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.

To good readers the phonics test is of no importance or relevance whatsoever, because they have moved past the simple sounding out stage which the phonics check tests.

Becoming a fluent reader of English involves much more than mere sounding out. It depends very heavily on learning to recognise instantly common words with tricky spellings, like 'one, two, you...' without the need for sounding out.

To the best readers in a class the phonics test is almost invariably a complete waste of time.

Agree with MrsK and AuntStella. Good readers usually get 39/40, they certainly don't get enough wrong to fail the test.

Did they give you the school's results when they gave you your dd's? That might put it into context and help show where the issue is.

Not synthetic phonics. Not always. Not in isolation.

Yes, synthetic phonics.
Yes, always
No, not in isolation. As part of a language and literature rich curriculum. Anyone teaching it in isolation is doing it very badly.

And it is a nonsense that 'good readers will change nonsense words into real ones'. Good readers read all words accurately.

I was worried my very good reader would fail because she had gotten really lazy about sounding out unfamiliar words. I can understand why, sounding out is effort fil. But I think that the school did a lot of work on the test beforehand. Normally I'm against prepping for tests in that sort of way, but actually I think it helped get her back to sounding out, which is actually the quickest strategy for most new words, no matter how long. If she is doing well, this check will just get her a little support to get back to using phonics as the basis for new words. I'd say that is a good thing - strong report and a little more focus from the school on helping her maintain good strategies for new words.

Reports should never contain nasty surprises. Frankly the school should have had some idea who was at risk of failing the phonics check.

I'm sorry that 29/40 is not a borderline fail. A nervous child might make one or two mistakes, but getting eleven words wrong is worrying. I suggest you ask the teacher whether your daughter struggled with the alien words or the normal words.

The phonics check is a cheap and simple way to pick up children who have weaknesses in their literacy. A bright dyslexic child might do well in the rest of the curriculum, but fail the phonics check. It's good if such a child can be picked up and helped.

I agree with the phonics check but I hate the way it was administered. No child of six should be made to feel that they have failed. I feel children should sit the test when they are ready rather than formally failing a test. Ideally six year olds should not realise they are being tested.

You can't say that she got eleven words wrong because 50% of the test is made up of non words. All you can say is that she made nonsense of the nonsense. Which, to me, is quite reasonable. I think, the best method of finding out whether or not a child can read is to give her a book and ask her to read it. I'm going to send that idea to the Department for Education and see what they make of it,

I think that's the way it's administered by some schools though, ReallyTired. I don't think there's any requirement for children to be told they've 'failed'. Or to use the word 'fail' with parents either.

A simple 'x is working below the standards expected of children at the end of year 1 and will be given extra help to catch up next year' should suffice. Similar things get put on school reports all the time.

Agree it shouldn't come as a surprise in a report. But if the school's phonics teaching is a bit dodgy they may not have correctly identified those children that were likely to end up below the pass mark.

Since non-word reading tests have been used successfully to screen for reading difficulties by ed psychs and dyslexia specialists for years, I doubt there's much chance of the DfE listening to your idea.

Anyway KS1 children are given comprehension assessments in ks1. The results of children who make nonsense of the nonsense in both years 1 and 2 are not good.

"I think, the best method of finding out whether or not a child can read is to give her a book and ask her to read it. I'm going to send that idea to the Department for Education and see what they make of it"

I think you may be muddling two ideas.

This year 1 screening is not a 'reading test'. It is specifically designed to establish if a child can decode, that is be able to speak the written word accurately, whether it is one they have seen before or not. This is a vital skill in later reading fluency.

Reading tests come later anyhow (SATs etc) so there is no need to suggest to DofEd.

Early data is already showing that pupils who are better decoders are performing better in later reading/literacy tests.

And as masha says, good readers are so fluent in phonic decoding, they are unaware they are doing it. (That they use the brain pathways associated with phonics, not sight, has now been demonstrated by neurological experiment).

I don't think there is necessarily an exact correlation between confident reading and phonics decoding. I say this because DD3 is only just moving up to green book band (stage 5) having been struggling on stage 3 for forever a while. Her report describes her as 'just within age related expectations'. Yet she got 38/40 on the phonics test.

I think she got some fairly intensive phonics support in the time leading up to the test. I also think that it's revealed that she can read more than she lets on -she doesn't like to get things wrong.

Worryingly, in her school 100% of girls met the threshold but only 53% of boys.

Dora, the children know which words are nonsense words because there is a picture of a little alien. There is really no excuse for a child to turn them into a real word. The blunt truth is that a child who gets below 32/40 really cannot read. They need extra help in year 2.

My daughter got the word "beehive" wrong and scored 39/40. Her teacher tells me that she was incredibly nervous during the test. A group of daft year 1 children had got it into their heads that if they failed they would have yo repeat the whole of year 1.

How can you talk about comprehension and nonsense in the same sentence? Surely, if children who can't decode nonsense also do badly at comprehension it's for some other reason. Being brilliant at reading non words isn't a passport to understanding Shakespeare.

The phonics check assesses a particular skill. Either a child has that skill or they don't.

In the past most people just picked up the phonics naturally. However there is a stubborn 20% of children who need explicit instruction. Most adults taught to read by look say would be able to pass the phonics check in spite of never been taught phonics.

The ability to read new words is essential when learning Shakespeare. Guessing at new words results in more mistakes in a reading comprehension test.

reallytired, I think there's probably a lot of truth in what you're saying. But, people are going to get confused if it's proposed that reading non words aides comprehension, as above, because it clearly doesn't.

What's more likely to be true is that children who have trouble with the non words also have other reading difficulties, of which comprehension is one, and that the correlation is to some degree coincidental.

" But, people are going to get confused if it's proposed that reading non words aides comprehension, as above, because it clearly doesn't. "

I don't think that has been proposed. And yes, confusion does need to be cleared up.

The ability to decode nonsense words correlates with the ability to accurately decode real words in a text. And the ability to read a text accurately correlates with the ability to understand it.

All a non-word reading test does is test the ability to recognise graphemes and blend them together in a way that ensures that what you are not testing is actually how large a sight vocabulary a child has.

It sounds more like the OP's child has more of a problem applying her phonics skills, rather than the actual skills themselves. If she's already using phonics play, I would continue with that but with supervision so you can ensure she is actually reading the words.

I think the point is that accurate decoding aides comprehension because then you are reading the words that are written. All words are nonsense words until you know the meaning. It doesn't stop you reading the word if you can decode it.

Anyway KS1 children are given comprehension assessments in ks1. The results of children who make nonsense of the nonsense in both years 1 and 2 are not good.

Isn't the conjunction of these to things merely a coincidence? It looks as if it's being proposed that good nonsense reading leads to better comprehension scores. But, I'd imagine that, although the statistics are correct, one is not the cause of the other.

All words are nonsense words until you know the meaning.

No, they're not. Hamlet's soliloquy doesn't morph into the Jabberwocky, just because someone is unfamiliar with Danish princes in emotional turmoil. Shakespeare is trying to tell us something, and doubtless succeeds, even if you don't understand much of what he's saying. Lewis Carroll isn't.

"What's more likely to be true is that children who have trouble with the non words also have other reading difficulties, of which comprehension is one, and that the correlation is to some degree coincidental."

That has to be one of the strongest arguments for having the phonics check. It identifies children who may need a more rigorous assessment. It is not financially practical to screen every six year old in the land for dyslexia. 25% of children failed the phonics check at dd school. It is financially more realistic to screen 25% of those children for dyslexia than the whole class.

Ugh, my phone died and I lost my entire post

it is a nonsense that 'good readers will change nonsense words into real ones'. Good readers read all words accurately.

I don't think this is the case. For an experienced reader, an unfamiliar word is far more likely to be a typo or a misspelling than a word they haven't seen before. If I'm on MN and someone's typed "don't buy that satchel, the starp is ridiculously short", I'll automatically mentally correct starp to strap, and since strap makes good sense, my brain's happy and I might not even realise I've done it and that the person mistyped at all. If someone types "the teddy bear was starp and soft with age" my brain might try strap, or maybe sharp, see that neither of those make sense in context and reconsider "starp" as a possible new word I haven't heard before. All these processes are automatic in a good reader, and with a decontextualised single word, it makes sense that some good readers' brains would do the first half, autocorrecting, but not be able to do the second half, context-checking.

If I read all words accurately it would take me all bloody day to get through some threads.

In the phonics test there is a picture of an alien which tells the childen they have to use their blending skills.

This is a nonsense word: strom (I wish mumsnet had an alien icon!)

I have told you a nonsense word and your brain should understand that its not in any particular context.

If I used the same nonsense word in this sentence you would instantly think that I meant storm and had just made a typo. When our brain is reading a sentence we are doing far more than just decoding.

The boats were tossed about in the howling strom.

Our children are brighter than we think. They know they are being tested on their phonics. They are adaptable.

Agree totally realhuman

I think we're in danger of assuming that what some apparently able 6 year old readers are doing is the same as a skilled adult reader.

I'm not convinced that all children that read strom as storm are reading strom and then correcting to a word they know. I suspect many just aren't looking properly.
Also 6 year olds don't have the same vocabulary size as adults. They shouldn't expect every word they come across to be one they know. Especially since at some point most of our new vocabulary acquisition comes from reading.

A child that reads silt as slit all the way through a geography text because they know slit and not silt has a problem