My 5 year old can't read....

[Stuffragette]

She is the third dc. She is a mega happy child, loves school, has lots of friends. But we recently had a parent teacher meeting and they said she is behind. She knows her sounds she just isn't blending them. Before the meeting I really couldn't care less. She's happy, she has friends. My theory is she'll get there in the end. But the teacher now has me really worried. What does anyone else think?

[mrz]

"An understanding of phonics can follow on from learning whole words and then working back to their constituent sounds. For some children that makes more sense." And for many more it doesn't perhaps you're willing to take the risk your child will be a fortunate one who can work it out unfortunately I've seen too many who have been failed by your method

[mrz]

"I've seen children of 5 or 6 able to sound out perfectly, but unable to make the leap to the word and it's meaning" unfortunately lots of people seem to believe phonic is teaching the sounds represented by letters and assume that children will be able to blend and segment without proper teaching

I've seen many children who can recite words as wholes from flash cards or look and Say books but aren't able to make the leap to reading the same words in a different context and of course throw in any new words they've not previously learnt they don't know where to start.

[maisyanddaisy]

It's not 'my method', it's an approach to try when phonics hasn't been working.

[mrz]

No it's an approach for failure

[QuackDuckQuack]

Something that I don't think is known is whether those children who struggle to learn to read in reception/year 1 and then 'suddenly get it' would have done as well if they only started to learn to read at 7. Is there an advantage to struggling for years or are they simply not ready.

[maisyanddaisy]

There is still a leap from blending and segmenting to recognising the sound you have produced as the word it represents, even if if sounds perfect.
Sorry for derailing your thread op!

[mrz]

Actually there isn't

[maisyanddaisy]

Yes there is. I've seen it. Anyway, let's agree to disagree.

[mrz]

If you e seen it ...could it be because of teaching?

[mrz]

http://www.thelearningzoo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Phonics-Why-we-need-to-get-off-the-fence-in-Scotland-FINAL.pdf open letter from a Scottish teacher re multi cueing

[maisyanddaisy]

Interesting article mrz, I've read one of the Ellis articles she references along with many others on this issue.
I do agree with her that the pgde in Scotland gives no guidance whatsoever in how to teach reading (or anything) and new teachers have to feel their way.
I'm not anti-phonics, I have just seen the problems that can arise and although you obviously disagree, I think it is helpful to be flexible.

[gluteustothemaximus]

I home school my middle child. She wasn't ready at 5. Yet at 6 and a half, it just clicked, and she reads brilliantly now.

Sometimes I do wonder if leaving it later means no struggling for a year or 2, then 'getting it', is better.

On the other hand I taught DS1 to read before he started school. He just got the blending.

We're all different. All learn at different rates, and we generally all get there.

We have the jolly phonics dvds and app, and they are fab for blending games.

[loverlybunchofcoconuts]

Mrs, I'm a bit puzzled that you seem to think there should be phonics and no other approaches. How would one spell out 'the' using phonics, or understand the completely different pronunciations for 'here' and 'there'?
Sounding out letters works for some words, but a lot of English words don't fit the 'rules' of phonetic pronunciation.

[BackforGood]

Sorry DrSpouse I should have written "one".

Maisy, Mrz will never let this go. She doesn't believe other people can offer their opinions and experience. She's a driven person with a bit of tunnel vision around this - hence why I said earlier about some people won't believe anyone else.

There is no one system that will enable all dc to kickstart their reading IME. 'Phonics' form a very important part, but some dc need other support.
This post will be ridiculed again, I know, but I presume if you only wanted the opinion of one poster, you'd have PM'd them. MN is for all to offer suggestions, thoughts and opinions.

[Feenie]

You're talking about simple phonics, lovely, where one grapheme = one sound. Bud from at least Y1 onwards, children are used to learning alternative spellings for the same sound. They also know that a particular grapheme can make different sounds and are happy to try alternatives quickly and efficiently. It's not the laborious task you imagine it is.

maisyanddaisy - flexible = mixed methods where we know 20% of children fail to learn to read.

[Feenie]

There is no one system that will enable all dc to kickstart their reading IME

Since your experience has never been the exclusive teaching of phonics, that doesn't surprise me. How would you know?

[BackforGood]

Because of working with the children for whom it (exclusive teaching of phonics) didn't work.

[cantkeepawayforever]

BackforGood,

The thing ios, it depends how well phonics was taught, as well as whether it was taught exclusively.

• Was it taught systematically past the first sounds to include all the alternative graphemes and digraphs / trigraphs?
  
• Was it fully supported by fully phonic reading matter?
  
• Were parents and others who read with the child well-trained in phonics as well?
  

IME, where 'phonics doesn't work' it is usually either because reading matter provided was not fully phonically decodeable, or because only the simple code was ever taught. Where high quality daily phonics teaching has continued past the initial stage and is fully understood by all adults involved in reading, failure IME is very, very rare.

[BackforGood]

- Were parents and others who read with the child well-trained in phonics as well

Lol

some of our parents could read.
Some tried to listen to their dc read.
A few read to the children.

[Feenie]

Or where teachers thought they were teaching phonics exclusively, but erroneously believe that exclusive phonics means everything except tricky words which of course HAVE to be learned by sight or think they are helping by being 'flexible'.

[mrz]

"or understand the completely different pronunciations for 'here' and 'there'?"

In phonics we teach that spoken language is represented by written language using the symbols we call letters

There are 44 sounds (plus or minus depending on accent) in the English language and roughly 180 common ways those sounds can be spelt

A sound can be represented by one, two, three or four letter spellings. c a t - f I sh - th ere - w eigh t

One sound can be represented by different spellings apron, rain, great, play, they, name, eight, veil, straight, ballet

One spelling can represent more than one sound mean, great, bread (ere can be /air/ in there or /ear/ in here )

"How would one spell out the". Two sounds /th/ / schwa/. (We'd tell the children it's a weak vowel sound so not pronounced clearly)

[user789653241]

Reading MN made me think every parents read bedtime stories to their children...
I don't. I thought I was a minority.

[QuackDuckQuack]

It's interesting that there are 180 ways that these sounds can be spelt. My DD did RWI phonics and that seems to have about 60 spellings in the sets 1-3. When are the other 120 spellings taught?

[TheUnseenAcademic]

Oh come on, not learning phonics doesn't mean that you have to learn every word independently or that you can't use analogy or that you have no strategies to approach new words. If you learn 'car' and 'pet' you can use that knowledge to read 'carpet'. You can learn common prefixes, suffixes and commit root words- morphological knowledge comes into play as well as phonic.

[Feenie]

Yes - excellent description of mixed methods. Completely fails one in five children