Yr 1 reading/phonics

[RunsWithScissors]

Hello,

DD (5.5) seems to be doing pretty well. Nearer the top end of reading in her class (on orange band, I know not stunning based on MN standards ;-) but she's moved up leaps and bounds from the beginning of the year.

The phonics test is this week, and her teacher caught me yesterday to say she doesn't think she'll pass it. I know it's for the school to see how she's doing, etc. she's moved her into a different phonics group to help her out.

I'd noticed she doesn't tend to sound things out much, I think she remembers words/word recognition?

I didn't learn phonics growing up, but can't recall the learning process of reading that I went through. I've always loved reading, as does DD.

So, my questions are:

Is the lack of ability/knowledge going to make it harder for her? She seems to be progressing really well with her reading, and has wonderful comprehension of what she reads. Very expressive when she reads a book for the first time, so I know she is understanding it. I'm just wondering if a better grasp of phonics would make it easier for her, or do some children naturally read in a different way?

Secondly, although her spelling is also progressing really well I do notice that some misspelled words reflect her speech (which we are having assessed) eg. 'Wiv' for 'with'. Her hearing test was fine last year, she has a great vocabulary and can explain things really well.

I am a bit confused tjough, as she seems to use sounding out to spell. Is this not a similar skill to reading by sounding out?

I know the school will do a great job to support her, and we are thrilled with her progress this year. I just want to ensure we are doing what we can to support her, and that we aren't missing out on things that might make it easier for her/be a more natural fit for her style of learning.

Thanks if you've read this far!

Also, his paper does not support your stance that English should not be used as a base for developing theories of reading acquisition, only that it should not be the sole driving force behind research. This is his own closing remark:
Postscript. The unrivalled status that English enjoys today as
the global language (Crystal, 2003) has brought a proliferation of
English borrowings and associated spellings (often nonnativized).
Ironically, many highly regular (Roman-based) scripts (perhaps
hundreds) are now finding significant numbers of borrowed English
spellings (exceptions, no exception) in their orthographic
lexicon. The wheel may be coming full circle, with the extraordinarily
hospitable English lexicon now dispensing orthographic
largesse in every corner of the globe. Could this one outlier
orthography be shifting the global norm of spelling–sound correspondence
among Roman-based scripts? Whether English spelling
exceptionality is on the wane, no grand unifying theory in the
reading field can afford to overlook such a ubiquitous outlier.

I know what dual-route theory is.

You can easily know what a symbol means without identifying letters.

That is assuming that you are able to 'learn' these words as 'wholes'; that, to me, seems to be the only alternative way to identify them.

But how does that reconcile with Dehaene's account in which individual letters (the parts of the 'symbol') are identified initially. What is happening is not going straight from word to meaning - it is identifying the word before attaching a meaning. We also know that phonology is activated very soon after letter/word ID (do some more googling on 'phonology & silent reading) so that we are also using the 'sound' of the word in the reading process.

If we revert to a 'whole word' learning theory for the 'lexical access' route we come up against the problem that whole word learning has been demonstrated over many decades to be ineffective. If you want to 'balance' whole word with phonics you arrive at the 1998 National Literacy Strategy which also proved to be ineffective in that, although literacy rates were marginally improved ( KS2 SATs data was used for monitoring), it still failed some 20% of children.

Where the researchers seem to fall down is their belief that children somehow cannot be taught the entire range of letter/sound correspondences used in English orthography. Or, perhaps, that children cannot 'learn' them.

I was quite surprised in your choice of paper to show me, because it directly contradicts these viewpoints.

No. It says that English orthography is complex and that greater insights may be gained into the acquisition of reading skills if we treated it as an outlier rather than made it central to reading research. I don't think he is accepting the dual-route theory; I think he is expressing a degree of academic scepticism over its value.

I am perfectly happy with phonics being the route into reading. Even when a word contains a completely unique letter/sound correspondence it is usually possible to decode the rest of it. There is no need for it to be taught as a logograph. What needs to be taught is the unique correspondence. Learning that correspondence may come by being 'told' it by a teacher, or other adult, or finding it in a pronunciation guide to the word. Or even, once the meaning is known, the word might well be mentally mispronounced for years & years if it's not used in expressive vocabulary and is only encountered when reading..

You're conflating teaching with learning again.
Regarding Dehaene, I'll honestly say I don't understand the topic well enough to attempt a definitive answer. I haven't read anything of his that negates either of the two main models, the paper I read of his seemed more to run in parallel, looking at the function of the left fusiform gyru. His description of what happens in that brain region does not negate the possibility of something else happening elsewhere. I've definitely read a paper yesterda (not by him) that was saying they'd identified a second region involved in reading irregular words .
Dehaene may well disagree with dual process or Connectionist approaches, and will then be one of a number of eminent experts with their own theories. Weighing in on one side or the other of the debate without becoming at least a semi professional would be sheer arrogance.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=yrxqVaTuEsOBU63rgNAO&url=www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/Coltheart%252005.pdf&ved=0CCgQFjAB&usg=AFQjCNHib7naw0NZJvst2kxxnmgdctgdXQ&sig2=7UaVkr3xDshVFKDu7_i7Ig" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=yrxqVaTuEsOBU63rgNAO&url=www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/Coltheart%252005.pdf&ved=0CCgQFjAB&usg=AFQjCNHib7naw0NZJvst2kxxnmgdctgdXQ&sig2=7UaVkr3xDshVFKDu7_i7Ig
Here is a link to the full Coulthart text on drc. There's nothing in it about accessing words as single visual blocks. His model breaks words into letters even on the lexical route.

Micksy Sat 30-May-15 21:59:59

^Mrz, here are some alien words from last year's phonics screening check:
vol, teg, jat, ind, tull, shog, frem. Not all quite cvc, but pretty close.^

Thanks Micksy not sure why you thought I needed that (I've administered the check every year since it was introduced)
You stated
Micksy Fri 29-May-15 20:28:22

Lots of the alien words are cvc, though, which I think makes it easier to see what they're not, if that makes sense.

Alien (a term coined by the press) pseudo words can be any length you choose it just so happens that the DfE have decided that in a check for six year olds that the words should be mainly cvc ... I was providing you with some examples of longer pseudo words that are used by many schools to assess decoding skills.

^I found this website to explain the unpronounceable name trope.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheUnpronounceable^

The point of this (way back in the thread, and really not terribly relevant to where it is now) is that not all words written in print are intended to be possible to be spoken aloud.

the words in that piece are trying to make a humourous point not very accurately but that wasn't the author's purpose.

Words in Russian or Polish or Czech or Welsh .... are equally unpronounceable until you know the code (relationship between symbols and speech sounds) for that language. Try prst or chrz?szcz both real words but using different alphabetic codes.
If the screening check used combinations of letters that aren't seen in English orthography (as used by the author to create "The Unpronounceable" name and in your spelling of the word you would pronounce "Prigstulbrif" and the example someone gave earlier in the thread "mrain") then the check would be totally useless.

nice short accessible videos

but you access the research/articles on the childrenofthecode.org site

Mrz, your almost completely right in everything you say in your last post.
Completely irrelevant to the debate I think I'm having, but completely right. Nearly. I'd argue that alien words having pictures of aliens next to them makes calling them alien words fairly apt.

Please stop inventing imagined arguments against you to repudiate. It makes the debate incredibly tiresome. I never once suggested alien words in the phonics check were anything other than completely regular. As you say, doing so would make the check pointless.
There are lots of other completely obviously wrong things I've never said. Do i have to listen to you explain why they are wrong as well? It is an incredibly laborious way to have a debate.
As I say, you pick up on the least relevant part of each of my posts. When I bother to explain what I meant, even though it isn't really important, you then pick up on the least relevant part of my reply, and focus in on that, often totally missing the point even of that.

I am not interested in the use of alien words in scifi. I am not interested in reciting lists of alien words used in various tests. I only did so because you pulled me up on a point I had made to another poster, which was mainly intended only to wish their daughter good luck on the check and want even related to this debate!

I'm only interested in the completely wrong things you have said Micksy. Sorry you think it's irrelevant but it's probably mire relevant to the OP than your links

Mrz, those videos are just little sound bites. I watched two of them and they were completely irrelevant to what I'm arguing.
Here is my stance again.
Synthetic phonics works better than any method it has been compared to. I haven't read the original research on this topic. My stance on this is much softer than phonics purists as I believe there are lots of methods it hasn't been compared to, and some of these could potentially be even better.
My second position is that whilst phonics is the best contemporary method to teach, this does not mean that it is the only method children learn. The current position of research is mostly divided between supporters of either the dual route cascade model or the Connectionist model, neither of which propose a purely phonological basis for reading.
My third position is that the English language is the most irregular of all languages and that it is precisely the irregular words which are furthest from being decoded using a pure phonological process.
I'd really appreciate limiting this discussion to those points where I think we might actually be in disagreement.

I once more completely agree that this debate has diverged from the opening post. So..
My fourth position is that this post now bears very little relevance to the op and is now a conversation mostly between you, Maizie and myself, with an occasional pop in from readers with an interest in phonics debate. As such, it would be lovely to restrict it to areas upon which we disagree, rather than quoting truisms at each other as though we were disproving each others posts.

Did I say they were relevant to you?

I know most people have probably run away but some might still be interested in the OP

Sorry Micksy my interest is in the OP

That's fine, Mrz. Feel free to ignore any further posts I make as the majority of them have only been tangentially connected for pages now. We may well have further discussions on any posts of I feel you are giving simplistic judgements at odds with current theory. Hopefully i will at least begin a little more on topic than we are currently.

When you come up with some current theory I'd be interested in seeing it

I'd happily discuss dual process cascade models or connectionist models with you. That's in fact what I felt I had been doing. Do you not consider these to be current theories?

But you said "current" theories

I'm not aware of them having been superseded. There are lots and lots of papers on the topic within the last five years. How are you defining current?

A nice simple illustration of the dual route model
www.readingdoctor.com.au/how-do-children-learn-to-read/

A simple model of reading aloud (adapted from Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R. & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A Dual Route Cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204-256)

Brilliant, so we're discussing Colthearts dual route cascade model, then, since that's the one referenced in your link.

Do you agree that to achieve reading competency, both phonic knowledge and a lexicon of recognised words are necessary? Do you think it's a possibility, or do you outright disagree with the DRC model?

I just thought I'd provide a simple illustration for anyone who didn't want to try and find full articles Micksy.

Mrz, I am quite baffled by the fact that you're playing for the benefit of a potentially entirely imaginary audience, rather than for the only person active on the thread. I was supposing that you were giving an example of a current theory.
Do you consider dual route cascade models to be a current theory that you are prepared to discuss (preferably with me, since I'm actually here!) or not?

No Micksy I don't consider it to be current I consider it something that's been around for a decade

So you feel it's been completely discredited by this point?

I prefer the Scarborough model but remember we are talking about skilled readers not beginners/