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?

This is an Australian site but the message still applies www.spelfabet.com.au/2012/07/teaching-sight-words/

I said I didn't know any schools who send home lists of HF words to learn.

Depends what you mean by "sight words". If you mean words that they learn to read on sight without having previously been able to fully decode them, then the majority of approved phonics schemes seem to do that. The self assessments in the .gov site I linked to are talking about decoding the parts you can and identifying the "tricky part"/"surprise letters"/"not yet decodable part". Or decoding using standard correspondences then guessing/remembering a word that sounds similar.

The AU site you link to isn't remotely talking about learning HFW words in the context of a systematic phonics programme, it's talking about using sight words as a main and first strategy. A very different animal.

The self assessments in the .gov site I linked to are talking about decoding the parts you can and identifying the "tricky part"/"surprise letters"/"not yet decodable part".

The children decode the parts they know already - the teacher tells them the "tricky" part - together they decode the whole word. That is how the majority of programmes, including the DfE offering, Letters & Sounds, teach these words cartkind. Check out the programmes rather than rely on your link.
For what its worth there are a number of disgruntaled programme authors whose products failed to make the government list simply because they teach HFWs as wholes.

The message from the Australian site is that learning words by sight is unnecessary!
In Australia ( also common in USA) HFW are taught as wholes as part of a "Balanced Literacy" or "phonics" programme.

Catkind:
Mixed methods the way I was taught where we learned basic single letter correspondences and th/ch/sh/ee/oo and muddled our way to the rest with repetition and using the pictures and decode the bits you know and guess the rest

Is this really different from
MRZ
The children decode the parts they know already - the teacher tells them the "tricky" part - together they decode the whole word.

The teacher (or parent) telling a child or children the tricky part is ok, but some words need the tricky parts told lots and lots of times before they stop causing trouble when children try to read them by themselves.

And as i asked before,
DO ALL THOSE REPETITIONS NOT simply help to IMPRINT THOSE WORDS AS WHOLES ON CHILDREN'S MINDS?

Being good at phonics, in the sense of knowing that ui can have the sounds as in 'build, fruit, ruin' is ok,
but it's only when a child no longer has to stop and think which sound applies in each of those words - when they recognise them as wholes - that they become fluent readers.

If the child is not able to independently decode the word then I can't see any way round either they've learned the whole word, or they're guessing the missing bit. As masha says, sounds awfully like what you were condemning as mixed methods.

From your earlier posts mrz I thought you were saying they should be learning the GPCs so as to be able to use them in other words. As I've said before there's a big difference between passive familiarity (teacher sounded it out) and active knowledge (child is able to independently sound it out). First is a step on the way to the second. But not the same thing.

Quote:

"Catkind:
Mixed methods the way I was taught where we learned basic single letter correspondences and th/ch/sh/ee/oo and muddled our way to the rest with repetition and using the pictures and decode the bits you know and guess the rest

Is this really different from
MRZ
The children decode the parts they know already - the teacher tells them the "tricky" part - together they decode the whole word."

End quote.

Sorry, but I am astounded that at an ex-teacher/EP can't tell the difference between teacher led explicit direct instruction and a child 'muddling and guessing' their way to an answer (which could well be completely wrong).

If the child is not able to independently decode the word then I can't see any way round either they've learned the whole word, or they're guessing the missing bit.

I'm completely unable to understand what you are trying to say here, catkind. Can you clarify?

As I've said before there's a big difference between passive familiarity (teacher sounded it out) and active knowledge (child is able to independently sound it out).

In good phonics teaching the teacher never does sound out unfamiliar words. They may indicate the sound represented by an unfamiliar grapheme in the word but the sounding out is done by the child. It is by repetition of sounding out and blending a word that it is secured in long term memory and can subsequently be read 'on sight'. Some children can do this after one or two repetitions, some take more; a very few might never manage it but they can still always read the words by sounding out and blending them. Fluency suffers but not comprehension (unless the child has severe receptive language difficulties).

BTW catkind,

This struck me as being very odd:

"The self assessments in the .gov site I linked to are talking about decoding the parts you can and identifying the "tricky part"/"surprise letters"/"not yet decodable part". Or decoding using standard correspondences then guessing/remembering a word that sounds similar."

Can you point me to which of the self assessments on that link specifies that HFWs are taught like the emboldened statement that in the programme? Because that is not good at all.

Catkind they can't independently decode the word because they are beginner readers and are being introduced to the word for the very first time by the teacher (instead of sending home a list of words the teacher is actually teaching). They are being taught how to use what they already know to read the "tricky word". To do that the child doesn't need to learn the word as a whole by memory/sight all they need is for the teacher to teach them the missing knowledge for them to decode the word.

And yes the teacher is teaching them the GPC they need to know in order to decode the word.
So instead of asking a child to memorise "he" they are taught that the spelling can represent the sound /ee/ so instead of being able to read the single word he they can apply that new knowledge and read the other HFWs me, she, we, be.

That's the way you do it mrz, that's not what the self assessments seem to be saying the majority of phonics schemes are doing it. Sounds Write is the only one that comes close to saying the children are taught to decode the words in full. I had high hopes of Tap Tap Bat until I got to this bit:
"The “Tap Tap Bat System” introduces ‘tricky’ words with ‘irregular’ spellings using an incidental approach in Reception and Year 1. ‘Tricky’ word practise is confined to “Word Banks” and “Workbooks” until such time as their ‘irregular’ spellings are fully explained at which juncture they can freely enter into the fully systematic environment of the “Storybooks”.
i.e. they're teaching tricky words in Yr R-1 but only teaching children to decode them and including them in story books in Yr 2. (How the frig do you keep tricky words out of stories for that long? Must be weird stories.)

I won't quote all the others. They mostly talk about identifying the tricky bit, teacher talking through the tricky bit etc. NOT children learning to decode the tricky bit. This from Letterland for example:
^"teaching the concept of ‘tricky’ words which have letters that do not make their normal sounds and enlisting the children to find them in order to avoid being tricked.
by providing a procedure for children to segment the phonemes in a word to discover the irregular part of a word and draw a wavy line under it.
by telling children when a ‘tricky’ part will later become decodable (or optionally giving them a flash preview of a GPC that will be taught later) to reinforce their confidence that phonic knowledge is the first and best approach."^
Presumably if it will later become decodable, it isn't at the point they're learning it.

Maizie: Thought you wouldn't like that one, it was Jolly Phonics: "Many words, when blended, provide a close pronunciation. If these words are in the child’s vocabulary, it is relatively easy to deduce the word, especially if the context is taken into account. "

In this is in the context of programmes trying to say what the government want to hear. e.g. DS has played a bit of Teach your monster to read which blatantly does tricky words with no hint of decoding in the very early stages.

Chance of all the italics working in this post? Small.

From catkind's own link

1. Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional 'methods' or 'strategies' for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-
phonic clues such as pictures

No catkind that isn't my own personal method of teaching, it is the way it is set out in programmes such as Letters and Sounds ...

1. Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional 'methods' or 'strategies' for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-phonic clues such as pictures

OK, here's what Letters and Sounds say in their assessment.
^... designating high frequency words that are not completely decodable as 'tricky' words in Letters and Sounds, and teaching suitable examples of them at each phase, as described above. These words are incorporated into the decodable texts provided for use in the 'Apply' part of each day's discrete session, so that children have frequent experience of reading words, phrases and sentences that include the 'tricky' words they are learning as well as words they can decode using their current phonic
knowledge. The Notes of Guidance stress that children should be taught to identify the tricky part of the word, as this reinforces for them the importance of decoding all through the word and avoids learning them as 'sight' words. ^
So they're not learning them as sight words but they also aren't decoding them. (They're "not completely decodable".)

Anyway we know Letters and Sounds can't be teaching all the GPCs required to decode the tricky words where they occur in the L&S programme, because they turn up as GPCs in later phases. If they'd already learned them when required for tricky words they wouldn't need to learn them again later in the programme. We discussed that before too mrz, I seem to recall you said the phases in Letters and Sounds weren't good practice.

I only have experience of my DS's school and my nephew and niece's school, but both send a tub of key words home to learn of by heart (and we were explicitly told not to sound them out!) and send home non-decodable books and encourage lots of guessing from pictures. The books are basically designed so children can only read by guessing.

Do you know if that's still been the case this September, fatterfsce?

Fatterface - sorry.

Yes Feenie, my DS2 and niece both started school this September! Both schools were Ofsteded Good in the last few months too.

I was trying to say that if the child isn't being taught to decode the word, but they can read it, then it seems to me either they must have learned it as a whole word, or they are guessing. Mrz is now saying she thinks the children should be being taught the GPCs to completely decode the word. That's not the impression I have from reading the schemes' own self-assessments. Certainly doesn't seem to be the case from the Letters and Sounds as the phases wouldn't tie up.

Aargh major italics fail, wrong symbol entirely.

and here's what the Letters & Sounds guidance says

When and how should high-frequency words be taught?
High-frequency words have often been regarded in the past as needing to be taught as ‘sight words’ – words which need to be recognised as visual wholes without much attention to the grapheme–phoneme correspondences in them, even when those correspondences are straightforward. Research has shown, however, that even when words are recognised apparently at sight, this recognition is most efficient when it is underpinned by grapheme–phoneme knowledge.

What counts as ‘decodable’ depends on the grapheme–phoneme correspondences that have been taught up to any given point.
^Letters and Sounds recognises this and aligns the introduction of high-frequency words as far as possible with this teaching. As shown in Appendix 1 of the Six-phase Teaching Programme, a quarter of the 100 words occurring most frequently in children’s books are decodable at Phase Two. Once children know letters and can blend VC and CVC words, by repeatedly sounding and blending words such as in, on, it and and, they begin to be able to read them without overt sounding and blending, thus starting to experience what it feels like to read some words automatically. About half of the 100 words are decodable by the end of Phase Four and
the majority by the end of Phase Five.^
^Even the core of high frequency words which are not transparently decodable using known grapheme–phoneme correspondences usually contain at least one GPC that is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they were unique entities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ‘tricky bit’ in the word. Even the word yacht,
often considered one of the most irregular of English words, has two of the
three phonemes represented with regular graphemes.^

and what Letters & Sounds assessment says

... designating high frequency words that are not completely decodable as 'tricky' words in Letters and Sounds, and teaching suitable examples of them at each phase, as described above. These words are incorporated into the decodable texts provided for use in the 'Apply' part of each day's discrete session, so that children have frequent experience of reading words, phrases and sentences that include the 'tricky' words they are learning as well as words they can decode using their current phonic knowledge. The Notes of Guidance stress that children should be taught to identify the tricky part of the word, as this reinforces for them the importance of decoding althrough the word and avoids learning them as 'sight' words .

I don't think that contradicts anything I said? The HFW occur in phases of L&S before the code for them, so they've been learned without being fully decoded. Even back in the mixed methods dark ages when I learned to read we decoded the bits of words we could decode.

That isnt what it says catkind.

The "tricky" part is identified and taught so that the word can be decoded at that stage (incidental teaching) reinforcing the decoding all through the word not learning as a whole or "sight" word.