Yr 1 report - informed me she failed phonics test.....

[sugarhoops]

But she was given expected and exceeding for all report areas and her main report gave no mention of failing the test (the phonics test result was on a separate piece of paper, included in her report pack).

I have to confess, I was a little alarmed at the fail in the phonics test (29/40). I've been told by the teacher at last parents eve a month ago that DD is in the top group for phonics, one of the top readers in the class and is excellent at literacy. I was surprised to see she failed the phonics test, but then was given expected and exceeding for all her report areas, with no mention of needing further phonics support.

Can you just have an off day? My Ds passed the test a few years back and was definitely further behind with reading and phonics compared to dd at this same stage of yr 1. I'm confused, and not sure what to do to support her so that she passes in yr2 retake.

No DoraGora it's called phonics!

Quite. It's phonic knowledge that tells you that a 'd' sound is what makes 'ben' into 'bend', not your memory of how 'bend' is spelled.

The main way that people memorise pieces of music is by actually playing it. In the same way that children understand phonics by writing them down, and people revising for exams write down what they want to remember as this helps them to do so.

maizieD explains the seeming similarity but fundamental differences between long-term, secure phonic knowledge and whole word recognition better than me.

Before trying to establish exactly how regular and irregular English spelling is, i first set about compiling a basic vocabulary list that an average 16-year-old can be expected to have come across, by comparing various spelling lists and spelling books, and online corpuses. I had great difficulty getting beyond 7,000 basic words (i.e. play, but not playing, player or plays as well).

The vocabulary that people use is much smaller than the contents of dictionaries which contain lots of compounds and derivatives and lots of entries for different meanings of identical words, along with thousands of foreign words which most people don't know or use.

I get that and agree maizie; I was responding to a PP who said that even fluent adult readers are instantly and unconsciously phonically decoding.

MRi scans have shown that what happens in the brain

Actually memorising a piece of music uses a range of strategies - not just playing it, but visual, aural, even 'guesswork' can help...!!! Same is true of reading music, that there are different strategies. (Again, not equating this to reading words). To get to a point where you can look at a complex score and hear it in your head (e.g. a contemporary symphony orchestra score) takes a long time, and I think probably does use lots of the same tools in terms of getting from a visual prompt to an aural realisation.

Memorising text does too. Actors use lots of different strategies to memorise their lines for example.

No it isn't. phonics is a philosophy (a dodgy one at that). Spelling is just a matter of observation.

Even though we appear to read words as 'wholes' the brain processes them by a bottom up process, letters > sounds > to words, albeit so fast we are not conscious of it. Well, that's what the neuroscientists say...

It's fascinating and I don't know anything about the science, but that doesn't seem to mesh with my subjective experience of reading - for example, written puns that I don't "get" unless I hear the words spoken for some reason, or words I know well from reading that I don't realise I have no idea how to pronounce until I try to speak them, and other aspects of reading such as those times when an incorrect word on a page of text leaps out at you without your having read the text, like an unfamiliar face in a room full of friends.

Phonics is about as far from being a philosophy as it's possible to be.

If spelling were just a matter of observation, anyone would be able to spell any word they had ever seen (unless they had dyslexia or something similar).

Given the volume of poor spelling about, this is a bit of a spurious claim.

That kind of argument would make boxing, cricket and rowing ineligible for the title of sports, on account on the fact that many people are not very good at them.

Sorry, you've lost me Dora.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

By your argument anyone who's seen boxing should be able to step into the ring with Tyson Fury ????

Or anyone who has watched cricket could be called up for the remaining Ashes tests. Which might be an improvement.

Even though we appear to read words as 'wholes' the brain processes them by a bottom up process, letters > sounds > to words, albeit so fast we are not conscious of it. Well, that's what the neuroscientists say...

That's really interesting. Most of the stuff coming up via google is variants on the dual-route hypothesis which seems to be saying that there are separate brain mechanisms for decoding (sublexical route) and reading recognised words (lexical route). Or more complex variants including semantic clues too.
The references in wikipedia seem fairly recent. Is it a case of opinion differing or newer research?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-route_hypothesis_to_reading_aloud

explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=41549&PageTemplateID=295
"In their experiments, the researchers looked at the response between two visually similar normal words that shared all letters but one (i.e. ‘boat’ and ‘coat’) and found that the neural response to this condition “looked just like when participants saw two words that shared no letters, for example ‘coat’ and ‘fish’,” says Glezer. “This shows that the neurons in this area of the brain are very selective for individual words. Even though the two words shared all letters but one, there is no overlap in the neural representation, just like when the two words are completely different.”
Which contradicts DoraGoras Ben/bend theory

news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/reading-brain-phonics-052815.html

"How different teaching methods affect brain activity and reading development
Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.
July 15, 2015
A new study in the scientific journal Brain and Language examines how the brain responds when presented with two different methods of reading instruction. It examines a small sample—sixteen adults (with an average age of twenty-two) who are native English speakers and do not face reading disabilities.

Participants took two days to undergo training, whereby they learn an invented language based on hieroglyphics. Each participant was taught two ways to associate a set of words read aloud to a corresponding set of visual characters (or “glyphs”). The first was a phonics-based approach focusing on letter-sound relationships; the second was a whole-word approach relying on memorization. After training, the participants took part in testing sessions during which they were hooked up to an EEG machine that monitored their brain response. They were then instructed to approach their “reading” using one strategy or the other.

Scientists found that the phonics approach activated the left side of the brain—which is where the visual and language regions lie, and which has been shown in prior studies to support later word recognition. Thus, activating this part of the brain helps to spur on beginning readers. This approach also enabled participants to decode “words” they had previously not been exposed to in the training. The whole-word approach, on the other hand, did not activate the left brain hemisphere; instead, it engaged the right side, which has different circuitry typically not associated with “firing” in the brains of skilled early readers.

The study adds more solid evidence that phonics instruction is effective instructional practice, which is what the National Reading Panel told us many years ago. Now we know that it also stimulates the brain."

Nothing proves more clearly that it is perfectly possible to learn to read and write without any phonics than the chap from NZ who became French scrabble champion without speaking any French
www.wtsp.com/story/news/2015/07/21/man-speaks-no-french-wins-french-scrabble-title/30483733/

This neurology/phonics research is interesting. But, the researchers are cheating. They've already looked at the children's reading test scores before conducting the research on them and now they're concluding that the ones with the higher test scores are better at phonics. Professor McNorgen even uses logic derived from phonics to explain hypothetical efficiencies in identifying words. The results of the research are biased and front loaded!

That doesn't make it dull. But it does make it suspect.

This is a superadditive effect,” says McNorgan. “An audio-visual response less than that sum suggests that getting both types of inputs causes these neurons to fire for less time. This is a subadditive effect.”

This subadditivity is associated with higher reading scores and faster responses to similarly spelled words, the reading equivalent to having a head start in a race.

• See more at: www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2015/01/028.html#sthash.ktC5T3qB.dpuf

@catkind

Dual route is still only a hypothesis, even though it seems to be the dominant one. I have probems with it because it fails to adequately explain how the word is identified before meaning is activated. Logic tells me that the random collection of letters on the page in front of the reader has to be identified as the collection which has its discrete meaning. Which takes us back to rapid, automatic, unconscious processing in the manner proposed by neurologists.

If the words aren't identified you could be attaching a meaning to any old collection of letters and we needn't worry about learning to read and write, we can just make it all up!

The theory was proposed quite a long time ago now, at a period when the extent of the alphabetic code wasn't fully appreciated by researchers and understanding of it was focussed more on acknowledging all the one to one letter/sound correspondences and dismissing all the rest as 'irregular' (the marsha view ) rather than on the fact that the 'sounds' remain constant and the letters & letter combinations are different ways of representing them (sorry, I'm not sure if I've explained that very well).

So, we have one of the originators of the dual route theory insisting that words which do not contain what he considers to be the 'right' letter/sound correspondences cannot be sounded out and blended but must be learned 'by sight. (I know this because I'm on a forum which he is on and have discussed it with him). It is these words which he believes must be recognised by 'meaning' because they can't be decoded (in his view).

This neurology/phonics research is interesting. But, the researchers are cheating. They've already looked at the children's reading test scores before conducting the research on them and now they're concluding that the ones with the higher test scores are better at phonics. Professor McNorgen even uses logic derived from phonics to explain hypothetical efficiencies in identifying words. The results of the research are biased and front loaded!

I'm sure you think know what you are talking about but I don't think anyone else does.

There's nothing in your link to support your statement.

masha that story shows no such thing. The scrabble champion has learned the possible graphemes of the language, and has applied it in the artificial world of a particular game. So he has used the necessary elements of phonics (ie permissible grapheme combinations) for the task, but not all of them. Which is unsurprising.

maizieD: I get what you mean - spoken natural languages are all about their meaningful sounds (ie phonemes) and then dealing with the 'code' that puts those sounds into the written word.

And there's nothing in your response to show that my statement is unsupported, either. other than ya boo.