Yr1 child - top phonics group but slow reader - how can this be?

[sugarhoops]

Was told today by another mum that my year 1 DD is in the top group in the class for phonics, but is a little behind others for reading (this mum has a DD who, apparently, is 2nd highest reader in class, but is in a phonics group below my DD).

Putting aside for a moment how on earth this mother knows all this info - to be fair she helps out in class sometimes, I just wondered how this can be re: the top phonics group but lower reader level?

I had no idea where my daughter was at against others in the class - parents eve last week the teacher told me she's doing fine academically, which is good enough for me. But with this new info, I just wondered, purely out of interest, how she can be in top group for phonics, but apparently 'behind' for reading?

My little girl is not bad at reading, but appears to have very little memory for words she has already read. For example, she can decode knight and spray, but gets stuck on said, which comes up all the time in the books she brings home. She also does a fair bit of contextual guessing based on the first letter. I'm sure a lot of the kids in her phonics group are beyond her in reading levels.

Well at a basic level they are. And then words and whatever whatever. And yes writing too. It is still the same. Phonics is over emphasised in its ability to learn to read. Dyslexic will never get phonics, neither will lots ands lots of children. I was a student under the man who wrote some of the first papers on the benefit of phonics and he is appalled at what has happened. It is important, it is not god. He also argues now that morphological awareness should be thought once children are passed the initial phase of reading and ultimately has argued all along that phonics many benefit is to spelling once children have begun to read and write,

Phonics is the most successful method for dyslexic pupils
I find it strange that anyone would think memorising thousands of whole words is easier than learning how the 44 sounds in our language are represented in print.

Dyslexic will never get phonics

Right - someone needs to tell that to the dyslexic children in our school then, who 'get' phonics so much that they habitually exceed age related expectations in reading, writing and spelling.

Have a word with Dyslexia Action too - their individual programmes are all phonics based.

Oh, and the U.S. creator of Lexia, who was so frustrated at the lack of good phonics teaching for his dyslexic son that he wrote his own software around it.

Many don't. It isn't god. There is a difference between just being badly taught and suffering from severe dyslexia. Many many severe dyslexics I know are frustrated by the attempts to push phonics down their neck. It should be taught, provision for those who are behind made but I do not agree with flogging it at children year after year, making no progress and neglecting to try other methods. My top readers have never learnt to read phonetically despite my best efforts. They have memorised but are good at phonics because they read. None of us can ever really say for many children what happens first. It is a good method for learning to read for the majority.

I've only ever known two children not progress using phonics, and they both left us at 11 to go to special schools.

We don't have any children who don't make any progress, and lots of our children come in way below age related expectations.

We have had many children identified as dyslexic who have left us reading fluently at age appropriate levels. The feedback from our main secondary schools is that in the last 5 years no child leaving us has required support in literacy.

You need to see more. I have seen thousands in my days doing research and planning and evaluating interventions. Nobody doubts the teachers' skill but how and what are the children actually learning? The truth is we do not know because when you know how to read, you read, and nobody remembers the process. It is arrogance on all our parts to think it is the only way, absolutely. It wasn't so long ago that the word was dirt and teachers hide the phonics materials so they wouldn't be caught teaching it. Times change and they will move on again. I will state again in my time evaluating interventions, and in particular BES, SEN and severe dyslexia... continual pounding of students provided no significant results. There needs to be other ways. For a low ability child however good teaching makes all the difference... but they are just low ability. One can argue that good teaching with any child of anything in any subject provides results. Don't get me started on how they teach in America. They learn the alphabet first and then start on sounds. If I was dyslexic I would be confused to. I am all for the sounds, CVC words, naming letter. Actually if we waited until they were 7 none of it would matter anyway because they would just go name, sound, sound it out, spell it... no probs.

There is a difference between just being badly taught and suffering from severe dyslexia.

There is often a very close connection between the two

You intrigue me, poppy70. What was/is your day job?

Poppy are you in the uk?
In the UK a rigorous and systematic programme of phonics has been the recommended intervention for pupils with dyslexia for as long as I can remember, and under the new NC is the recommendation for any child who is not reading at age appropriate levels.

And how many have you actually taught to read poppy?

For the record I do doubt the teachers skill especially when they promote mixed methods against all the evidence

Micksy: she can decode knight and spray, but gets stuck on said.

The reason for this is simple.
Although the kn, igh and ay spellings are unpredictable, because they are variants for n, i-e and ey (nice, grey), their pronunciations are regular. So children learn quite quickly how to pronounce or sound them out.

The main sound for ai, however, is /a-e/, as in 'main, train, plain', except in 'plaid', 'plait' and the very high frequency word said. That's why many children keeping being stumped by it until they seen enough times times to learn to read it as a sight word. The words which make learning to read English much slower than in all other European languages, the ones that keep stumping children, are all the ones in which one or more letters don't have their main sound.

After the basic phonics stage with regular sounds, children are nowadays taught other pronunciations for many letters as well, e.g. go – do; laid – said, the – he.
When they find it difficult to make sense of a word, they are encouraged to remember and try out the other pronunciations they have been taught as well, but this can be very tedious for both the children and the adults helping them to learn to read.

Many children make much faster progress if taught to recognise the most common tricky words as sight words quite early on. - U could say that they do better with phonics+.

They take note of the letters with phonically regular sounds (e.g. the g, d, l, s in 'go – do, laid – said'), but learning the 100 or so most used tricky words as whole words enables them to move away a bit faster from phonically simple, and often rather tedious, repetitive texts to real stories.

This is pretty much how children have been taught to read ever since reading became more widespread after the printing of the first English New Testament in 1526. But now that 'synthetic phonics' is the officially favoured, best, one and only, nothing but, teaching method, phonics evangelists dismiss the common sense approach as 'mixed methods' or 'guessing' - as very bad indeed.

The simple truth is that English uses phonic and non-phonic spellings. Phonics works beautifully with phonic spellings, but much less well with the non-phonic ones. Most good readers find their own best way of coping with those.

It's obvious you have never taught a reception or infant class

This is pretty much how children have been taught to read ever since reading became more widespread after the printing of the first English New Testament in 1526.

Not according to what I have read. For a start, the High Frequency Words are a 20th century invention.

What history of teaching reading are you working from, marsha?

How do you decide that a child is the 2nd best reader? That's hilarious! I hate that type of parent. I also hate the ones who go to 'help' out just to do their nosey.

Thanks shedding - your DD sounds very similar to mine. The only take-home I had from parents evening last week was that DD needs to be more independent in her learning, nothing about her academics (other than she's bright & fine).

It was this comment to mum friend (i.e. nothing specific / concerning about academic ability) that prompted my friend to tell me about her position in phonics groups and reader levels etc.....

The more I think about it, the more I do wonder how on earth this mum knows such info, I can only think she has asked her DD in the same class, as she hasn't been into classroom to help since reception (when she was in every week . I have vaguely asked my DD who she sits with for phonics etc....she has completely NO idea that they're split according to ability, and I don't want her knowing that either. I wonder if my friends DD is fully aware of what the split means and so knows who is in which group.

I think the fact that she is completely unaware they are split according to ability suggests that they aren't

Really mrz? My DS in Yr 1 still hasn't a clue they're grouped by ability. I can imagine some of the more competitive children might have worked it out. DS notices that particular boy is really good at reading but otherwise is happily uninterested in the relative abilities of his classmates.

If they are grouped by ability and doing the same work then it's pointless having phonics ability groups and if they are grouped by ability and having separate lessons then the OPs daughter would notice ... That's the nature of phonics

DS knows he goes into a group for phonics, he doesn't know it's an ability group and doesn't know he's doing different work from all the other groups. I thought that was a standard approach if you're ability grouping in early years. You wouldn't want to tell a 5 yr old they were in the bottom set would you?!

Just because the child is unaware they are split according to ability doesn't necessarily mean they aren't.

When they started working with their phonic groups earlier in the year, I was told by the teacher that they have decided to put DS and another Y1 child with a Y2 phonics group because they were already reading at that level.

I asked DS later that day how his day had been, and he confirmed that the teacher formed groups for phonics and read the names of the children to tell them in which table and with which teacher they were going to be working with. I asked who were the other children in his group, he mentioned the other Y1 child, and said all the other children were from Y2. I asked him if he knew why, he said no. And that was the end of the conversation. He didn't really think much into that, and wasn't interested.
Eventually as the weeks passed, he sort of worked it out.

Maizie: the High Frequency Words are a 20th century invention^.

They are not!
Some words are simply used much more than others, and that makes them HF. This has always been true, and in all languages.

The invention of computers, especially Excel, has merely made it possible to rank them more accurately, from much to little used, than was possible before.

And it's not rocket science that once children can recognise all the most used words on sight - without getting stuck and having to work them out - their reading becomes more fluent. It leaves them with fewer words that they still have to work at.