OFSTED criticise reading instruction ...

[mrz]

I wonder how many more schools around the country would "fail" to meet expectations

www.ofsted.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/surveys-and-good-practice/r/Ready%20to%20read%20-%20How%20a%20sample%20of%20primary%20schools%20in%20Stoke-on-Trent%20teach%20people%20to%20read.pdf

"Not all the schools taught early reading using phonic decoding as ‘the route to decode words’, as required by the national curriculum
2014. Three headteachers were unaware of this requirement in the new programme of study.

Almost all of the schools visited used a range of early reading books to teach young children to read. Many of these books, however, were not ‘closely matched to pupils’ developing phonics knowledge and knowledge of common exception words’. In other words, the books used did not support young children to practise and apply the phonics they were learning.

Four of the schools did not send home phonically decodable books so that
children could practise their new knowledge and skills at home."

The difference is context. It is not illogical for a child who is a keen, frequent and fluent reader of Roald Dahl to come across made-up words and the words Dahl uses are linguistically plausible in the context of his stories. They are an integral part of his writing.

Some (not all) of the pseudo words in the phonics test are ambiguous for fluent speakers and readers of English. Small children do not have the meta linguistic capability to systematically switch off their aural/oral language awareness on request as an educated adult can. A small child who is a fluent reader will have an overriding urge to make what they read meaningful if they can and they will be used to the irregularities of English orthography and using their aural/oral skills to help them read unfamiliar words. Their unconscious mind will make them do this and it is what they should be doing!

It is ludicrous to administer the phonics check to all children in May of Yr1, because by then many are way past the kind of simple decoding and blending that this supposedly tests.

It would make more sense to have something like that in YR, if the test is meant to identify children who are not doing as well as they should.

In its current form it is nothing but an expensive waste of time and money and sensible people are right to call for its abolition.

Thanks for your answers LittleMissGreen and Kesstrel. It makes sense then to have phonic books with words that match the phonic sounds they know so far, and concentrate on practising these.

I remember when I had just started teaching DS to read in my language, that it was quite difficult to find context where he could apply the knowledge of the few syllables he knew, as there aren't that many words or sentences you can build up with a handful of syllables if you don't know the rest. And the sentences you could make with decodable words were not very interesting.
I couldn't wait until he know all the syllables so we could actually start reading proper books.

My husband (who is English) has commented the same, that the English phonic code is very complex, and it is more difficult and takes longer to master than the one of my first language.

I think I remember seeing those books with "Kipper is reading" "Kipper is doing..." also "I can this or I can that" with a picture that gave you a clue of what was happening. Those were the very early books he brought home. But later he started bringing phonic books of various schemes that had a list of words for him to practise certain sounds.
I expect they must have used a mixed method then, or a mixed selection of books to teach him how to read.

A small child who is a fluent reader will have an overriding urge to make what they read meaningful if they can and they will be used to the irregularities of English orthography and using their aural/oral skills to help them read unfamiliar words. Their unconscious mind will make them do this and it is what they should be doing!

I'm sorry, bonsoir, but I don't understand your reasoning. If they can decipher unfamiliar words in text why can't they decipher them when presented in isolation? Especially when they have been practically TOLD that the words are nonsense words.

No 6y old on earth 'knows' every single word in their language, written or spoken; even highly literate adults probably only 'know' a small percentage (in English, around 60,000 of 250,000 words according to David Crystal)). So unless you are saying that the desire to make meaning completely overrides accurate word ID (thus to some extent negating the use of phonic skills) I am puzzled by your statement.

And if that is so, at what age do you think accurate word ID kicks in instead of bending the words to their will

maizieD - I think that a few posts on MN are probably not going to get to the bottom of language development and early reading in young DC for the uninitiated.

May I repeat, however, that I am 100% behind phonics and decodable books (= meaningful stories written in words using only the previously taught grapheme/phoneme correspondences) for young readers, and also think that some sort of phonics reading test in Y1 is a good idea, for many reasons. Just not pseudo-words - the risk of false negatives is just too great.

Bonsoir a very similar test is used by educational professionals to identify decoding difficulties in children and adults. The problem is it isn't usually used until they have fallen significantly behind in their reading ... the key is early identification before it becomes an issue. This type of screening has been around for many years it's proven to be highly reliable ... why wait until a child has a mountain to climb before offering them support?

We have spent thousands on training, phonics materials and books. Government approved scheme.

We do not yet have enough phonics books to send home for all children. We still don't have quite enough phonics based guided reading books - not for all the classes that need them. The money available from the Government does not reach that far, even with the fund matching.

We are continuing to us our budgets to keep purchasing phonic books for home and for guided reading, but it cannot be a quick fix thing.

Whilst I don't agree with publishing the results of the phonics test, I did find it a great diagnostic tool for identifying the difficulties that individual children were having. However, I used a previous test to screen children in January and then used the information to identify next steps or put in an intervention if necessary. I think testing children in May is far too late.

We don't do guided reading and we didn't buy games or toys just books to send home

Pseudo words don't mean a good reader doesn't achieve the pass mark, they may just miss the maximum. I practise lots of 'made up' words with my class as they need to be able to do this when working out multi-syllable words a syllable at a time e.g. th-u-n, thun, d-er, der, thunder. A syllable on its own often makes no sense.

We have no games or toys. The main cost was the package and training. The package consists mainly if the CDs for teaching and the photocopiable pupil worksheets.
There are also books that match the CDs for in class work.

We do however have guided reading sets though only a couple of each book at present, which really isn't enough obviously. But that's all the funding and budget would allow at the time.
We do have some other phonics books - guided reading and home books - but not linked to the same scheme.
We try to use Oxford Owls on the whiteboard and iPads a fair bit too as that has several on.

My good readers have scored 40/40 for the three years there has been a check. I don't practise lots of made up words just teach kids to decode

mrz - it is wrong to infer that a test that is reliable for poor readers will be reliable for good readers. Their meta linguistic capabilities are likely to be entirely different.

Where did I say poor readers Bonsoir? I think you are inferring

What exactly do you mean by children "who have fallen significantly behind in their reading" if not poor readers? I am not inferring - merely retrieving information you have given explicitly.

I mean children like those so called "good readers" who get confused by pseaudo words

What? You are very confused.

No Bonsoir I'm not at all confused ... the children whose memories mask the fact they haven't got an effective strategy for tackling unfamiliar words so slip through the net only to hit a wall around Y3 when they can no longer simply memorise words or guess from the pictures ... they children everyone thought were good readers ... the children who read silver for sliver and spilt for split or storn for strom

they are the

Thanks, Kesstrel. It is tremendously depressing that NQTs have such a poor grasp of phonic teaching. Many ITTs are bitterly opposed to synthetic phonics - some way must be found to ensure that children learn to read fluently before they leave primary school.

Yes, I think if more parents understood this about the Initial Teacher Training system, there would be outrage. What a lot of people don't realise is that the proper scientific research into reading has mostly been carried out by academics in university departments of psychology, not departments of education. Meanwhile, many of the academics in university education departments have clung stubbornly to misconceived ideas, and ignored their colleagues' research, because it doesn't agree with their philosophy of education

There are several reasons why NQTs may have a poor grasp of phonics:

1. English spelling is phonically only loosely codified.
   a) It often uses different spellings for identical sounds (seek, bleak, shriek) and
   b) it also tolerates the use of one letter or letter string for different sounds - on, only... ear, early ... - without rhyme or reason.

2. The phonics evangelists don't ever explain clearly how to deal with those irregularities.
   They make vague claims that phonics is about teaching the relationship between letters and sounds, when they actually do a lot of word by word teaching, like 'to, do, who' or 'soup, group, you, youth' or 'rude, crude, brute', just everybody else does, and has to do, because of they way English is spelt.
   
   Or even that children differ in their meta linguistic capabilities.
   Masha Bell

2) The phonics evangelists don't ever explain clearly how to deal with those irregularities

Well, we have tried to in the past, Marsha, but you're really not in the least bit interested in knowing.

"What a lot of people don't realise is that the proper scientific research into reading has mostly been carried out by academics in university departments of psychology, not departments of education."

I agree, though it is not a problem per se that research into reading and other aspects of education has been done by psychologists. The issue is that there is no funding and no proper way of "selling" the output of research in a useful format to departments of education.

Bonsoir, I think you underestimate the degree of resistance there has been over the years in departments of education: this is primarily based on ideology. There are various strands to this ideology, for example: a general opposition to anything based on science rather than feel-good ideas from the 70s about what is supposedly "natural"; a resistance to anything that doesn't involve children "discovering" things for themselves rather than being explicitly taught; and a woolly post-modern belief that evidence doesn't prove anything anyway, so the correct thing to do is teach in a way that is "liberatory". There is also a belief in craft-based rather than objective knowledge, which emphasises teacher autonomy while ignoring the problem of confirmation bias.

This article is an interesting read about Whole Language ideas about reading, and the ideas behind it. nifdi.org/news/hempenstall-blog/441-part-1-whole-language-what-was-that-all-about

It's a bit long, but you will find some of the most interesting political stuff toward the end.