Is phonics ability different to reading ability?

[Thomasina76]

DS2 is in year 1 and is in the top group for reading. He is on ORT level 12 and chapter books. He was on ORT level 9 but after the phonics test in May he was put onto Level 12 and chapter books so I assumed he had done well. Just found out that they are putting the class into sets for phonics and that DS is not in top set. His other friends who used to be in the top set for reading are in it but DS is not and seems to be in a middle or low group with kids who are on ORT level 4-5 for reading. I am completely confused as I why he is in a lower group for phonics whilst in the top group for reading. I thought they were one and the same thing. I will ask the teacher on Monday of course but it's going to drive me mad all weekend.

Knowing the sounds isn't enough to pass the phonics screening check he needs to be able to apply the knowledge to read words he has never seen before (which is why pseudo words are used). It's unlikely that he has been taught all the alternative ways to spell the sounds by the time he took the PSC.

OP. Just ask the teacher! If you do it in a calm manner they won't mind at all.

Some children so struggle with phonics but have good sight vocabulary and vice versa - but that does not seem to be the case here as he moved up groups. So I'd just ask the question.

catkind, your comment made me think.
I think my ds was similar to your friend's dd. He first started to read the words he knew. And he was able to memorize sentence, paragraph, etc.
He refused to be read since 2.
But if I think back now, his nursery manager gave him 1-1 reading lesson once a week. Maybe she taught him phonics. I don't know what she was doing with him, but by the time he was 4 he was able to decode any words he has never seen before. I assume he was lucky he had someone to help him go forward, since his mum didn't know how.

I was half was through the second Lord of the Rings trilogy when I got phonics. It was the names that I was struggling with. I know my mum and teacher had both tried to get me to understand phonics, but failed. Plenty of the less good readers could do phonics easily.
I was in year 2at the time.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned,(just responding to the original post) but maybe his use of phonics for writing/spelling isn't as good as his reading ability? It happens.

I guess it depends what you call a good reader. If you define being a good reader by phonics then no, good readers won't fail the phonics test. If you define it by what they can read fluently then like witchend and my friend's DD, they might be reading well for a Y1 but still fail. (But might have problems later if their phonics doesn't catch up.)

The vocabulary required for reading children's books isn't that huge. Isn't there a statistic that the most common 100 words make up >50% of even adult texts? I'd guesstimate a few thousand for most kids' books. Would be interested if anyone has any actual figures.

It could just be coincidence OP that the reading levels were reviewed at around the same time as the phonics test. You won't know unless you ask though!

catkind I don't think I'd say anyone who was only reading children's books could be a good reader, but maybe that's just in the different definitions.

Top 100 is less than 50% of words (the American Corpus has it nearer 40%) but more importantly it only has 7 nouns in that top 100 (time, year, people, way, day, man, thing) which wouldn't make very interesting stories. 20% of words are just the/be/and/a/it/to/I. Just being able to recognise the top 100 words and even more wouldn't read much.

Good readers do fail the phonics test, mainly because made up words are used in the test and good/fast readers are so used to scanning a word and then fitting it to a word they know and in the context of a sentence that they often try to find a real word in the phonics test rather than sound out the word phonetically (I work in year 1)

" some readers do fail the phonics test, mainly because made up words are used in the test and inaccurate /fast readers are so used to scanning a word and then fitting it to a word they know and in the context of a sentence that they often try to find a real word in the phonics test rather than sound out the word phonetically (I work in year 1)"

This part of the test is designed to find exactly thise readers, whose weaknesses are masked by good guessing

Good readers do fail the phonics test, mainly because made up words are used in the test and good/fast readers are so used to scanning a word and then fitting it to a word they know and in the context of a sentence that they often try to find a real word in the phonics test rather than sound out the word phonetically (I work in year 1)

That's guessing, Herman, not reading. And it's certainly not something 'good' readers do.

Herman that sounds like a very poorly administered test, or the kids have other reasons for not understanding the instruction, example given as:

"You may have seen some of the words before and others will be new to you. "

"The words on this side [turn over ‘practice sheet’] are not real words. They are names for types of imaginary creatures. You can see a picture of the creature next to each word."

Why would good readers think that the names of types of imaginary creatures be words they've seen?

catkind I don't think I'd say anyone who was only reading children's books could be a good reader, but maybe that's just in the different definitions
In that case there won't be any "good readers" in year 1, reading adult books at 6 would be pretty rare and perhaps not the best idea. I assumed people just meant "good for year 1". My friend's DD pre-phonics would have been good for year 1 in terms of hand her a book and she reads it, but not good for year 1 in terms of hand her a random list of made up words.

That's not an argument against testing and teaching catch-up phonics by the way, they will need them later; just I can see how a child who I'd class a good reader in year 1 could fail.

Playing devil's advocate a bit but I can think of all sorts of ways my good reader DD might fail a phonics test and she was a phonics learner. Ask a child to do something that's ridiculously easy for them and you don't always get a sensible answer either. Especially if you're trying to make out it's a fun game not an important test. She might decide to read the words backwards to liven it up, or start each word with 'b'. She might decide she could make up better alien names. She might plain not see the point, she reads for stories, not for jumping through hoops.

Meh. I could read fluently when I started school, ignored phonics because it bored me to death and seemed irrelevant and far too much like hard work, and never had any problems with new words. I'd have been even more bored and pissed off with school if they hadn't let me just go and read instead.

This thing about inaccurate readers - it's about being able to fit your reading to the requirements. If I need to scan a text quickly I value speed over meticulous accuracy, as it'll always become obvious if I've misinterpreted a word. If I'm reading out loud for an audience, I'll value accuracy over speed.

I guess some kids need phonics instruction to start learning to read, some never need explicit phonics teaching and read new words fine using pattern-matching abilities or instinctive phonics or whatever, and some don't need phonics with words they're familiar with but need the explicit phonics instruction to decode new words.

catkind I don't think I'd say anyone who was only reading children's books could be a good reader, but maybe that's just in the different definitions

Researchers found that the later Harry Potter books were a higher reading level than Hemingway and Tolkien ...

I guess some kids need phonics instruction to start learning to read, some never need explicit phonics teaching and read new words fine using pattern-matching abilities or instinctive phonics or whatever, and some don't need phonics with words they're familiar with but need the explicit phonics instruction to decode new words.

In that case there won't be any "good readers" in year 1, reading adult books at 6 would be pretty rare and perhaps not the best idea. I assumed people just meant "good for year 1".

Ah, there are lots more things to read than children and adult books, and those were the things that I was imagining the distinction between a good reader, and someone who can simply read children's limited vocabulary text.

A recipe for example, the vocabulary should be all known, so if the words can be decoded it can be read, text conversations, picture captions in newspapers etc. So not able to read full adult books, be being able to read more than a reading scheme graded book.

Not sure what happened there

^*
This thing about inaccurate readers - it's about being able to fit your reading to the requirements. If I need to scan a text quickly I value speed over meticulous accuracy, as it'll always become obvious if I've misinterpreted a word. If I'm reading out loud for an audience, I'll value accuracy over speed.

I guess some kids need phonics instruction to start learning to read, some never need explicit phonics teaching and read new words fine using pattern-matching abilities or instinctive phonics or whatever, and some don't need phonics with words they're familiar with but need the explicit phonics instruction to decode new words.*^

I assume you aren't six years old but whatever age accuracy is important. Skimming and scanning are skills used to quickly find information which is then read accurately to ensure understanding. It's useless to read quickly and inaccurately ...the whole point of reading is to extract meaning.

Some children are able to work out how our written language works (phonics) without explicit instruction others need to be taught to make the connections between sounds in spoken words to the symbols we call letters.
Even those fortunate children who manage to work it out benefit from direct systematic phonic instruction to ensure there are no gaps in their knowledge.

"Even those fortunate children who manage to work it out benefit from direct systematic phonic instruction to ensure there are no gaps in their knowledge."

This is very true. My ds never got bored of learning phonics, even he was able to read anything. And I believe it strengthened his ability.

Look, suppose child A can stumble through a page of text, stopping to sound out some words, getting some wrong, giving up if they're too long, and not understand the text properly at all; and child B just reads it aloud with expression and understanding. Would you honestly say child A is a better reader? I think most people would say child B is the better reader now; child A might have the more useful skills to be a strong reader in the long term.

I could well believe if OP's child is slightly towards the position of child B, they might be in a higher reading group working on comprehension skills and stuff, but a lower phonics group to catch those skills up. After all reading lower level books wouldn't help B learn phonics because they'd just know all the words.

On the other hand it could just be an administrative error or a misunderstanding, so I'd ask the teacher if it was my child.

If child B can accurately read any word they meet then they will easily pass the phonics screening check

I'm not six, true I do need to skim-read a lot, though, and it's not always to find parts to read in more detail.

Even those fortunate children who manage to work it out benefit from direct systematic phonic instruction to ensure there are no gaps in their knowledge.

Not true. For me it was the beginning of turning me off education - the realisation that school was a factory and that lessons were going to be mostly boring or irrelevant or both. You don't teach a child to love learning by making them go over and over things they know already. I know that tailoring instruction to the child is unpopular with a lot of phonics enthusiasts (I agree that phonics is the best way to teach a child to read), though.

I very much doubt you were taught the type of phonics used by schools today (as you aren't six)

sirfredfredgeorge, I don't think the things you describe would have different or more vocabulary than the sort of books friend's DD was reading pre phonics. She was not just reading scheme books.

mrz, the hypothetical child B can't decode so fails the phonics test. Excuse my quoting other threads, but don't you have personal experience of a child who can read amazingly but still struggle with phonics? Reading the FT wasn't it?

catkind, really?

Since when has tailoring instruction to the needs of the pupils been unpopular with phonics enthusiasts? I don't recall anyone saying that every child must start from the beginning and work right the way through regardless of prior knowledge or specific areas of need.

There's nothing that says you can't assess the needs of the child and work from there, differentiating as appropriate in the same way you would in any other lesson.

Whether or not that's actually happening in all schools is different question, but I'm not sure 'phonics enthusiasts' are necessarily to blame for that.