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.

I like to think it's mrz saying something so sophisticated my computer can't cope, I just see a row of little diamonds.

The first was a row of faces without mouths the second was three wise monkeys ...I'm on the iPad but think it does work on my laptop ??

Lol. Do these funny ones on my tablet work? ????

No apparently not.

It's definitely a doughnut and I was going to be good this morning ????????????

I can see them when I use the app but not on the mobile site or desktop site.

That's because there is no way a bright child who is top of the class in Phonics, would have had such a bad day (unless they lost their sight overnight) that they would score 29 out of 40.

To be fair, my school have had various meetings with the parents explaining the test. Also, the children were all familiar with the layout and knew what was expected of them.

I had a child who managed to read every word with r-a in it as -ar- which lost him a few marks but he still passed. However, in my opinion, he still needs further support in Year 2 as this was quite a 'bad' mistake.

I had 'bright' children who didn't pass the phonics check the first year, as they had received poor Phonics teaching in Reception and had parents who didn't believe in Phonics but instead encouraged sight reading and guessing, at home. Those children may have been 'bright' in everything else but were not competent decoders and were therefore not good readers.

OP - just to reassure you.

I am a huge advocate of phonics, especially as I have a yr3 ds with a developmental speech & language disorder for whom learning to read has been a difficult journey. He got 40/40 in the phonics test, but only because he got a lot of extra help - mostly from me. (This turned out to be a mixed blessing as it meant he missed out on any extra phonic support in yr2 which resulted in quite alarming regression. Thankfully his junior school is totally on the ball and he's now getting the extra reading/phonics help that he needs - so he's back on track.)

Anyway, I have a yr1 dd who I've religiously been supporting with a phonics-only approach. At home she had been reading very well and fluently, always seeming able to decode new words without too much difficulty. Then at the beginning of this term I got a letter home saying that she wasn't meeting her phonics targets - so had clearly been given a "mock" test and failed. I admit to being horrified, and in a state of panic, I immediately found a phonics test and did it with her at home where she only made a couple of mistakes. I don't know exactly what happened at school, and I imagine it was due to her shyness, but it made it clear to me that it must be possible for some "good" readers with no phonic problems to still fail this test. In the end, dd got extra support and passed 39/40.

So my experience has taught me that as with any other "screening test" there'll be false-positives as well as false-negatives - and extra support will never do any harm.

Strom was the one dgs got wrong 39/40
He told his mum there was a spelling mistake in the test and they had written storm as 'strom'.
He knew there would be nonsense words but insisted that that one was 'just a mistake in the test'.

As far as I know, children like your dd who are 'good readers' but aren't secure in their phonic knowledge ie she wasn't able to correctly decode one quarter of the words in the screening test, are exactly who this screening will help.

Relying on guessing/memory will work for another couple of years then she'll start to struggle with reading more complex texts as her memory will have run out and she won't be sufficiently skilled in phonics to decode unfamiliar words.

Without this screening, everyone could have assumed that she 'knows her phonics' (I assume the school have if she's on the top group) and it would have been some time before she is given the support she needs to become a accomplished, confident reader.

Children who are 'good readers' don't need extra phonics teaching because they realise very early on that learning to read English is not just a matter of learning to decode.

They are able to learn basic phonics much faster than most children, but they understand that only some English letters (b,d, f, k, l, m, n ... i.e. most consonants) have fairly reliable, decodable sounds, while many others (the vowels) have variable ones, with different pronunciations in different words (an - any, toe - shoe) and that this makes learning to read for meaning essential.

They also realise that u cannot read English fluently until u can read the majority of the most common English words simply by sight, with barely any decoding at all - as u all can. So they concentrate on that.

Making good readers practise more of the basic decoding is a stupid waste of time, because they have moved past that stage, like all of u have.

Usual question Masha .. What experience do you have in teaching beginner readers in reception /KS1 to base your assertions?

masha

What you have just described is exactly phonics. You learn the regular correspondences, then add the others which are not one-to-one, and then practice which of the possibles is actually the one required in actual use. Finally achieving such automaticity that you are no longer aware you are doing it.

And yes, once true phonic fluency is achieved, explicit tuition is not needed. But it would be unwise before that point. This screening gives a good idea - to same standard in every school - whether YR-1 progress is normal towards that aim.

When does phonic fluency occur?

When it it truly accurate and automatic. I know I am phonically fluent - no longer aware I do it, and presumably achieved that at some point in learning to read.

If phonic fluency was not achievable, then even as adults we would be consciously sounding out words, and that is of course not the case. Brain scans show that 'sight' reading in the NT is usually rapid, automatic (ie fluent) decoding. An underlying process so well learned and practiced that there is no conscious awareness that this is what is happening (can't explain the science, but it's something to do with which parts of the brain light up, and what activities they are associated with).

I should imagine that fluency is achieved in different ages by different children. But it is, surely the central aim.

Making good readers practise more of the basic decoding is a stupid waste of time, because they have moved past that stage, like all of u have.

You forgot to add 'imho/ignoring recent discoveries on how the brain actually works/in my capacity as a teacher who has never worked as a class teacher in primary level except doing the odd bit of supply'.

I'm old and there are times when I consciously use phonics to read unfamiliar technical vocabulary and names ... Does that mean I'm not phonic fluent yet?

Of course it doesn't mean that.

Having recourse to explicit decoding when a novel word is encountered is of course an indicator of phonic fluency, because that is the point when you become conscious of the skill that is proceeding automatically in most of your reading.

I think assuming there is a cut off point is the reason many schools stop teaching phonics.

I do not see that the goal of achieving fluency in decoding (at which point no further explicit instruction is required) would mean there is an artificial 'cut off' in the classroom before it is properly achieved.

I think what AuntieStella is referring to is HFW that we no longer sound out every time we read them and possibly I'd add shorter unfamiliar words to that. It does become a subconscious process. Longer unfamiliar words tend to be different I think. It does tend to be more a slower more conscious process.

I think it's important to be clear because historically many schools/teachers stopped phonics once children could read those words ... At which point other strategies were introduced

Isn't fluent a relative term? If you're old and struggling to read chemistry research material then you're just not fluent at reading that stuff.

So, technically, the term non fluent is correct in that case, yes.

I agree with you, DoraGora.

A probem with 'fluency' seems to be that some teachers interpret it as 'reading fast' and hustle children into reading quickly when they really still need to be taking their time over decoding and blending words. A very prime example of this is in Reading Recovery

Perhaps 'automaticity' might be a more useful (though very ugly) word. For me it implies that words are either already in long term memory and so are read 'on sight' or that decoding and blending of an unfamiliar word takes place rapidly and almost unconsciously.

I quite honestly don't see much virtue in being able to read very fast.

Maybe in learning to read, becoming familiar with literature, speed reading/fast reading is a bit silly. But, further down the road, it's OK. I guess, if something has an eventual purpose, like speed reading, it's hard to put forward an argument that it should be ignored. So, it's always going to be a balance, and all balances have an inherent perpetual debate associated with them.