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!

It always amazes me that anyone listens to Rosen's rants.

My sons school does phonics from reception ( although ds did satpin at pre school) then they do a graded reading scheme using lots of different books and then they go onto the accelerated reader programme and do a computer quiz after each book read to test their comprehension.
Ds started the accelerated reader a few weeks ago and is enjoying it.
I used to help with reading in year 5 a few years ago and it was amazing the level of ability reading compared the the level of comprehension.

Our pupils comprehension age is roughly in line with their reading age.

I think as with a lot of government intervention initiatives, the thing to do is chill out and remember it's not aimed at you. It's aimed at the 20% of children who are functionally illiterate at the age of 16, a stat I know is true but still can't entirely bend my head round. So if the rest of us have to put our kids through five minutes of agreeing the monster's name is vob, so be it...

I think if the OP's DD is reading books in line with her age but can't sound out unfamiliar words, then this test is aimed at her exactly. But it's a good thing, not a bad one. She might not fall into the functionally illiterate category, but she might fall into that category of children who can read well enough to get the gist of a text but whose inability to read more complex texts accurately will hold them back accross the curriculum as they get older.

Better to identify and sort that now than run the risk of someone labelling her as 'not that academic' in the future.

I agree Rafa the struggling readers are more obvious but it's just as important that the check also picks up the apparent good readers who lack an effective strategy to tackle new vocabulary when they meet it. IMHO these children are more at risk in the future than the obvious struggling readers.

many will have raced ahead of confusing, pointless nonsense words.

You can't 'race ahead' of being able to decode a word which is unfamiliar to you.

I think problems do arise when children race ahead before developing necessary skills and knowledge regardless of the subject.

Longtalljosie,
The various government initiatives over the past 3 decades have indeed all been aimed at reducing the ratio of functionally illiterate school leavers.
Sadly, they have had no effect, because the main cause of it are the inconsistencies of English spelling which make learning to read exceptionally difficult.

It won't change for as long as the hundreds of baffling contradictions like 'an - any, apron', 'on - only, one, other' and 'sound - soup, trouble' remain.

The pathetic, totally pointless phonics test will certainly not change anything.

The only thing that makes a slight difference is giving struggling readers lots of one to one help. But even then English spelling leaves learning to read too slow and difficult for quite a few children, if they don't get regular help at home as well.

Conscientious parents who spend 10 mins a day helping their children with learning to read when they first start do a fantastic job.

Remind me masha ... Have you ever administered the check?
Have you ever seen it administered?
Have you ever used any of the widely used literacy screening assessments that all include versions that "pathetic" test (it isnt a test BTW) but a screening check.

I'm not certain whether taught phonics alone actually helps with reading unknown words. Take segue: phonics alone will lead to a pronunciation of seeg. When reading scifi novels, there are a number of alien words that I happily leave as a sight reading block.
I watch my child sounding out words like face, and it's through context and semantics that she chooses the soft ess sound. I realise that there are rules which lead us to choose face as a reading and not fake, but are children actually taught this level of rules, and if so, is this done before or after they no longer sound it out?

And would "gayk" be an acceptable reading of the alien word "gace" in a phonics screening check? Or would they just not use words with layered rules in the check?

Not sure how a child taught phonics would come up with seeg but you're correct unless they have heard the word before they are unlikely to get it 100% correct but much closer than a child who has never heard the word and is guessing from context or picture clues.

No "gayk" wouldn't be acceptable but neither would it appear in the check.

At the early stages a child taught phonics would be taught to try the most common sound represented by the spelling then to try the alternatives and decide which fits the context ... What they wouldn't be taught is to first guess what word might fit the context.

Sorry meant to say the reason "gace" wouldn't appear in the check has nothing to do with "layered rules" (whatever they might be) but the alternative spelling for sounds that will have been taught at that point - not all programmes will have covered the spelling for the sound /s/

I presumed ess was an alternative to Kuh, and the a-e was a split diagraph.
What I meant by layered rules was that the position of a letter within the word impacts on the correct choice of pronunciation. So a c at the end of a word is generally hard, but one that sits within a split diagraph is usually soft. A learner has first the set of rules that says these letter combinations can make these sounds, but then the extra layer meaning they are much more likely to make certain sounds in specific positions.
I'm not aware through my vicarious experience of phonics education how many positional rules are explicitly taught.

I am still not certain children learn the way teachers teach. My daughter will sound out, wwww-ah-sssss wass, then amend it to woz, because it's a real word that fits. She doesn't think of the o as an alternative sounding to a. She's applying her phonics knowledge sensibly but she's also doing what readers who mess up alien words do.

Ît's not that it's at the end, it's that it's followed by an 'e'. So 'c' in the middle of a split digraph is almost always going to be /s/ and that's the sound you would try first.

Some programmes will have taught that by this point in year 1, others won't. Which is why it isn't included in the screening check. Personally, I would expect most year 1s to try /f/ /ai/ /s/ first by now but expectations are different in different schools.

Actually what I think she might be doing is what children with incomplete phonic knowledge do. Whether that's because she hasn't picked it up or because she's been poorly taught, I don't know.

I always taught 'a' after /w/ in reception because it occurs in enough HFW it makes little sense not to. The same applies to s as /z/. When children see was or want or what they apply their phonics knowledge to read 'a' as /o/ because they are so used to doing so. If you don't have that knowledge then you are forced to do what your dd does. But that isn't an issue with either phonics itself or the test.

The split digraph works better as a rule than followed by an e, else you have exceptions like cello, celt and ceilidh.
There is definitely a difference between the type of unfamiliar words encountered by a good reader and a learning one. My daughter has a far better spoken vocabulary than recognised written one. When she encounters a new word it makes sense for her to think of the words she knows and choose the closest one to the sounds she is producing. This is a very successful strategy at this point for her.
For more advanced readers, unfamiliar words are less likely to be ones they have heard spoken and more likely to be entirely novel. However, they will also have a greater library of known words to refer to for similar pronunciations and may well use a combination of synthetic and analytic phonics methods.
I can't see when it would be useful to sound out a word using synthetic phonics and not then adjust it to the closest known word, other than when doing the phonics screening test. I think that good readers can probably be taught to override their usual strategies specifically for this test, but I don't think the strategy of choosing the closest known real word is a bad one under any other circumstance.
Obviously this test is useful, but I can see that a few good students could fail, not because they can't read novel real words, but because they haven't been taught well enough not to.
Most students will come up with other methods of decoding new words that are not already part of their spoken vocabulary soon enough, but it's unlikely they're going to need to whilst they're still reading Chiff and Bipper.

I think the first and possibly the most important thing to say is that we don't teach rules in phonics.

In reception we start from the simple - one sound represented by one letter then gradually introduce the idea that a sound can be represented by two or more letters, then in Y1 the idea that one sound can have more than one spelling and one spelling can represent more than one sound.
Of course when introducing common words we encounter this early ... My class would say /w/ /o/ /z/ because as Rafa says they have been taught that the spelling can represent more than one sound and they know that often the spelling represents the sound /o/ when it follows the sound /w/ (but not always so it's not a rule just a probability). They also know that can be /s/ but it can also be /z/ and is in many of those common words as, has, is, his and was.

Your point about exceptions is precisely why teaching rules is a waste of time.

You are right, they aren't going to need it reading Biff and Chip, but children might want to read stuff other than scheme books and not expecting every word to be one you know is a good habit to get into from the start. Once children reach a certain age most of their new language acquisition starts to come from reading. Children are going to be at a disadvantage if they are changing unknown words into ones they know.

Also, you'll lose a lot from authors like JK Rowling, Dahl, Carrol and Lear if you can't read nonsense words.

certainly when they begin to meet more subject specific "technical" vocabulary they need an effective strategy.

I don't argue that new strategies are needed for new words at all, but I think the more words you know well, the more likely those strategies are too be analytic or semantic than synthetic. I suspect we apply different strategies in different contexts. Nonsense words will almost certainly be designed to be regular and well sign posted as nonsensical. New real words may have similarities to other known words. I know I work by recognising a word's root rather than sounding it out.
None of this changes the fact that "rounding" to the closest known word is both highly effective, and yet effectively penalised in the phonics check. Without explicit teaching of how to handle alien words, many more children would fail. It makes sense to me that what's being tested is a combination of reading ability and the taught ability to switch off the "rounding" strategy.
Schools that have devised good teaching methods for both aspects will have no problem with good readers failing, but those that don't teach both parts may well have perfectly good readers failing.
The check will still be useful in picking up all the struggling readers, but it could quite conceivably generate a few false positives as well. Isn't this the meaning of a screening check, anyway?

Why do they need to be explicitly taught to read "alien words" (we don't even refer to them as such) why not just teach them an effective strategy for all the words they are ever likely to meet?

Pseudo words are just words we haven't met ...yet.

Think of how many words that have entered our language in the last decade ... I did a quick google and up popped adorbs choon listicle vape pharmacovigilance squee all real entries in the Oxford Dictionary