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.

We know from research that weaker readers over-rely on picture and or context clues when encouraged to do so. That's not all readers - it's the ones who struggle and cannot decode effectively.

Micksey it is virtually impossible to identify a g and t child in the first few years of education. A bit like dyslexia you cannot really spot them until all the basics have been learnt.

Mrz: Because he wants to read 'bat' but his teacher wants to check that he can 'decode' it and so makes him spell all words out. It frustrates him.

Anyway, thank you to everyone for a very interesting discussion ...

Marking place to read later

Micksy - is it really correct to assume that DC now in secondary all benefitted from rigorous phonics teaching from YR? My DD is 10 and would be in Y5 in the English system. I didn't find it particularly easy to get the info or materials I required to teach her phonics when she was 4 and lots of English schools were still using ORT old-style. I know my nephew (Y8) learned to read with Biff & Chip. Surely we still need a few more years to judge the impact of phonics on spelling?

Really? There is no need to sound out and blend 'bat' if you can already read it to automaticity.

That's not good phonics instruction.

Now we have got to the heart of the problem ... Your sons teacher!

No method of reading instruction will ever eradicate spelling errors. The errors being made are phonetically plausible in most cases.

Btw, LePetitMarseillais - I've just noticed that the thread title specifically asks KS1 teachers to comment.

Sure, but anecdotally I have evidence of DC in the same school taught to read in English with phonics and without phonics and there is clearly a discrepancy in spelling accuracy. Which doesn't exist in their other language (French).

Indeed. And I think she is far more comfortable teaching art/drama/music ... which is great. But she gets very defensive when I try to talk to her about reading ... Anyway I think what I need to do is work with her (let's face it, she doesn't have time to hear him read every day) and get my DS over this mental block by carefully doing lots of word work at home, without necessarily picking up the dreaded Read, Write, Inc books which he now hates. But you have all convinced my that well delivered phonics is a good approach to reading. So thank you for that.

As a secondary teacher, I can assure you that phonics has not eradicated bad spellings.

Really, 'phonics' hasn't had a chance to eradicate bad spelling yet. It may have been official govt advice since 2007 but good phonics teaching just isn't widespread. Govt advice doesn't equal instant turn around in teaching methods. You only have to read posts on here to get a flavour of what is really going on in primary schools.

I worked with struggling readers in Sec and most of their problems could be traced straight back to poor or incomplete phonics instruction. And bad spelling affected far more children than did bad reading. But spelling has been even more likely to have been left to children to work out for themselves...

Have you seen Reading Chest, op? You could borrow books which are better matched to your son's decoding ability (just tick the phonics schemes). Books come in the post personally addressed to your dc - exciting, and would leapfrog his reading and avoid the frustration completely.

Phonic ally plausible is OK when you're five but children need to be taught which alternative is correct

No method of reading instruction will ever eradicate spelling errors. The errors being made are phonetically plausible in most cases

Well, that's an improvement on writing a random collection of letters and hoping that they'll do! Which is how many children I worked with approached the task.

There's an impressive collection of spelling data here:
www.sounds-write.co.uk/pdf-downloads.aspx

If it doesn't open automatically find the 'Sounds~Write Research Report 2009', it has spelling data on over 1,000 children.

Notnowcato I would reassure him that he doesn't need to sound out every single word and that's it's fine for him to "read" the words he can automatically

I think NotNowCato that the reason she is asking him to spell out BAT is that she wants to check he understands it phonically not just through memorization.

I was once on a thread like this and I argued against phonics as two of my children were excellent readers and spellers and I had never made any attempt to do synthetic phonic practice with them.

Two years ago my second son started to slow down in his reading. His spelling was completely erratic (although vaguely phonic) and his sentences illegible as a result. He lost all patience with the written word as he couldn't communicate clearly what he knew. Disaster. For a child who had been an excellent reader in KS1. I pooh-poohed any idea that he needed synthetic phonics.

Finally I took him to a dyslexia tutor. Who identified that he did not know any of the phonic sounds, did not know how to blend, and couldn't tell a grapheme from a digraph (still not sure what either is myself Personally I didn't know what she was talking about but I slowly began to see that he had to start from the very very beginning with synthetic phonics because he was just making words up from his prodigious memory and not decoding to any regular method.

Somehow he had missed synthetics in his reception and Year 1 classes and had sufficiently grasped reading from another angle to appear a good reader. But it has really made me think again about the importance of synthetic phonics for SOME children who would otherwise not properly grasp reading and spelling. Despite SOME children learning to read and spell without apparently needing any formal synthetic phonic programme. Just reading is enough of a phonic programme for a lot of us. But not for all. Ds2 is extremely behind in his literacy through not acquiring synthetic phonics.

However, I will say this. He went to primary, was supposedly taught synthetic phonics. But he did not take them in. And no-one noticed or remedied it. Except a tutor when he was in Year 6. So much for the "system". And loads of dyslexic children suffer in the same way within the system. Not enough intervention early enough.

I'm an advocate of phonics, just not as a cure all dogma. It's unrealistic to think that it will eradicate bad spelling. Look at the extremes. Some children will be fortunate to write their own names correctly. Some will not be able to do even that. There will always be a spectrum. Spelling may improve under phonics but the will always be other educational needs which may lessen its effectiveness. The brain is a complex piece of equipment
Not everyone's can perform all tasks equally. Saying that poor spellers would have necessarily been better with phonics instruction is totally wrong on an individual level.

In my son's case I think it was an auditory processing issue as he could not distinguish the sounds - for example cr a v a t would be spelt c a r v a t. He knew there was a r in there somewhere but it would get lifted into the middle of the word. spr would lose the r and th would lose the h. Lots of very subtle mishearing of the phonic sounds or mixing up au with or, oar with or. We are slowly working our way through a phonics programme for 5-7 year olds and it is a revelation to both of us. By the time he was 7 the school didn't bother with phonics any more. You were supposed to have "got" it if you could read "fluently", which he could.

Look at the data, Micksy.

Nobody claims that SP will cure everything but it works better for more children than anything else we know of at present.

I found it really sad to have to be teaching children stuff in Y7 they could have easily learned in Y1/2

OP I felt like you completely baffled by all those "sounds" my child was meant to be learning in Reception and the handsignals. What were they on about? It seemed like some weird scientific way of teaching what I knew would just come naturally as it had with me and my other children as long as I read to them and surrounded them with books. It reminded me of the panic I felt when the antenatal Pregnancy Yoga teacher was explaining us how to breathe. I knew how to breathe but not the way she explained it? What was she on about???? (I never understood how to do yoga then or now)

Breathe.

Make phonics your servant not your master. Let them help your son and continue to read him as many lovely stories as you can.

I totally advocate phonics on a statistical level, but think it's very precarious to invoke it on an individual level. Saying, I wish my son had been taught phonics better because then he would be a better speller is bad application of the statistics. Saying my son was an atrocious speller until he revisited phonics would be far more plausible.
I truly do think phonics its the best method for every student, unless there is a valid individuated reason for it to not be the best method. I differ from purists in believing those reasons to exist.

But surely if a child is clearly a very bad speller but is otherwise intelligent, and mastered reading in the early stages (but stalled) it would be wise of school/teachers suspect lack of synthetic phonic knowledge?

As a first step? And then other more complicated interventions later?

Ds2 has Asperger's too - so I think they probably decided he was just not trying very hard/resistant to learning/couldn't be bothered to learn his spelling lists.

Learning spellings off by heart was pointless for him. He forgot them immediately. He can memorize ideas and facts but not spellings.

Why leave phonics learning to chance though, when it can be taught explicitly?

All these anecdotes about children learning to read without being taught phonics might be true, but those children simply worked out the phonetic codes themselves.

The recommendations for teaching reading are 'phonics first and fast'. Children are also taught to adapt words depending on context where appropriate, for instance: read, sow, live, wind, etc all alternate pronunciations. Other methods of teaching spelling are usually used as children become older too.

Phonetic knowledge is used all the time, even if we aren't conscious of it and we still use it to decode words like those mentioned above, you simply choose the alternate code, you don't really memorize the words, although it may feel that way as we apply phonics so naturally with time and practise. Think of some of the few words that you do memorise because the code really isn't useful for them, like Worcester, or keilidh. You approach reading them in a different way to reading other words, and I still find myself stumbling over the irregularity of them, even though I know and have read them lots of times. But words like this are few and far between as most words really are decodeable and belong to a family of similar words.

Masha's view of English seems skewed to me. It is mostly decodeable, and to learn the few exceptions is easier than trying to memorise 1000s of words. Allthough I do think she is kidding herself if she really thinks she has memorised these words, she is using phonics far more than she realizes.

Also meant to say that in my opinion it is parents that struggle with phonics and have problems as it is something many of our generation didn't learn to read with.

And all this about phonics spoiling enjoyment of books? How does learning phonics at school stop you enjoying story time with your child? Surely you read TO your small child? The books they enjoy sharing with you are not meant for your school starter to read themselves as the language is not at their decodeable level at the moment. It is still OK (and positively encouraged) that they memorise stories with rhythm and pattern eg, going on a bear hunt etc. as long as you don't confuse this with actual 'reading'.