When is the phonics check please?

[EarthboundMisfit]

It must be soon, right? Is there a specific timeframe in which schools have to do it?

Thanks.

Lily, but again that points to poor 'differentiation of phonics;' by his teachers.

DS tauight himself to read fluently before starting Reception. He was very interested in books [partly due to not being allowed out of bed until 7 am despite being a 5am waker] so would pore over and over his favourite books, linking his good auditory memory of the story he had had read to him repeatedly to the actual words on the page.

When he started school, he started at the beginning of Jolly Phonics with everyone else. However, his teacher very quickly spotted that he had worked out the phonic code for decoding. This is a key point - he APPEARED to read by sight, but what he had actually done, which if you think about it must be how those who 'read by sight' pretty much always do if they are to read new words, was to work out his own understanding of the 'common phonic code'.

Phonics for him was therefore differentiated by becoming phonics for encoding - for writing, not reading - as easy in many cases as a quick 'DS, can you write some words that have that sound at the beginning / middle / end ... oh that's interesting, that word does have that sound, but can it sometimes be encoded using a different grapheme?'

As a result, he remained a very keen devourer of all things book related, but also became a good speller. he never acquired the 'phonics is boring' mindset, because his teachers were always very quick to show him how phonics was useful for the next thing he needed to do.

The main way IME any child gets hooked into reading is by being read to, and by seeing the people in their lives reading interesting things. So if school phonics books seem 'boring skills practice' - in the same way times tables might be for Maths - then the best way to encourage reading or more maths is having a wide variety of other books that are read to / with the child, and a variety of 'other things to do with maths' (from mazes to magic squares to Polydron) around the place.

That's starting from a different point though - ds3 couldn't read at all when he started school! So from a 'differentiating' point of view, he 'needed' to do all the phonics stuff from scratch.

Honestly, I don't actually want to get into a blow by blow analysis of how he learned to read, it is just my observation that he would have benefited from a very different approach that wasn't purely phonics based. And having had 4 children given 4 different ways to read (depending on what govt says is the 'current' way), I've seen what worked with which child.

It's not rocket science that different children will respond differently, but that is something that is not allowed in the current DfE thinking, all children have to be the same.

I suppose what I'm saying is 'did you read books with DS3 every day that would interest him, in parallel with him learning phonics at school?'

In an atlas or history book, read together with an adult, there will be some words he can decode using the phonics that you know he has just been taught, and some that he can't ... yet .. and the carrot that you use phonics to sound out the really complex place names, and soon he will know enough phonics to do that too, can be helpful.

I suppose what I'm saying is that explicit and rigorous phonics teaching, supported by carefully grated phonics readers in the early stages, is absoklutely the best method for learning to read - but will only be a part, often only a very sm,all part, of a child's experience of the world of books, stories and reading in its widest sense. A 20 minute phonics lesson per day and 10 minutes with a phonics reader + 4 bedtime stories, a story read by the teacher, another story read in assembly, some non-fiction information about the class topic, some role play of a well-known story or TV series and some time at home exploring the atlas together is a balanced diet. Assuming that the 30 minutes of 'phonics related reading' is the only point at which your child can be engaged by reading is ... odd.

haha, yes, he was and is read to every day by us, and constantly by his siblings - the house is bursting with books!

Honestly, there is no 'magic bullet' for ds3 - but he has to be interested. This is the child who convinced his teachers in reception that he needed 1:1 support for counting up to 3 objects, when he could do complicated sums involving large 2 and 3 digit numbers in his head (and believe me he could count objects fine) - he just couldn't see the point. But once they twigged what he was up to there, they were able to engage him differently, because maths doesn't have quite the same requirement to adhere to a specific way, like phonics does .

When he's not interested (as in the phonics) he just switches off.

Apologies, X-post.

If something hasn't worked in terms of a child's learning - and we do this kind of analysis all the time at school - there are a number of things to consider:

• Is the approach that we have been using the best one? (E.g. are we teaching phonics?)

• Is the way we have taught this approach the best way? (E.g. Is our phonics teaching in line with best practice, and is it supported by appropriate resources e.g. phonic readers?)

• Have we tailored this approach to this particular child in the best way? (E.g. Do we have a range of phonic readers on a range of subjects, including non-fiction wherever possible? Is there individual and small group support/intervention? Does the child have specific learning differences or difficulties that we need to adapt for even further?)

• If parents / carers are required to support this child in this area, do they know enough to do this, and do they also understand the approach being used? (E.g. have we run information / training evenings for parents; have we explained what to do and what not to do; have we signposted parents to sources of other suitable reading material to supplement class readers; Have we sent home any resources that would be helpful; Do we have an open door policy towards parents where children are not making the progress we would like them to)

The same analysis applies to e.g. Maths methods. We very seldom go right back to 'no, we are using the wrong approach' (though we do on occasion) - if something has failed or isn't working as well as we would like for a particular child, it is usually one of the three later questions where we need to make changes.

So in your DS's case, I'd be asking 'why isn't he interested' - it sounds to me like it was the type of reading material he was being given to practice on. I did love the time DS was given a range of football players' names to practice phonics on ..,.

So it is a 'Question 3' change not a 'Question 1 change' IYSWIM, in relation to my previous post - a failure to grasp his particular learning needs, and accommodate them.

whereonthestair

As other posters have said, a child who is not "getting" phonics due to some neuropsychological difference still needs to understand phonics. If you cannot decode words using phonics, you will never be able to read a word that is new to you.

A very large proportion of reading in later stages is reading words that are new to you. If you cannot decode you are actually not reading English - you would be fine if the language you were reading was Chinese but you are not reading English words, you are just recognising words you already know. And that's not sustainable when reading advanced (or even middle level) texts. You will get stuck, you won't be able to read even quite well known but new-to-you words, and you won't get the meaning of the text.

Working on phonics in the right way is the best way to teach reading to children who have dyslexia (see PP). Or auditory processing difficulties etc. (not sure where the gross motor problems come in here as lots of children with gross motor problems learn to read using phonics methods just fine).

So if phonics doesn't seem to be working for your DC it's a problem with the way it's being used, not a problem with the whole principle of the thing.

And I get that the specialist provision in mainstream school can be absolutely rubbish (currently applying for an ECHP for our DS - he has quite a lot of motor difficulties but is pretty good at phonics).

mrz- I'm sure you do have children reading those excellent books. But they weren't the first books those children read

Why do you think they couldn't have those books from the beginnin?

g

First ever book my ds attempted to read was D H Lawrence!
He pulled it out from book shelf, and opened random page, and pointed to some words and pronounced it. I still remember delight in his face.

From the 'statutory requirements' for NC for primary.

'read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words

 re-read these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading.'

Hence the focus on books that use simple phonics words.

I'm sorry mrz, but I can't imagine any reception teacher handing a child their first reading book (assuming they are in the early stages of reading) - and handing them Roald Dahl. In any case, if they are following the NC, they can't, because you couldn't read every word in it using the limited phonics they would have learned by that point.

Lily, the way my ds learned to read might have worked for your ds too. It was simple, just watched everything with subtitles on. And he was capable of "decoding" Roald Darl bigginning of reception. He was capable of pretty much anything, if we didn't think about comprehension.

Dahl

The statutory requirements of the National Curriculum don't prohibit children reading other books alongside ... In fact it encourages them to read widely

There's also a little thing called baseline assessment that means children start from what they know so if you've got a child confidently and accurately reading Dahl you would provide suitable books

Hence the focus on books that use simple phonics words.

I'm not sure quite where to start with this one but I'l have a go.

Firstly, the focus is on books which children can read independently using their current phonic knowledge (i.e. the words contain only letter/sound correspondences which the children already know or are currently learning) This has at least two purposes. 1) to give the children an opportunity to practise what they are learning and to consolidate previous learning and 2) to avoid children being badly discouraged by encountering words which they are unable to read independently. I cannot emphasise enough how important this second point is; I know, from working with them, that a very significant number of children suffer needlessly in all sorts of ways from just not knowing how to work out what the words 'say'. Reading instruction has to be effective for all children; strugglers as well as high flyers.

Secondly, the issue of 'simple'. I take it that LilyB is using the word in the sense that the words used are very basic, short 'easy' words (with, I fear, the implication that this is demeaning for 'good readers'). I would contend that most words, whatever their syllabic complexity, are 'simple' so long as you know the letter/sound correspondences within them. In fact, learning the correspondences and how to apply them enables writers of decodable books to use a far wider range of vocabulary than do writers of 'Look & Say' books which depend on endless repetition of the same words over and over again to attempt to embed them in memory. Decodable books use repetition of correspondences for the same reason but the correspondences can be used in a far greater number and variety of words. Just try counting the number of words which can be made (and are available to use in books) with, say, the first dozen correspondences taught, and compare that with the number of words used in Look & Say books at the same sort of level.

Thirdly, although I 'get' what LilyB means, the term 'phonics words' is a nonsense term. 'Phonics' is the term for describing the correlation between the discrete sounds in words and the letters used to represent them. This is how all words in English are constructed. There are no 'non-phonics' words.

Given that the screening check has now been conducted, does anyone know where and when this year's 'paper' will be available?

DS has had his and claims to have got all 40 right, however that is purely on the basis that the teacher never told him that he got one wrong, so he may be mistaken .

I am not in the least worried and have refused (and been mildly angered by) the homework practicing sheets we have been given. Phonics teaching is a very weak point in our school IMO. I'm just curious.

The check period doesn't end until next Friday and the threshold isn't published until Monday 27th June, so it won't be before that.

Chamenager, both mine said the same, but, like you, I'm thinking they've never not been corrected if they've got something wrong at school.

It's a bit early so I won't say which word of the test it was, but DS read one of the nonsense words as an Acronym.

I've not managed to get out of him if he also sounded the letters of the nonsense word (in order to get it right and a tick for his teacher's sheet) but he is a example of how an advanced reader can go wrong in the test!

But I found it funny. Especially when he asked me what a similar acronym means beginning with R (may bring a smile to Yr1 teachers).

Now all of that is of course is dependent on whether he is telling me the truth about the word in the test or telling tall tales (very possible!)

Oh, now I'm intrigued!

Acronym or initialisations?

Initialise?.

I would have described it as an acronym but yes the first initials -
For example of the 'word' a guest list or royalty