Phonics Check at end of Year1

[lolaonrollerskates]

What's involved in this at the end of Year 1?

cross posted rafa! (slow typing...)

They're the children who we are still doing loads of stage 1 activities with and are only just learning to recognise satpin, despite having learnt and revisited them every day since September.

How many children?

It may be worth relooking at how phonics is taught if this is a big issue. It's unusual to only be using VC words in any scheme. They should be practicing their blending on CVC words.

Are they only being exposed to satpin? Normally, I would expect children who may not know all 6 of those to also have a few other letters that they are familiar with and can use to blend.

Oh dear!

Phase 1 was never a prerequisite to teaching/learning phonics. It is meant to be part of a high quality language rich environment running alongside the other phases.

I'm happy to be corrected, our training in phonics at uni was very poor and I initially started in nursery and I'm now in reception in a school and alongside a teacher who still uses mixed methods so I'm absolutely open to being advised!

There are only about 4 children who are struggling with recognising satpin and they have been taught the other alphabet sounds too and can generally recognise one or two that are in their names. Although there is one girl who can only recognise s.

I had been doing cvc words with them, orally and with letters but when I mentioned how they were struggling to the other teacher she suggested trying just vc, she's been teaching many years so I thought her advice was good.

We do lots of phase 1 with all the children mrz it's just that these children get extra within guided reading time.

Sadly I think poor training in uni is still quite common. Definitely when it comes to children who are not doing as well.

Do they get extra practice in letter recognition and blending and segmenting words as well as the phase 1 activities? If you are only doing phase 1 during guided reading time, it might be better to work on letter recognition and blending and segmenting written words during this time.

If you are trying to cement letter recognition, utilise muscle memory. Getting them to write the letter while saying the sound should help them to progress quicker. 'Tracing' with a finger on the desk or in the air will help too.

Little and often is the key I think. Especially for children who are slower to pick up phonics skills.

they can't decode cvc words but they are doing guided reading?

I'd assess whether they can aurally blend and segment cvc words as a starting point

Thanks rafals, I've been doing a bit of extra letter recognition with them too but will definitely add in the tracing and writing to those times. Our timetable is so squeezed at the minute, I've posted on the tes forums about how much the school is asking us to do as adult directed time and the consensus seems to be find a different school to work for!

Mrz I use the term guided reading just to refer to the times I'm working with small groups, for many it's proper guided reading, for others it's a small group time to practise phonics and talk about stories together.

Is it school policy that you continue using methods that were part of the multi cueing scrapped literacy strategy?

Kind of, I questioned the value of our reading books as they are mostly old style Oxford Reading Tree ones, we have some decodable ones but not enough for each child to have one each at a guided reading session and we have to use the same ones for guided reading as we send home. Anyway, when I questioned the usefulness of the old ORT ones with the literacy coordinator she looked a bit horrified and said they're really important to use as well as they teach the high frequency words.

I think I see your problem. I don't think the carpet sessions themselves are an issue. It's the amount of stuff the school are expecting you to fit into it.

Personally, I'd get rid of the guided reading and the bear, but I don't suppose you have that option.

X posts. I'm not sure finding a new school is bad advice, tbh.

The guided reading is definitely needed, it was put in this year to replace individual readers that we did before. The bear could potentially go but the other teacher loves doing the bear and if we have twins split across two classes I feel I have no choice.
I am looking for a new school but so little comes up for early years in my area.

Sorry but guided reading is part of the whole discredited multi cueing system and is often responsible for reading gaps rather than a solution.

Oh dear mrz I can't believe we're getting it so wrong, to be fair because I've been focusing on the decodable books I haven't done the whole hog of guided reading so perhaps it's not quite so bad!? (Clutching at straws!) What is preferred now for reading then, 1:1?

DS in reception and I'm really interested in helping him as much as I can. What is guided reading?? Why is it bad?

We do whole class and individual reading. Look at Mrs PTeach's blog on reading and Big Reading

MrsPTeach's blog on KS1 reading does suggest group reading with decodable books though. With 2 whole class RIC sessions.

I was thinking of this one http://www.mrspteach.com/2015/05/from-guided-reading-to-whole-class.html

We do R E A D

Retrieval
Explore texts
Analyse
Deduction and Inference

Plus READ- decoding the words

I was thinking of this recent one www.mrspteach.com/2016/10/whole-class-reading-and-ric-in-ks1.html

I've seen DERIC, which is similar.

Decode
Explain (meaning of vocabulary)
Retrieve
Interpret
Choice

I feel like this is a million miles away from what I've been doing, like I need to go back on placements to have proper training on it.