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.

LePetitM - as an objective outsider, I must say I found your posts to be the most aggressive. 'Quit with your...' - not that nice.

On the topic, I don't think any teacher thinks phonics is the be-all-end-all and I agree your son shouldn't be force fed it in an ideal world. But why can't he sound out b-a-t if he is such a good reader? I think his attitude is the issue - this is something that doesn't come easily so he shies away from it. I agree with PP who said you need to work on encouraging him to try & rewarding/praising when he does it, because he will be able to. While you are all 'this isn't right for my DS' and battling the teacher, he's not going to start trying to make this come more easily to him.

To whoever it was that said their child could read 75% of Charlie and Lola but can't sound out - surely they will have memorised it? Reading is a blend of so many things but I feel phonics is the bedrock of a sort of pyramid.

1. What phonemes are in the word; when blended do they sound like a word I know?
2. Do I recognise the written format of the word?
3. What is the context - can that help?
4. Can I get a clue from the illustrations?

Now in many cases 2 will overlap with 1, but you will always be limited to your sight vocabulary. If a child is read to a lot in combination with phonics, that and blending can help them pin down a word they've heard before but not seen.

Agree with so much of Notinaminutenow's post actually; I've not added much.

I said I was very happy to look at data. I'll revise. I'm always happy to look at research that is not provided by people with products to sell.
The problem with explicit phonics teaching is when children are resistant to spending lots of time learning things they already know. Only the people who know them well can make the decision of whether they truly have inferred the rules through solitary reading, or whether they are using a portfolio of other skills to cover a lack of knowledge.
The people closest should be they ones making that decision, and should not be forced into a single path through strict adherence to a dogma.

"The problem with explicit phonics teaching is when children are resistant to spending lots of time learning things they already know."

That's not a phonics problem, that's a bad teaching problem. Just the same issue as if a child who knew their tables was tested on 2x2 over and over again.

Eugene I refuse to be patronised,belittled or bullied thanks which I have observed happening time and again on these threads towards other posters(and I'm not alone in my observations).If I feel that is happening I will say whether you like it or not.

The alternative is sitting back and saying nothing which frankly I find more unpleasant.

Perhaps you should consider why you find someone disagreeing with you are patronising

You know you were being patronising and the three of you belittling again.It was commented on on another recent thread with one of your little group excusing it by putting it down to your posting style(as if that is an excuse).

Anyhow we shall have to agree to disagree.

Maizie about me
She is not an expert in the teaching of reading
True, and don't claim to be.
she's an 'expert' in pointing out the problems with English spelling
Not on 'pointing out', but simply very knowledgeable about the reading and spelling problems posed by the inconsistencies of English spelling, after spending 20 years investigating them.

This may be reassuring for parents who are worried about their children's progress but it's not much help in solving their problems.

I disagree. I think that understanding what makes learning to read and write English difficult is of great use in helping children cope with those difficulties - rather than pretending that those difficulties don't exist.

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.

No country with an alphabetically written language has to deal with the reading difficulties posed by letters with variable sounds, such as 'and - any, our - your, on - once' ...
For them phonics works perfectly and they would be mad to use anything else.

The fact that on the European mainland all children learn to read much faster than in the UK, and that they use nothing but phonics for doing so, was used by the likes of Ruth Miskin to push for more phonics over here, completely ignoring the differences between English and all other European writing systems.

The more phonic a spelling system is, the better phonics works.

Glad you weren't scared off by the running arguments OP! I did assume he was finding reading "bat" difficult from what you said. Unfortunately there's no "of course" about it, I know a kid who genuinely couldn't decode by the end of year 1. And that despite mum being a primary school teacher and and very supportive of phonics. Agree with PPs that perhaps the problem here is poor teaching of phonics not phonics per se. Perhaps your DS will actually have more fun with the phonics check things, where he will really need the decoding to read the alien names.

Also interested to know what evidence there is the 4th grade dip is associated with phonics (or lack thereof). From a quick google it seems to be being related to deprivation, lack of vocabulary, lack of breadth of reading matter at home, lack of comprehension skills.

ITA has little to do with current teaching methods but lots to do with Masha's spelling reform aims.
Wrong again. Schools who used i.t.a. in the 1970s did so to prevent spelling reform.

In 1953 the House of Commons had passed Mont Follicks spelling reform bill. In 1963-4 this led to an experiment with 1,670 children to test if making English spelling more regular would speed up literacy acquisition. Half the children used i.t.a., the rest normal spelling in their 1st school year.

The teachers who saw that i.t.a. enabled children to learn to read and write much faster had the daft idea that if all children used i.t.a. for the first year, and learned what reading and writing was about, they would cope better with normal English spelling afterwards. Their reasoning was that if this worked, there would be no need for spelling reform.

This was a classic case of putting good research to really bad use, as happens so often with teaching children to read and write English.

The 4th grade dip is a phenomenom which seems to have been initially noted in the US. The US is even more resistant to systematic phonics instruction than the UK. It stands to reason that they would blame anything other than the method of reading instruction for children's failure to progress. In many instances teachers and researchers aren't even aware that there might be something wrong with their methodology.

I'm always a bit suspicious of low SES explanations of failure to learn to read. I appreciate that home conditions would present a barrier to learning, but when you consider the appalling social conditions which prevailed in the 19th century in Britain, and for a lot of the 20th century, the fact that somehow since then we have managed to raise literacy levels over the past 150 or so years tells me that there must have been something going on in that period which over-rode the effect of low SES.

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.

It's based entirely on a very careful analysis of the spellings of the 7,000 most used English words.

At least 2,000 of them contain contain some letters with variable sounds. And many of them undermine the main spellings too:
e.g. out, sound, our ... - soup, should, your, double....

They can be taught in a very carefully structured way, in small groups, but they all end up together in children's heads.

I wonder if a lot of the shouting on these threads is actually different uses of definitions.

I get the impression that by "decodable" for example, masha means 1:1 decodable. So for her lots of things are "not decodable" that are in fact decodable with the many:many code. To add to the confusion even phonics scheme writers sometimes refer to words as "not decodable" when they actually mean "not decodable yet".

Of course the fact that English code is many:many makes it harder to learn to read and spell compared to languages that are closer to 1:1. But teaching approaches to many:many code is well within the scope of phonics teaching.

I have to try to remember not to use phrases like "read at sight" as people take that to mean look and say style whole word learning and get hot under the collar. Ditto lots of different usages for "high frequency words", "high frequency tricky words", "irregular words".

While we're clearing the air, one thing that comes across really patronising is when teachers' response to any posts they don't like is "how many children have you taught to read?". Complete non-argument. 20 years ago the teachers would have been advocating a completely different method, and equally boasting about how successful their children are at learning to read. Even in this thread you are talking about how much phonics is taught badly. I'm sure those teachers have seen hundreds of children learn to read and think they're doing the best thing for their children too. Talk about what the evidence says, please do.* Talk about how specifically you teach things in your classroom, that's really interesting. But "I am a teacher therefore I am right" is just rubbish.

*But what the evidence says about the question under discussion please. What the evidence says about synthetic phonics vs look and say is irrelevant when no-one on the thread is advocating look and say.

Also interested to know what evidence there is the 4th grade dip is associated with phonics (or lack thereof).

The reason for that is very simple, Catkind.
As children start meeting and using vocabulary which is less controlled than in the phonics schemes, the irregularities of English spelling derail them more.

I completely agree with u, Catkind.

And especially that
a lot of the shouting on these threads is actually different uses of definitions.

E.g. a 'code' normally means a reliable 1 to 1 way of working something out.
As many English sound to letter relationships (and visa versa) are one to many, it clearly hasn't got a reliable code, but phonics evangelists claim that it does.

*But what the evidence says about the question under discussion please. What the evidence says about synthetic phonics vs look and say is irrelevant when no-one on the thread is advocating look and say.

But isn't that just what the OP seemed to be suggesting? That her DS seemed to be able to 'learn' words without phonics?

I agree that there is a lot of confusion over terminology; I don't know how you get round that apart from by trying to explain how the terms used have been interpreted and making it clear what one, personally, means by them. They sometimes just cannot be avoided...

As children start meeting and using vocabulary which is less controlled than in the phonics schemes, the irregularities of English spelling derail them more.

Oh dear, marsha. By '4th grade' a phonics taught child is well beyond the stage of needing controlled vocabulary decodables'; just about everything is 'decodable' by then. It is Look & Say taught children, who have reached the limit of memory for whole words (2,000 - 3,000) and who haven't worked out the phonics for themselves, who struggle when they encounter unfamiliar words and have no idea how to identify them.

The reading vocabulary of a skilled reader is reckoned to be 30,000 words or more; David Crystal worked out that you'd need a reading vocabulary of about 9,000 words just to read a Red Top newspaper. 2-3,000 words isn't going to take you very far.

The fourth grade dip is due to DC from less privileged homes having much lower (oral and written) vocabularies and therefore not understanding text. It's not a decoding issue.

I see a "fourth grade dip" with French DC who attended British schools in their early years, spoke and read English perfectly at age 7 (and had learned to read with phonics) who then return to France. Their English no longer progresses. Their decoding skills remain very good so on a pure decoding test such as Burt's their performance is often very respectable at age 9 (discounting a slight accent), but when reading text their comprehension is hindered by their lack of vocabulary. Many linguistic features of under privileged children are found in bilingual DC who do not live fully bilingual lives both at home and school.

Maizie: But isn't that just what the OP seemed to be suggesting? That her DS seemed to be able to 'learn' words without phonics?
You're right, it was relevant on this thread, but it's often brought up on threads where the discussion is actually about 100% phonics vs phonics plus other strategies e.g. different teaching for not-easily-decodable-high-frequency-words. (There, was that clear enough?)

Masha: As many English sound to letter relationships (and visa versa) are one to many, it clearly hasn't got a reliable code, but phonics evangelists claim that it does.
This is the crux of it. No, no-one's claiming that English has a 1:1 code. mrz, maizie, feenie, anyone want to claim that? No, thought not. When they say decodable they don't mean a 1:1 code they mean a many:many code.

Can I be translator?

But "I am a teacher therefore I am right" is just rubbish.

I agree! But that isn't what I am saying at all in those situations - I'm not infallible because I am a teacher. What I am saying in response to masha (when she says that pure phonics for later readers is rubbish) is "but in my school, we use it, and 100% of our children learn to read to at least level 4 standard, and around 60-70% to level 5. How can you tell me it's rubbish/dogma, etc, when I have the evidence day to day in front of me (and you haven't)? And why aren't you interested in finding out why it's working?

Masha has been invited many times to see phonics in action throughout school, not just in early reading. She has never taken anyone up on that opportunity. Too busy posting about it not working past early reading on every parenting/education/spelling forum known to man, I guess.

Just a thought, but how is his speech/ hearing? Some of your post reminded me of DS2 who would memorise words when he started school and struggled to learn phonics. I found that he needed one to one attention and spent quite a bit of time going over the phonics sounds with him. That worked well. Alphablocks was also good and he would watch it for 30 minutes at a time without realising that he was learning. He has had speech therapy for years and I suspect the problems with phonics were connected to that and that he finds it difficult to differentiate between sounds.

Feenie I'm very interested in hearing your experiences in the classroom. I'm not interested in hearing you dismissing other people's ideas on the basis they don't have the same experience. "We tried x and y and y worked better" is interesting information. "I'm a teacher, you're not, so your opinion has no value," is putting down another poster.

I'm personally not particularly interested in your school's reading record, as I don't know the record of the school next door to compare it with, nor what exactly you're doing differently. You might have inspiring teachers. You might spend more time hearing children read 1:1. You might have good systems in place to catch children who are failing early. You might have some magic way of doing phonics that's different from the way everyone else does phonics. You might do all of those. We have no way of knowing! That's where actual studies are valuable because they try to control out the other factors.

No LePetit I wasn't trying to patronise you and I'm sorry you feel that way.