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.

Perhaps you could explain how the researchers are cheating?

There's nothing to support!

What you have described is the essence of observational studies. You would never get ethical permission to put children onto controlled trials of techniques of methods of reading, when the consequences of being assigned an inferior method would be far reaching and possibly life-long.

Unless there was anything showing that the methodology of these studies did not conform to the best standards for observational trials, I would not dismiss them out of hand simply because they are observational.

Isn't that what the clack study did though? It did assign children to either synthetics phonics or not.

Admittedly they don't have a control group over the long term as they eventually gave all the children synthetic phonics.

Given the huge variation in what is being taught, I'm not sure you would have to assign children to groups. It's happening already.

The report of the study Dora linked to said nothing about phonics. It was about what brain areas were being activated in word reading. Complete red herring...

OK, if Professor McNorgan's speaking about phonological information and existent and non existent letter combinations has nothing to do with phonics, then, so be it.

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.

The only thing he learnt is how to spell French words, he can neither speak or read French nor can he write anything other than lists of French words. He memorised the French scrabble dictionary and doesn't even know the meaning of the words he can spell or how to pronounce them.

Although he has achieved a great feat it is hardly one that is in any way relevant to children learning to read even if they had similar visual memory abilities, which, in any case, most do not.

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.

No they haven't. They've just discovered which areas of the brain are activated when reading words in different 'conditions'.

... Across a range of abilities

Exactly what are posters' objections to phonics being used to teach children to read in UK schools?

Some of the above posts read almost like some sort of conspiracy theory.

I can understand being a bit at the commercial gain being made by companies producing huge volumes of standardised teaching materials, but the evidence clearly shows that phonics are an effective way of teaching the vast majority of children to read.

I don't understand the problem that some people have with that.

to be fair only the big publishing companies are making money
... and they would sell whole language books just as happily

I know a few people whose objections to phonics stems from the mass produced RML materials and the like, and the cost to schools of buying it.

That's why I mentioned it - I can understand some of their cynicism, but don't agree that it discounts the value of the practice.

I've seen that, christina. The other thing that sometimes happens is objecting baser on their own lack of knowledge and understanding about phonics and what it is or isn't.

I once had a long discussion with a ks2 teacher who thought that phonixs meant you had to sound out every single word every time. More commonly it's a lack of knowledge about the alphabetic code which leads some teachers to believe that most English words can't be sounded out. So phonics is of use early on but is then of limited use.

RML/RWI has proved to be highly effective in schools now published by OUP who just as happily continue to publish look and say ORT books written in the 80s

It's RML that always attracts the sneers about 'commercialism' yet Jolly Phonics has been on the market since the early 1990s and is never mentioned. It's not really the commercial RML materials that people dislike, they're just a proxy for their author who is the target in some quarters for an intense hate campaign. She's hated because she is high profile and has had enough clout to challenge the 'establishment' view of teaching reading and advise on change at a high level. Most authors of SP programmes don't attract attention in the same way and are not criticised.

I think in part it's because Ruth Miskin has been high profile so an easy target ... Authors of other programmes are less visible

My dd1 failed the phonics test in year 1 despite being an excellent reader. However, she has extreme difficulties in writing particularly in spelling. Initially school wasn't worried as she was such a good reader but clearly the phonics test picked up that she wasn't using her phonics knowledge and it was a problem. Personally I wish they had taken it more seriously when she was younger and intervened in year 1 to deal with the problem as it is holding her back. She is going into year 5 considerably behind in writing (but still a good reader). I think the phonics test is a good thing for screening fro problems (even though I didn't support it when they brought it in).

Yes, I agree that phonics helps immensely with spelling.

I found the standard Christine Blower/Michael Rosen opposition towards statutory phonics screening for Y1 children really unhelpful. It's a five minutes one to one with a staff member they know, not Oxbridge entry.

Both of my children are, fortunately, very good readers and spellers. One taught with Letters and Sounds and one with RML. I'm really glad that if they hadn't been picking up phonics, it would have been identified early and appropriate support given (both young enough to have had the phonics screening).

Even if their school hadn't taken a low mark seriously (which is unlikely, they're very hot on phonics all the way through), I would have known and could have, um, asked for advice on MN .