Sythetic phonics hell: any KS1 teachers/parents with soothing words?

[Notnowcato]

So, DS2 is learning to read. He loves books. We read them together ever day. Lots of them. All sorts. Just as my DD and DS1 did.

He has 'learned' quite a few words because he recognises them. He makes others up, from context. The story moves along. He 'reads' aloud with expression and he laughs at the jokes. This is at home. At school, he crumples into tears in front of 'b-a-t' and says he can't do it and he's rubbish at reading. [I know because I help in the classroom.]

So I say to the teacher: "What are we doing here. We are destroying his love of stories. Why do we have to do synthetic phonics? You [teacher] and I didn't learn to read like this. My older daughter (now 12, level 6 reading and writing in Year 6 and is currently at the top of her 'Accelerated Reader scheme in Year 7) didn't learn to read like this. Leave him with me (he reads at home to me every day, I read to him every day). By the time he is in year 2 he will be reading fine." But no. She says he must sound out words so that he "understands" them. But he doesn't understand 'the cat sat on the mat' because he is crying. He does understand Alan Ahlberg's Crazy Fox stories because he tells me all about the silly fox and the lovely dog for hours afterwards.

Now were I being cynical (who me?), I might say that the teacher is more concerned with getting my son to 'pass' his phonics test at the end of the year, than she is in keeping the love of reading alive in him.

Thank you for the space to vent! [I hasten to add that I say nothing to undermine the teacher in front of my son, either at home or at school. We read his Read Write Inc. level 1 books very quickly and then go on to more interesting books.]

More practically, what can less angry parents/sympathetic teachers suggest about how I tackle this, given that my darling boy has another two terms of this teacher to endure. I really think that he is starting to hate reading at school. I really don't care if he fails his phonics test, I just want him to enjoy reading as much as his siblings do.

You really take criticism to heart don't you

Criticism?

I thought about the enigma machine, but there is definitely only one correct output per input, even though a single letter can be interpreted as any other letter under various contexts (though never itself). The English language also has contextual rules, most of which are not taught explicitly. It differs because there are multiple potential correct outputs. When children do the pseudo words test, multiple phonetically plausible soundings are allowed.

Yes, doesn't entirely stand up.

I've also seen letter level codes (technically cyphers I guess) used where j and i are encoded the same, or spaces encoded the same as z or x, relying on context to see which is intended where. It's 1 to not-very-many, and don't think I've seen it used at the same time as many:1 aspects.

Catkind

Words can mean different things in different contexts. ... If "code" is used in a different sense in the context of phonics, masha, we should try to understand what sense that is and accept it as its meaning in that context.

I've trying to get them to explain that clearly for years, but always quite vague about it.l

And when phonics experts go on national media and say that insufficient teaching of the 'alphabet code' is the cause of literacy failure in English-speaking countries, they never explain that they mean something entirely different from the normal meaning of code.

They also like to pretend that there is no difference between phonics and synthetic English phonics, as Maizie did the other day:

I do find the dispute over phonics teaching a bit bizarre in view of the fact that in many countries all children are taught to read with phonics as a matter of course and no-one thinks twice about it.

I've been trying to get them to explain...

Masha do you agree that written language is a visual representation of spoken language?

Yes. Written language is a visual representation of spoken language.
But how this is done varies greatly from one language to another. When it is done as erratically as in English, learning to read and write is much more difficult, takes vastly longer and is harder to teach than it is if done consistently.

It can also be done with letters (alphabetically) or with pictograms (logographicaly), as in Chinese or early Egyptian.

They also like to pretend that there is no difference between phonics and synthetic English phonics, as Maizie did the other day:

Perhaps you would like to explain the difference, marsha, as you clearly see that there is one.

Bearing in mind that English synthetic phonics teaches the way that the phonemes of which words are composed are represented by symbols (in this case, letters of the alphabet). The 'synthetic' refers to the synthesising of words from their component phonemes once they have been 'decoded'. And let me remind you of the definition of 'synthesise': to form (a material or abstract entity) by combining parts or elements.

So you agree that written language is the visual representation of our spoken language. Do you also agree that the visual symbols (letters) represent spoken language?

P.S. The fact that many other orthographies have a more consistent one to one mapping of sound to symbol does not make the process of decoding and synthesising any different.

We are of course talking about English not Egyptian

I am interested in this technical discussion of codes and ciphers but would point out that reading researchers have been using the terms interchangeably for many decades. Presumably because they could not find any word which more nearly conveyed the idea of the use of sound to symbol mapping in the reading process.

However, if Micksy et al could suggest a word that they consider to be more appropriate perhaps the research community would change their terminology.

Maizie:
The fact that many other orthographies have a more consistent one to one mapping of sound to symbol does not make the process of decoding and synthesising any different.

It makes the process completely different. In English, there is far more to learn and the learning is not even generally applicable.

I'd say the concept from mathematics that best describes phonics code (or do you say alphabet code? I'd tended to assume that just meant the simple code for the individual letters) would be a binary relation between the set of graphemes and the set of phonemes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_relation

Another name for a binary relation is a correspondence - although generally used for the whole relation rather than individual x corresponds to y elements of it as it is for GPCs.

(Can also be described as a many to many mapping as Micksy says.)

Code and cipher have particular technical meanings in the context of cryptography. I don't think there's a problem using the word code in its everyday sense in forming your own technical meaning for reading research/teaching though. It made sense to me, I didn't need anyone to explain to me it wasn't intended to be 1:1 because that was obvious.

masha, have you genuinely been thinking all these years that phonics proponents were claiming the code was a 1:1 encoding and decoding relationship? No wonder you think they're all nuts.

It doesn't make the process of reading any different. There is just more to learn.

Perhaps you'd better look at some 2014 results from schools which teach 'pure' synthetic phonics:

www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6080

Third post down. It doesn't look as if those children had any difficulties with phonics.

masha, have you genuinely been thinking all these years that phonics proponents were claiming the code was a 1:1 encoding and decoding relationship? No wonder you think they're all nuts.

I think it's marsha who believes that that a 1:1 encoding and decoding relationship is the only thing that is allowed to be called 'phonics'. We all think she's nuts, so the feeling is mutual

Thanks for your post, catkind. Glad we can go on using 'code'

Thanks for your post, catkind. Glad we can go on using 'code' wink
As long as we're allowed to go on using many-to-many.

Of course you can use "many to many" it was the many,many I disagreed with

Oh how lovely; friends

If I ever said many, many it was a typo! many:many is a shorthand for many to many. Pax

Then we have been disagreeing over your typo catkind

I can't even find a typo, perhaps we have our browsers on different encodings so my colon came out as a comma? (it's that code again!)

Perhaps, showing on my iPad as a comma

Very odd. Is it all my posts or just one? This is me on safari on iPad and they still all look like colons to me. Is this a comma? "Many:many"