5 year old reading well but struggling with phonics

[backtothegrindstone]

Just been to parents evening and have been told that my year 1, 5 year old (late August born so very young for the year) has been moved into a booster group for kids struggling with phonics. I was shocked as his reading is decent and he's making really good progress. I've never noticed him having any issues and he sounds out words perfectly when we read at home. He's my 2nd child and if anything reads better than his older brother did at the same age- and his brother was always in the top set. I got the feeling that his teachers feel his reading is absolutely fine but that he's not reading the WAY they want him to read - he likes to read whole words rather than breaking them into bits. They want me to work with him on the phonics at home. So, should I be concerned and put a happy but rather tired little boy who's progressing well through extra work at home, or just ignore it all and assume that phonics just isn't his thing?

Yes they just have to read the word. It’s also ok if a child needs to sound it out first but they have to be able to then blend it and say it without too much hesitation.

Phonics doesn't work for all children. My DD taught herself to read, well she just suddenly seemed to be able to read at 2. By 4 she was reading books for 10 to 11 year olds. School said she was going to have to start on pre reading skills. We decided it wasn't for her and kept her at home till she was nearly 9, we thought they will all be reading so no probs. She had it, literacy hour (do they still do that) drove her mad. If anything they succeeded in turning her off reading. They tested her when she started school and said she was off their test so 14 plus. Her brother was a late reader and loves reading, did English A level. Phonics and literacy hour was fine for him.

I think it is sad that one size has to fit all.

drspouse it is great that phonics is best for 95% of kids but don't the other 5% matter?

100% of children in my school are fluent readers by the end of KS1, excluding children with complex SEND or new arrivals. My grandson's school would tell you the same thing. In his class of 30 I know for a fact that 2 of them didn't learn from phonics. After 2 years of no progress whatsoever I started whole word with GS and his friend had a tutor who did the same. Both caught up within the year. Neither set of parents let on as the school didn't approve. Just smiled and agreed that it was wonderful how it suddenly clicked.

I suppose that is in line with the 5% not doing well with phonics. Both are now in top sets at secondary school.

I have no problem using phonics, as I said my son who was a late reader did well with it, but if a child is identified as not suiting it I don't think it should be a dirty little secret that something else worked.

I know 2 out of 30 isn't exactly 5% before anyone tells me.

Then they worked out the phonics for themselves - if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be able to read any new word. Ever. Without it being told and learnt as a whole.

Yes, I think the working out just came naturally. Thinking about it when I learned to read, eons ago, we did whole word and the graded reading books worked with that, then you got to a certain point I think I was in year 1 but could have been year 2, when the reading scheme did introduce phonics but not exactly how kids learn phonics now.

I think what worked with grandson was learning to recognise alot of common words, say between 50 and 100, and he could then read quite fluently with just getting stuck on the odd word so he suddenly felt like he was succeeding whereas with phonics he always felt a failure. Then he started decoding the odd word so he got to the same place just by a different route.

That's what is called mixed methods - around 80% of children are fine learning to read like that, but one in five are confused. There's no way of predicting who those children are going to be.

But whether it is mixed method and 20% struggling or phonics and 5% struggling then surely those children should be offered an alternative. All GSs school did was offer him more and more of the same. He didn't improve but he did totally lose confidence and got to a point where it was almost a phobia.

Sorry forgot to say you don't need to predict it do you, if after two years the child has made no progress, like GS, then it is surely time to try something else. The proof of that is that by the end of year 2 he had caught up by using another method. If it is only a small number of children I can't see why their can't be some flexibility.

One in five isn't a small number.

Instead of teaching mixed methods and choosing to allow 20% of children to fail, better to use quality phonics teaching that allows all children to learn to decode.

I would question the quality of your ds's school's reading teaching, from what you have said.

It also sounds as if he got to a point, albeit eventually, where he could recognise some words to automaticity, which is the ultimate aim of any strategy. It doesn't mean that he learnt words as wholes. What reading scheme did he read in Reception?

But what about the ones, 5%?, who don't learn by the quality phonics teaching? They most definitely are a small number. My GS and the other boy had sessions with a special TA but all the did was what they had already failed at. Why couldn't that time have been doing what I and the tutor did?

Why would you question the quality of the teaching if it is accepted it isn't the best way for all children. It sounds like a bit of a cult. Most, the vast majority, of children in that class did well, were good readers. I know as I was a volunteer in that class, in our LEA they were rated top primary school. Some children don't do well with phonics. Can't you accept that, do you just keep doing more of the same with children who are clearly not doing well with that method?

I've only met four children who couldn't learn to read using phonics - they also couldn't learn to read using other methods either. All had complex SEN and all of them went on to specialist SEND settings.

Why would I accept that when all of our children learn to read?

Most, the vast majority, of children in that class did well, were good readers

Not good enough - should be all of them. Some teachers and schools and LEAs believe that 'most' is good enough and that some children will always struggle. I don't.

^"Mrz’s chart shows pretty well how this affects learning to read.
Around 40% of kids learn easily, with minimal teaching of any kind (because they are clever, have exceptionally good visual memories and no learning disabilities) with parents who read to them as soon as they can sit up and will have seen words like ‘one, two, four’ 100s of times before starting to learn to read."^
Once again you are misrepresenting the facts Masha. It shows no such thing! The ease with a which a child learns to read has nothing to do with being clever or how many books they've shared ...
A fortunate few < 5% will work out the relationship between those squiggles on a page and spoken language with apparent ease the other 95% will learn with varying degrees of effort if they are taught systematically and explicitly.

"My GS and the other boy had sessions with a special TA" sadly this is all too common, the children who most need to be taught by a knowledgeable teacher are sent off with a TA.

"if after two years the child has made no progress, like GS, then it is surely time to try something else" since we all need to know the same things and to develop the same skills trying something else only serves to handicap the child more unfortunately this common belief still persists despite everything we know about how the human brain learns

.

Why would you teach children the fallback strategies of struggling readers instead of the most effective method?

From the brain's point of view, learning to read consists of:
1 First, recognising the letters and how they combine into written words
2 Second, connecting them to the brain systems for coding of speech sounds and for meaning.

Professor Dehaene says, "whole-word reading is a myth". The brain processes every single letter and does not look at the whole word shape.

What predicts how well a child will learn to read
The predictors of learning to read in young children are:
• How well they know phonics - the understanding of the sound systems of language
• How large is the size of their spoken vocabulary. If they know a large number of words, they will learn to read faster.

Why would you teach children the fallback strategies of struggling readers instead of the most effective method? Because the most effective method didn't work. I believe in being open minded and after 2 years when he had literally learned nothing from the phonics lessons I think trying something else was well justified and the result backed that up.

since we all need to know the same things and to develop the same skills trying something else only serves to handicap the child more unfortunately this common belief still persists despite everything we know about how the human brain learns But it didn't handicap them, they are both in top sets at the same senior school. Two years with no progress and within months they had caught up.

sadly this is all too common, the children who most need to be taught by a knowledgeable teacher are sent off with a TA. And you'd say that with knobs on if you met her. Personally I wouldn't have put her in charge of the gerbils never mind two little boys who were struggling and suffering from low self-esteem.

My DD was the opposite, a teacher who came to her playgroup to meet kids who were starting school was totally fascinated watching her, not quite 3, sitting in the corner reading to her friends. We got questioned about how well she knew the book, she didn't it was in a pile that had just come from the library service, who taught her to read , no one we just discovered she could. She said in over 20 years teaching key stage 1 she had never seen anything like it. As a 2 and 3 year old her favourite thing in the world was words, then she started reading music and a whole new chapter started, We used to say someone had forgotten to wipe the hard drive when she was recycled.

I've got 4 kids, 1 very early reader, two fairly normal starting age and progress, one late reader and ironically he is the one who reads voraciously, did brilliantly in English A level where the others all dropped it after GCSE. Hard to predict how interests will go and kids will develop and what will work.

And you'd say that with knobs on if you met her. Personally I wouldn't have put her in charge of the gerbils never mind two little boys who were struggling and suffering from low self-esteem.

Exactly as I suspected - shit teaching.

DD1 is dyslexic but a very able reader since we ditched phonics. It was just an unnecessary struggle for her a friend is a teacher in a SN school and had discussed this with me

Bloody hate phonics.
Even as a teacher.
Don’t think it’s great at all.