. It speeds up the process and increases the confidence of early reaers.

I can't believe we would even consider that one method of teaching reading works best. Why have such a black and white argument? I'm sure the poster who mentioned the DFE would frown at school's teaching sight words doesn't know the whole story.

it's seems clear that both instruction of phonics and sight words lead to better reading progress. I can see where some testing emphasis needs to be on phonics

No one would argue against the need for children to be able to read the high frequency words, because as the name suggests these are the words that appear most often in speech and writing, but those who actually teach children to read would argue with masha over the need to teach these as sight words.

Why have such a black and white argument?

Because it really is black and white. There is one method of teaching (synthetic phonics) which, if used exclusively, succeeds for almost all children. As soon as you add any other method of teaching the success rate drops.

it's seems clear that both instruction of phonics and sight words lead to better reading progress.

All the available research says that it doesn't. Phonics on its own leads to better progress.

mrz - I'm not sure all teachers agree with that. What Mashabelle suggests is still being taught in our local primaries with word books - teaching common words by sight. It slows down reading when high frequency words have to be decoded.

There are some, such as

one, two and the

which can only be taught as sight words. People who teach reading can argue as much as they like.But they can't alter the facts.

it's seems clear that both instruction of phonics and sight words lead to better reading progress.

It seems clear that you have never had to work with children who have been completely messed up by this mix of methods. Very often they've been diagnosed as 'dyslexic' because they read words in reverse was/saw, of/for (yes, it really happens) read words inaccurately come/came, some/same, miss sounds out of words or add them in wet/went, girl/girls, and they can't distinguish between thought, though and through, because they haven't consistently been taught to sound out and blend all through the written word from L to R and to pay close attention to the letters within the words.

It is more difficult to learn words as 'wholes' than it is to 'learn' them through the sounding and blending route. That has been established since at least the 1960s. Interestingly, with the advent of 'whole word' methods of teaching reading in the USA the number of words in the basal readers diminished rapidly. They diminished because children were incapable of learning 'by sight' enough words to 'read' word rich books. This was highlighted by Jeanne Chall in her book 'Learning to Read, the great debate' (1967). The book was written after several years of extensive research, in both the US & the UK, into methods of teaching reading.

There is nothing at all difficult about teaching these words by phonic principles.