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!

Thanks Rafals, that's good data. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I doubt many children, if any, are failing on alien words alone.

I'm coming out of this thinking that making slight alterations from phonics to known words (not guesses based on the first letter) is a completely normal and harmless part of the reading process, and that children who fail the phonics check probably do so not because of an inability to read novel words but due to a lack of phonic and other mappings.
I'm not sold on the necessity of alien words, as I doubt the existence of a group of children so good at sight reading that they can read all the real words, who have yet failed to pick up any mappings for regular letter sounds.

I'm not sure whether anyone has analysed that far in depth. It might be interesting if they did.

If you don't want alien words, how would you test the ability to accurately decode new words in a way that you can ensure that children aren't passing because they have the words in their sight vocabulary?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=SoX21V8-p40
The other quote is from an article by Dr Spear Swerling can't link from phone as signal poor here

I'm not certain that it is possible to gain a sufficient amount of sight words along the way without also implicitly learning to read new words as well. If it was, we would have lots of readers failing only on the alien words. My intuition is that children with the capacity to learn huge amounts of sight words will in doing so learn to read en route, whilst the many others who failed to pick up reading this way would also not have sufficient sight words to pass the test either. As a really rough example, I don't know that you can learn hat cat at dot dab fluently and then not be able to read dat.
A really easy way of seeing if the alien words were with bothering with would be to look at the correlation between scoring in the two groups. If it's high, don't bother with alien words, if it's low, keep them.
I'd love to think that someone had actually done that, but knowing how evidence based half the decisions made in education are, I won't bet my house on it.

As a really rough example, I don't know that you can learn hat cat at dot dab fluently and then not be able to read dat.

I'd have thought that too, until I started working with 'struggling' readers at secondary level. I had a large number of children who could read nice, ice, mice, slice but who couldn't read 'spice'. 'Spickee' was what most of them tried.

How strange that every one of them struggled in that exact way. Isn't anecdotal evidence strange?

Maizie:
I had a large number of children who could read nice, ice, mice, slice but who couldn't read 'spice'. 'Spickee' was what most of them tried.

'Spice' was clearly a word they were less familiar with.

This confirms that having a big vocabulary is of great help in decoding English.

Rafa: If you don't want alien words, how would you test the ability to accurately decode new words in a way that you can ensure that children aren't passing because they have the words in their sight vocabulary?

Use low frequency longer real words, e.g. independent, longitude, pontificate, obliterate, procrastinate), if the test is really meant to reveal how well or badly children are able to decode unfamiliar words.
U could even use sensibly spelt real words: eevn, throo, altho, frend, sed...
U would be 100% certain that children don't have them in their sight vocabulary.

But in English there is really no accurate decoding divorced from meaning: mean/meant, reread what u read yesterday, could/couple/ doubt/double ...

"U could even use sensibly spelt real words: eevn, throo, altho, frend, sed"

Newsflash those are pseudo words!??

I suspect there would be complaints that the check is trying to trick children if they used such words because many will know the correct spelling

"Use low frequency longer real word, e.g. Independent, longitude, pontificate, obliterate, procrastinate), if the test us rally meant to decide unfamiliar words."

Interestingly my Y1s have recently been learning about continents and oceans and latitude and longitude so I know they can read the familiar word longitude. They have also met obliterate when finding synonyms for destroy - it's on the WOW word board (you need to get an XBox) so the argument would be that you can't be sure they aren't familiar to some children giving them an unfair advantage.

When my Y1 class come in each morning there is a polysyllabic word on the board. There is a reward for accurately reading the word, another for a definition, a third for using it correctly in a sentence and finally using the letters in the word to write as many words as they can (spelt correctly) while I complete the register. Would that give them an unfair advantage over children sitting with Biff et al?

Alien words are used because they have been shown to be the most effective way to assess the ability to decode. They have been used by researchers, Ed Psychs and Sencos for decades and are a feature of all the widely used assessments.

As a Senco I use Rapid as a screener which includes pseudo word reading.

It would actually be more sensible for the PSC to only use pseudo words but I suspect the government were all too aware of the outcry that would cause.

The sources for the quote

Peer-reviewed journal articles:
Chapman, J. W., Tunmer, W. E., & Prochnow, J. E. (2001). Does success in the Reading Recovery program depend on developing proficiency in phonological-processing skills? A longitudinal study in a whole language instructional context. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5, 141-176.
Fukkink, R. G., & de Glopper, K. (1998). Effects of instruction in deriving word meaning from context: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 68, 450-469.
Jenkins, J. R., Matlock, B., & Slocum, T. A. (1989). Two approaches to vocabulary instruction: The teaching of individual word meanings and practice in deriving word meaning from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 215-235.
Kuhn, M., & Stahl, S. (1998). Teaching children to learn word meanings from context: A synthesis and some questions. Journal of Literacy Research, 30, 119-138.
Stanovich, K., & Stanovich, P. (1995). How research might inform the debate about early reading acquisition. Journal of Research in Reading,18, 87-105.
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Feeman, D. J. (1981). A longitudinal study of sentence context effects in second-grade children: Tests of an interactive-compensatory model. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 32, 185-199.
Other helpful sources:
Adams, M. J. (1998). The three-cueing system. In F. Lehr & J. Osborn (Eds.), Literacy for all: Issues in teaching and learning(pp. 73-99). New York: Guilford Press.
Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford.
Stanovich, K. E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading: Scientific foundations and new frontiers. New York: Guilford Press.

Thanks, I will work my way through some of those.

Words such as birth are known as pseudo homophones, apparently, and are processed slightly differently to pseudo words having no meaning. They activate different parts of the brain and incur different processing times.

I wouldn't bother.
In view of the speed with which theories about teaching children to read and English change, they are all a bit dated.

All those millions of pointless words which have been written about it have only been penned or typed because of the inconsistencies of English spelling.

Burth not birth. Auto correct does not like pseudo homophones.

Reading is Rocket Science - Moats.pdf

Birth isn't pseudo anything using phonics

Burth is a spelling mistake

m.youtube.com/watch?v=MSy685vNqYk

If children are going to turn non-words, that'they've been told aren't real words into real words when reading, what on earth do you think they are going to do to words that are real words but they don't know. I don't see how that improves the test at all Masha, it just makes the problem worse. They'll be expecting them to make sense.

They'll use their knowledge of phonics to decode them.

What about the children who are familiar with the words?

My Y1s read real polysyllabic words every day as part of their phonics lesson ... 80%+ would read masha's suggestions with no difficulty.

Words like burth are considered pseudo homophones because they have semantic meaning without being recognisable written units. They are therefore very useful comparisons in neurological research.

From what I gather, children with dyslexia have a very different pattern of real word to pseudo word success and failure. It appears that these checks could be used to identify certain kinds of processing disorders. Interestingly, high IQ poor readers apparently share many profile elements with children with learning disabilities.
Reading acquisition is an amazing topic, but there are no simple answers, there are no proven theories and there are few stupid questions
I hope if this thread has shown anything it is that debate is healthy and that no one is right on everything all the time - not the most referenced expert, and certainly not people on mumsnet forums debating the work of those experts.
Synthetic phonics is wonderful teaching method, but it is not the be all and end all. It does not closely mirror what is actually being learned or how information it's encoded neurally. With an open mind, we can improve instruction even further, because we do not, and never have, lived in the best possible of all worlds. We should always be adaptable, never dogmatic, and take to heart the advice of not trusting intuition beyond its remit.

They are used in visual word recognition research not in phonics and obviously not in any research focusing on the sounds of our language.