Appalling reading advice for parents and TAs

[Feenie]

This document is being flagged up in lots of the teaching pages i've liked on Facebook:

literacyforpleasure.wordpress.com/ta-guide-to-listening-to-reading-making-comments/

It's terrible, full of recommendations to encourage children to guess. Really depressed at the number of teachers tagging others to flag it as 'useful'. It really, really isn't.

If you're starting as a reading volunteer in September, I hope you're not given anything like this. Any advice encouraging children to guess words is really poor and awful practice.

If a child is 'stuck', encourage them to look at the sounds and blend - or if they're really stuck, give them the word and come back to it later. Feedback to the teacher on the sound they couldn't recognise is fabulous.

And thank you for volunteering in the first place - your help is invaluable and much appreciated.

Is there a reason why you didn't use an English phonics program and chose a one using US methods?

I thought some of you might be interested to see what happens with the Phonics Screener Check.
Is it really helpful? Who to?
whatdoiknowdotco.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/is-the-phonics-screening-check-fit-for-purpose/

Not sure who the author is but they should have done their research before publishing

*Just one section as I'm leaving for school soon

"*How many zany alien pictures with daft names can one child stand? Are these the aliens’ names? Why don’t they have capital letters? We spend the other non-phonics half of our lives trying to get little kids to use capital letters"

The stupid pictures were added in response to criticism that children would be confused by pseudo words (despite this type of screening having been used for decades by SENCOs, Educational Psychologists and researchers to identify those at risk of reading difficulties ). However the teacher can print off copies without the pictures from NCAtools (I do).
They don't need capital letters because they aren't proper nouns we don't need capitals for dog, man, elephant, fish or magpie. (Just for the record the words aren't "alien names" the guidance says they are the names of types of imaginary creatures ... the press and producers of useless resources have created the alien name nonsense)

Very rambling and not v accurate.

Wouldn't it have just been easier for the author of that to just read the PSC technical document to answer her questions?

"What the PSC has been doing since it was introduced in 2012 is to make schools teach phonics. Phonics is a useful aspect of reading and especially writing and was probably being neglected in many schools pre 2012. It has now become a full blown primary school subject, just like English and Maths, Geography and RE. Now that it is a ‘normal’ part of every day and has almost equal weight with English and Maths – it is far more high profile than History, Geography, Music, Art, PE, Science, DT, IT, PHSCE, Story Time and even British Values, surprisingly enough – isn’t it time to drop the screening check? Isn’t it time to drop the nonsensical non-word practice and free up all those hours for real reading – of BOOKS!! – and writing of stories and news about our dad’s new car?

We’ve got the message.

Thank you very much."

Well it doesn't sound like the author (you OP?) HAS got the message. It sounds like the author's school would stop teaching phonics intensively the moment the PSC was scrapped. Our school most certainly would. It is ONLY the PSC that ensures the kids in DS' school get a half-way decent basis in phonics. Just enough to scrape through the test.

'Isn't it time to drop the nonsensical non-word practice'
-> yes please. But that is just bad teaching. Teachers who practise non-words (make their kids practise) clearly haven't understood the PSC (or phonics, really).

Yes you could argue that the PSC is not perfect, that there is room to improve.

• It could be made up of 40 nonsense words.
• It could be allowed to be administered whenever the teacher thought a child was ready (with a deadline at end of Y1, or end of Y2) - allowing those children who are solid on phase 2, 3 and 5 phonics to move on to more complex phonics rather than having to sit through endless revision sessions (but admittedly that is an issue that school could address without the PSC having to change).
• Teachers could be trained better as to purpose and function of the PSC, and phonics in general, and given the confidence to just teach phonics well rather than feeling as if they had to teach to the 'test'/check.
• It could be made clearer all over that it is NOT a test, but a screening check.

A large part of that blog post consists of points that are either highly debatable (Kids not allowed to write about things they haven't learned the phonics for yet?! Agree that that would be ridiculous, but I've never heard of anything like that happening, anywhere) or beside the point (How many times each phonics item appears on the current check, how is that a point in favour OR against the usefulness of the check? It assumes the PSC is the only way teachers assess their children's phonics knowledge).

I am not entirely sure what argument the author IS making. Apart from 'we don't need the PSC, we will teach phonics without it too' which is plainly not true for the majority of schools I have had any experience with.

The author has a small chip on her shoulder about phonics. I'm not sure she was trying to make any point at all other than to have another rant about phonics.

Small?!

Well, it's quite a large one to be fair. She's not fond of phonics at all.

Why did the other thread get deleted? The deletion message wasn't really that helpful.

Which other thread?

The thread that user14687689576465342432334245567669869 started this morning about the PSC linking to that blog. It had 2 posts saying that the PSC was fine by the time I answered. 1/2 an hour later it had been deleted for breaking talk guidelines.

Hmm - I am guessing spam or PAs!

Or deleted at the OP's request because it wasn't going her way.

It's weird. Can't think that it would have turned into a bunfight in the time it took me to walk to the bus stop.

"I have been looking at the frequency of phase phonics items in the booklet and doing a bit of counting of the actual phonics (items) occurring in the Phonics Screening Check administered to every Year 1"

Obviously the author doesn't realise that most phonics programs don't have phases.

“Children are taught phases 2, 3 and 5 by the time the Phonics Screener Check is timetabled as a national and statutory event near the end of year 1. Children and their parents and schools are not told in advance which specific items will be used in the check.”

If schools use Letters and Sounds (the only program to have phases) children are taught phases 2, 3 and 4 in reception and phase 5 in Year 1.
The DfE published the sounds that would be included in the screening check (based on what sounds are taught in all the most popular programs not just L&S.) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/230810/Phonicssassessmentframework.PDF

“Who chose the words in this booklet? Who invented the non-words and how did they decide which items to include and in which parts of the words they should occur, in combinations with which other items? What was wrong with wh and th? What when where why this that and the other? Anyone who reads and writes with small children all the time will have plenty to say about the order these items appear in natural speech that children will turn into writing, and the real language books they will be enticed to read. What is necessary about any of this arbitrary order?”

Anyone who knows about screening for reading difficulties knows that the words used are chosen to check decoding ability and do not include high frequency words a child might be familiar with and recognise by sight.
They’d also realise that including every alternative spelling of the 44 sounds would require more than a 40 word check.

“Why are we testing small children mainly on items they learned nearly 2 years ago, and ignoring most of what they are likely to have learned recently?”

perhaps the author hasn't heard of long term memory.

“How long before anyone can read Once Upon a Time..? (No mention of soft c yet so heaven help us all.)”

The sound is /s/ spelt and children are taught alternative spellings in Year 1.

I missed it ...what a pity.

“Why are we testing small children mainly on items they learned nearly 2 years ago, and ignoring most of what they are likely to have learned recently?”

That's a very weird thing to say about something that underpins reading all the way into adulthood.

“Why are we testing small children mainly on items they learned nearly 2 years ago, and ignoring most of what they are likely to have learned recently?”

Yes, really weird things to say. All those things small children are learning are the building blocks for future learning, isn't it? So, things they learned 2 years ago, they should be secure with it, or they have problem. If you expect them to forget everything after a while, what's the point of learning?

I've looked at the blog and worked backward (very poor blog site with no apparent quick way to find old blog posts) through the blog posts and it turns out that the author is a Reading Recovery teacher (I'm pretty sure that it is one known to both mrz and me from twitter). No RR teacher I've ever known (sorry, bar one) and no RR 'writings I've ever seen has convinced me that RR know very much at all about phonics so no surprise that this particular blog is not very impressive.

I think she's probably known to most people who follow discussions on reading on Twitter. She's blocked most of them

That explains the nonsense!

The 'how a specialist reading teacher teaches reading' post is indelibly etched on my mind. It's quite difficult to forget the blog after that.

I'd be less curious about why the other thread was deleted if I didn't know who wrote the blog.

I can't believe I didn't make the connection and now I'm intrigued about the missing thread