'Using picture clues and context are great for developing comprehension'

[Sleeperandthespindle]

This is the response I got to asking for decodable books from school for 4 year old in reception who is guessing from pictures when presented with Biff and Chip.

I don't agree. I can ignore the books sent home and give him others, I know, but he is clearly being taught to 'guess' in school.

The school are unlikely to change their mind, I realise, but older DC (in the same school) is struggling very greatly with literacy and the general approach seems unhelpful.

Isn't Arkadia's dd1's case is what all the teachers talking about?
She was able to read fine up until now, but because of not so good phonics knowledge, she started to struggle as years gone up?

Most (80%?) of children will be fine with mixed teaching, but 20% fail to grasp it. And you can't tell who those 20% are at early stage.
But with exclusive phonics method, 95-99% will do fine,which is a big difference?

DS's school did mrz. Why not though? It's only a name. As is "magic e". It's more concise than having to say "it's one of those spellings where the consonant sound jumps into the middle of the two letters representing the vowel sound the second of which is an e" when you're reminding the kids to consider it. (I have no doubt there's something egregiously wrong with that representation too, I haven't thought about it so please don't take that one literally too.)

Cant,

Arkadia, are all the alternatives that your DD writes for a given word phonically reasonable (ie use correct grapheme / phoneme correspondences but not the right ones for that word)? If any are not, she should be able to check and identify those as 'wrong' straight away. Moving from 'phonically reasonable' to 'correct' needs her to really, really look at words as she reads and then apply that as she writes - if she is using mixed methods for reading, she will not have been well-trained to look hard, so it will be something you need to work with her on.

No idea how she is being taught. (p3 or Y2 if you are south of the border)
When she writes something phonetically, at least some of the times something reasonable comes out, albeit incorrect, but quite often she writes something that would not be read like the word she means. For example, very often she forges to add an "e" at the end of the word. If you ask her to write "bite" she might try "bit", byt", "byte" and variations thereof. When confronted with a series of words, one of which is correct and the others made up, she has no clue.

What does she say when she reads those spellings back? So does she see 'bit' and say 'bite' [which indicates that she isn't decoding accurately)?

What's magic about it?

When you read to her, does she follow along? Can you, for example, look carefully at every word that contains the sounds at the end and collect them? can she divide them into families and see which are rare and which are common? Can she then apply that in her own spelling?

Off the top of my head, so please don't hold me to it, I suspect that -ite is the most common, -ight next, -yte only in byte and -yt never. So she can then rule out some of her mis-spellings simply because she never sees those in her reading or being read to.

It's just a name mrz. Why take it so literally? If you insist, it's magic because the digraph still works split up, whereas normally they need to be joined together. DD's teacher also teaches them to write letters with magic pens (aka their finger in the air), and sprinkles magic fairy dust in the sand (aka glitter). 4 yr olds love a bit of magic.

Cant,
she reads fine, but she doesn't "read" the words. She just looks at them and recognizes the pattern helped by the context surrounding the word. For example she can make up all chunks of words because of what she GUESSES should follow. (something that I am guilty of myself).

As I said somewhere else, she reads just like I do (I can't decode and don't know phonics) and if a new word comes along, that might prove to be a major stumbling block. She finds it difficult to read the single letters and make sense of them, so when she tries to sound out a word I have to ask her to do it several times before she gets all the letters. Then we proceed to read the word in chunks that are more meaningful and try to blend the lot, but that single word might take as long as a page to read :(

I hardly ever read to her any more as she either reads to me or she reads on her own. When I read to her she follows what I read, rather than following it on a book.

Just want to say thank you to Feenie, mrz, prh47bridge and all others who are talking sense. Phonics is the way.

A young person I am currently working with has PMLD. I was told she could read. She can't. She memorises and guesses using pictures. Fakes her way though a book as I am sure many children do who have not been taught properly. It sounds impressive until you ask her to read a new book or unfamiliar word. Because she doesn't have the tools to tackle them.

She is not yet ready for phonics and I am not sure she will ever be, but if she does learn to read guessing at pictures won't help her. Phonics will.

"she reads fine, but she doesn't "read" the words" I'm sorry but if she's not reading the words she doesn't "read fine"

Well, if you prefer, she APPEARS to be reading fine (and she does read all the time, even rather complex texts), until a new word comes along, that is.

Because she hasn't got an effective strategy for reading unknown words. As the curriculum progresses children meet more and more new technical vocabulary and more complex texts and it is at this point children begin to struggle and flounder if they rely on guessing from pictures and context.

Cat I'm not being literal I'm simply trying to get an answer ...and perhaps make some people think about how ridiculous the label is.

I just gave you an answer then. Because it works at a distance, whereas most digraphs only work when touching. Giving things catchy names can make them more memorable to small children, is that so ridiculous?

The idea that there is not a 1:1 grapheme:phoneme correspondence is such a key one in English phonics that it is (or rather should be) integral to its teaching for all children.

Even in the very basic Jolly Phonics first set of sounds, if a school goes no further than that [it's amazing what some schools do] there are the two sounds of 'th', the one as in both and the one as in the.

"Because it works at a distance" so in give and have and come and love ...what's it doing ? Run out of fairy dust?

Arkadia, given what you say, it probably is worth going back to reading to her as well as her reading to you. It is very likely indeed that she is 'skipping' unknown words when she reads to herself and thus getting no more than the overall gist of what is going on.

Read page and page about, or choose a text that you know she would enjoy but is definitely beyond her at present, and do get her to follow along in your copy and in hers, as you can then start to fill in some of her spelling and reading gaps.

sorry 'or in hers'. In school, the children either have their own copy of class texts or they are displayed on the whiteboard or visualiser for exactly this reason (as well as the fact that many books we share have wonderful illustrations for everyone to enjoy)

To quote a certain popular teacher on MN, there are no rules in phonics. Apparently no magic either.

My ds says he learnt as split digraph but also says some people quoted as magic e.
I agree with Cat on this one, as long as they have understanding of what it is, it's just a name to me. No biggie.

It's a "rule" by another name and as soon as you teach that magic e "makes the vowel say it's name" you have to say of course it doesn't work for all these words and people start saying you have to learn those words as wholes because you can't decode them etc etc etc

Cat, we just got from the library the Robber's daughter (Astrid lindgren) so we might have a bash at that. However I think she needs more help from the school who first need to recognise the problem. I have been harping on about it since P1, but I keep being told that everything is just fine.
I want to try the SATS test from last year (can't print it for some reason) and see how the (DD1 and 2) fare. It looks incredibly easy for someone with three years of school, so we shall see...

That would be Paper 1. There was also a second paper, and I wouldn't call that one easy.

Try this official page

You can find both papers, administration guidelines e.g. timing, and marking guides there.