TO not get Phonics

[BIgBagofJelly]

I'm mainly curious as opposed to concerned, my DD is summer born reception and brings home ORT level 2 books so I'm assuming she's within the normal range and I'm not really worried. What I don't get though is the school make a huge dealt of phonics (and I understand there's a lot of evidence to back this up) but the Oxford Reading Tree books she brings home seem to have so many words that she can't "decode" either because they're irregular or because she hasn't learned that particular rule yet. (E.g. the E on the end of a word in "Like" "Snake" etc). Am I meant to be explaining that to her or should she just read the entire word and learn it?

I can understand building up a catalogue of "High frequency words" but it doesn't even seem like the same word is consolidated so isn't she bound to forget them anyway?

AS I said I'm not really worried she seems neither particularly advanced nor particularly behind but I was curious about what I should be doing with these words and the reading books in general. Should I read each one once? Read it a few times?

I haven't asked you anything. If you read my posts you will see that I actually agree with most of what you say, but believe that evidence points to eventual "sight" recognition of words,

In addition, I have said that dyslexia teachers will use things like precision probes to encourage automaticity for high frequency words and visually similar word. That doesn't mean that phonic strategies will not have been used as well.

Dyslexia teachers have to undo many bad habits and misconceptions that struggling readers have acquired and there are differences to how you approach teaching reading to a 5 year old with little reading knowledge and a 14 year old who has built up many years of misconceptions as to how language works, but phonics will be the major basis of the intervention. However children often have to unlearn their errors. So for instance, I taught a 12 year old who consistently read "me" as "my" and vice versa - she had completely transposed the words in her memory. We examined the words in every way possible and then use precision probes to encourage automaticity when she encountered the words in texts. She had lots of other issues poor letter-sound knowledge, poor understanding of the significance of morphemes, poor understanding of grammmar Ll of which contributed to her literacy difficulties.

"but sight recognition is there mrz or do you disagree with that particular strand" so this wasn't a question?

Fair enough - but I haven't said that words should be taught in wholes just that "sight" recognition exists which is the point I wanted to make. Children will recognise certain words,such as their name, by sight before they have ever been taught phonics - recognising that some words may be learnt by sight is very different from saying that is how we should teach reading. I am old enough to remember how the "look and say" method let down many children and to see how good phonics teaching will enable most children to learn to read.

And as I explained earlier the aim of phonics is automaticity reading common words instantly

Again I don't disagree - read my earlier post about the dual-route cascade model. Some words however will be learnt through sight recognition (names and other significant words for example) and in addition some children have precocious reading abilities (for instance, hyperlexia) before any phonics teaching has occurred. I think it weakens arguments in support of phonics teaching if we don't explicitly recognise that learning words by sight does happen, but also make it clear that is an insufficient strategy for long term, high level reading and writing development.

"Eye movement studies have shown that mature, proficient readers do not skip words, use context to process words, or bypass phonics in establishing word recognition. Reading requires letter-wise processing of print and the ability to match symbols with the speech sounds they represent."

"Although we may not be aware of it, we do not skip over words, read print selectively, or recognize words by sampling a few letters of the print, as whole language theorists proposed in the 1970s. Reading is accomplished with letter-by-letter processing of the word (Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001, 2002). Fluent readers do perceive each and every letter of print."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bSEWrbcrFc0

“Another thing that we understand a little bit better now is this very classical question of phonics vs. whole-word training. You know there’s been a lot of debate in psychology and in education should we teach the whole word level or should we really teach every single letter and their pronunciation? Is there anything such as the global shape of the word that is being used in reading? Well, here there is something very important. As adults we have forgotten how we were as children. We have forgotten how difficult it was to learn to read and we think we can just lay our eyes on a word and it immediately pops to mind. Indeed, there is this notion of parallel reading, we read all of the letters at the same time. This gives us an illusion of whole-word reading, but in fact, if we look at the brain, the brain still processes every single letter and does not look at the whole shape. So whole word reading is a myth,** basically. What we have is letter processing, but letter processing in parallel across all of the letters of the word. The brain does not use the global word shape. And in fact in children it’s even worse. Children require more and more time for more and more letters. ”

The English language is quite bonkers - it's a wonder any method sticks to be honest!

English spelling is more complex than many other languages but if you really study it it is logical.

Capsicum, you are probably right that how reading is taught could be part of the issue. English has a complex orthography so needs good quality teaching from well trained teachers. Unfortunately we seem to be quite a long way off that in many schools. And a lot of what happens e.g. sending home lists of sight words to learn, giving non-decodable books, thinking that some children are 'sight readers' and others aren't is more akin to mixed methods.

I think it's part of the issue with the methodology of the paper up thread. There seems to have been a lot less of an attempt to control the quality of the phonics provision than there were the intervention groups. I'm not sure how reliable the conclusion can be.

Actually, Rafa, the conclusions of the paper cited with relation to boys and SP are directly contrary to the Clackmannanshire research findings and the experience of an schools which closely monitor their results. I believe that the data collected by Sounds~Write (to be found on their website) and Dr Marlynne Grant (on old the RRF website which, at the moment, is not available as it's being revamped) would confirm that there is no aderse gap between boys and girls taught with SP. I'm sure that mrz, you, and others who are actively teaching SP, could confirm that the gap doesn't exist.

I note that though they describe how the 'mixed methods' groups were taught they give no detail at all of the SP instruction.

Apologies for the typos. When will I learn to proof read.

As a child I always felt stupid because I didn't 'get' what the teachers were telling me.
My son was behind and didn't 'get' what he was being taught.
I'm afraid I don't 'get' how easy phonics is, that must mean I'm stupid.

See - that's the issue. I can't hear it, but deaf people can so it must be me. If only I try harder then I will get it.
Or I can believe it's the system that doesn't work for me.

Definitely our boys often exceed the girls in reading and writing (with no mixed methods or whole word learning).

So if I asked you what sound you can hear when you say cat you can't hear anything?

That my issue with it, Maizie. The teachers for the two intervention groups were given lesson plans and there is detail about how carefully the content of those plans were put together. In contrast the synthetic phonics only group was just whatever they were already doing. I will read it more closely at some point but there does seem to have been an assumption by the researchers that what was being taught was good quality SP and not mixed methods. I think you would need to provide a similar level of support for all 3 groups in order to draw that conclusion.

They seem to have dragged up the issue with comprehension in the Clack study again too.

And if mixed methods teaching with non-PD books was the way to close the gap between boy and girls reading, why did we spend the 90s and early 00s bemoaning the huge gender gap in reading attainment and chucking loads of money at the problem. The predominant method of teaching in virtually every school was mixed methods with non decodable books, that gap shouldn't have existed.

And that mrz is the kind of question asked in a disbelieving tone that still makes me want to cry. All these years later the feeling of helpless bewilderment is still there.

Yes I can heat c.a.t. what I struggle with is when a t (write) becomes a double tt as in (written) - the word sound changes. Now this has been explained to me but I fail to retain it. It's like being tone deaf I imagine. Logically you can understand it but it means nothing.

I have (in a very limited way) taught spelling rules to others. I can teach it but every time I have to relearn it and then I forget it. It's weird and frustrating and I don't understand it myself. It's slippery in my mind.

However, I no longer allow myself to feel bad about it or stupid for not getting it. It helps others just no me.

How do you mean the word sound changes? (Genuine question)

Write sounds different to written.

You don't say "write en" , I suppose it's the 'I' sound that changes. See I'm confusing myself. So if the 'I' sound changes what about the 't's? Why do you need two 't's? Writing - why did the e disappear? Should the sound change if the e goes. Then I remember something about 'e's and 'ing's, but I can't pull it to the front of my brain so I get distracted by something shiny and the teacher tells me off......

It hurts my head.

It's not disbelieving namechangeb it's a genuine question. Some children don't hear the sounds at first but it's something that develops with phonics teaching. Our initial assessment would be to see if a struggling child can aurally blend and segment sounds because if they can't we need to lots if aural work .

My next question would be if I said butter ..pause... fly could you hear butterfly? Foot ..pause.. ball etc.

It's all part of learning phonics

"I have (in a very limited way) taught spelling rules to others" I'd suggest "rules" should be ignored

I've been away from the thread for a while so missed some posts, sorry.

The gender gap in reading attainment still exists in UK schools (as it does in pretty much every country ever studied). A new UK cohort study looked at thousands of 7-year-olds and found that boys' performance in word reading was worse than girls' even when controlling for a wide range of socioeconomic and other variables. Regardless of individual classes here and there showing the opposite trend, girls are doing better than boys in word reading even since the introduction of synthetic phonics instruction.

So I think it's reasonable to examine whether this gender gap can be reduced in some way. I agree the other study I linked to could have provided more detail of the "standard" synthetic phonics teaching, but its main aim was to compare whether decodable or non-decodable texts were better in the context of mixed methods instruction.

From a purely practical standpoint, if it's true that a lot of synthetic phonics teaching in the UK is effectively mixed methods in practice (e.g., either with children independently learning to sight-read some words, or with some words such as high-frequency irregulars being taught by sight-reading method), then the type of text is important. Children should be encouraged to read naturalistic texts with non-decodable words (rather than strictly decodable texts that are typically used in "pure" synthetic phonics instruction) because reading attainment is much better, particularly for boys.

I assume you mean that there are different spellings for the same sound?

So /t/ can be spelt sit kitten jumped