Phonics

[MummyDolly]

So my little boy can read and write really well, his memory of words is amazing. However when it comes to phonics he cannot grasp them. He cannot sound out words or blend the sounds together.

I have got the same flash cards as his teacher to try and help but I'm just worrying he's going to fall behind in some way.

He's had his ears checked as his teacher asked me if he could hear properly etc

Just don't know what else to do 😬😬

Nitashadyta I'm sure you miss the irony of your comment

"How do people from non English speaking countries learn then? " phonics ...

@Norestformrz

"How do people from non English speaking countries learn then? " phonics ...

But they don't do phonics? Particularly not for English.

From Finland, France, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Papua New Guinea, India, Spain, Zimbabwe reading in taught using phonics.

I think you may be confusing phonics - the way in which we decode written English, with phonics - the method of teaching children to decode written English.
If you can read fluently then you are using ‘phonics’, either you were taught it explicitly or you worked it out for yourself. We know from brain scans that everyone reading fluently is using ‘phonics’ to decode the words.
Other languages also use ‘phonics’ to decode the written language, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Polish, French, Arabic etc. All of them use written symbols to represent sounds, and all are decoded using ‘phonics’.
Written languages such as Chinese are pictorial - it uses pictographic symbols to represent word meanings. However they still use phonics to teach reading. There is a system called Pinyin which is used to write Chinese phonetically and which children learn first.

@Norestformrz

From Finland, France, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Papua New Guinea, India, Spain, Zimbabwe reading in taught using phonics.

Yes in their own language. However that's now how they are taught English. I'm sure they use their own language's phonics knowledge to decode some(quite a lot?) of English words but obviously they don't always correspond and some things are non existent in one language or the other. It's even harder when translated into writing.

For example where I'm from there's a letter for the sh sound(and other examples,we have quite a few extra letters)If I used the phonics I was taught in my own language my English spelling would be atrocious.

But because you are already aware of the concept of phonics you are able to apply it to any other language you choose to learn, and to realise that, in English, the graphemes represent different phonemes.
When you are listening to and learning words in a new language you are using your knowledge of how a phonetic language works to understand and remember the new words.

"For example where I'm from there's a letter for the sh sound(and other examples,we have quite a few extra letters)If I used the phonics I was taught in my own language my English spelling would be atrocious."

But you would be taught the English sound/spelling correspondences if learning ESL not applying those of your own language. The BritishCouncil provides many resources for those ESL learners including a really useful free app https://www.britishcouncil.org/english/business/apps/sounds-right

Brain scans have been mentioned quite a bit here. I've read that brain scans of dyslexic people who read fluently show that they use some different neural pathways in the process.

I have long wondered about phonics and different languages too. In Ireland, where I am, children learn both Irish and English from the time they start school (the majority speak English at home). When the phoneme/grapheme correlation is being taught to 5 and 6 year olds, it is the sounds and letters of the English language that are used in the majority of schools. This is not made explicit though, and I suppose it can lead to confusion in learning, especially for children who have difficulties in the area. Most children do seem to manage okay, though I don't think it does their Irish language pronunciation/reading any favours tbh. Children who are struggling can get an exemption from studying Irish, which is otherwise compulsory, but this sometimes takes quite a while.
There are a smaller number of schools in Ireland where children are taught through the medium of Irish and I guess phonics teaching is different there.

If you're teaching Year 6, you're not really teaching reading, with respect.

I've been a Literacy manager for 23 years so I am very much responsible for the teaching of reading right across the school. I have taught extensively in KS1. You mean decoding, I suspect - of course I teach reading in Y6! And I teach phonics every single day for spelling.

[quote Norestformrz]"For example where I'm from there's a letter for the sh sound(and other examples,we have quite a few extra letters)If I used the phonics I was taught in my own language my English spelling would be atrocious."

But you would be taught the English sound/spelling correspondences if learning ESL not applying those of your own language. The BritishCouncil provides many resources for those ESL learners including a really useful free app https://www.britishcouncil.org/english/business/apps/sounds-right[/quote]
I was only asking, because I'm wondering if some of that can be applied to the children for whom phonics does not work.
I learned English with speaking first and hearing words. Then basic vocab written down this is a cat this is how you write it. This is how the word cat looks,now read it. There was no sounding out, blending,segmenting etc. Very helpful for not confusing their/there/they're . I use the correct spelling because the others are not what I mean.

And while my English is nowhere near perfect is acceptable enough and I can read very well.

But you can learn English because you are already literate. Your brain already understands phonics and uses it to learn the new language.

My concern with your approach is how many children struggle with the times (many, many times) when phonics doesn't work

I find this really alarming. There are children who need extra, rapid phonics intervention - which is what the NC dictates - before everything clicks. But it does invariably click, that's what the intervention is for at that point, and these children all learn to decode fluently. Are you giving up on phonics because they sturuggle, instead of giving extra skilled intervention? The NC states firmly that children should not be asked to use strategies other than phonics to decode.

Brain scans have been mentioned quite a bit here. I've read that brain scans of dyslexic people who read fluently show that they use some different neural pathways in the process.

But they don’t read in some mysterious ‘other’ way, they use different parts of their brain to read in the same way I.e. decoding the sounds, blending them to make a word, assigning meaning to that word.

@Feenie, it’s incredibly frustrating. The EPs in my area recommend using ‘other methods’ as standard for children with dyslexic tendencies, including word shapes, flash cards and looking at the picture for clues.

Yes, ours too, makes me so cross for those children.

An EP told me that my DS (passed his phonics screening, but had started school-refusing-in-school due to behaviour issues) needed to use a non phonics method to reteach stuff he'd forgotten. I refused to let her see him again and rudely took over a meeting to tell her she didn't know anything about learning to read. I'm not sorry.

Good for you!

I am a teacher who teaches rwi phonics. I learned to read (back in the day!! ) by the 'look see' method. I read everything by sight and I was always an advanced reader as a child. My son bypassed phonics and learned to read by sight. Neither of us use phonics to read. I only understand phonics because I'm a teacher and have learned as an adult. If he can read, decode and spell he has bypassed the phonics. As pp have said, the phonics test is for the school to check it's on track. Your son is probably absolutely fine.

"Brain scans have been mentioned quite a bit here. I've read that brain scans of dyslexic people who read fluently show that they use some different neural pathways in the process." I'm not sure where you e read that Lizzieant because it's not true. Neuroimaging shows that it's poor readers who rely on other ineffective strategies whereas skilled readers are able to instantly and effortlessly decode text.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

Somethingischasingme you say you read by sight so perhaps you can explain how you tackle words you've never seen before.

I know that several posters/teachers here are utterly convinced that synthetic phonics instruction is the best and only way to teach children how to read (as opposed to analytical phonics, which starts at word level not phoneme level). It seems that others aren't as convinced though. I quote from Frontiers in Education, 2020:

According toTorgerson et al.(2006), “There is currently no strong randomized controlled trial evidence that any one form of systematic phonics is more effective than any other”, i.e., synthetic or analytic. The available evidence is insufficient to allow for reliable judgments to be made about the efficiency of different approaches to phonics instruction (Stuart, 2006). In countries where there are consistent one-to-one mappings between graphemes and phonemes (such as in Finland, Greece, Italy, and Spain), evidence suggests that synthetic phonics is effective (Landerl, 2000). However, the English language is not orthographically consistent.
and
A range of research has emphasized the need for a broad range of approaches to support reading development (Clark, 2014,2015;Solar, 2016;Torgerson et al., 2019) and the negative impact of phonics (Price-Mohr and Price, 2017,2018,2019) as an approach to teaching reading.
and
It is deeply worrying that despite the methodological weaknesses of the research into synthetic phonics, this approach is being heralded as the best approach for promoting early reading development.
The complete article is at doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.587155

You can see why people are confused!

There’s nothing confusing about teaching every single child to read fluently though. Or there shouldn’t be.

Well, if 1 in 6 are leaving school unable to read well there's obviously a problem somewhere!

[quote Norestformrz]"Brain scans have been mentioned quite a bit here. I've read that brain scans of dyslexic people who read fluently show that they use some different neural pathways in the process." I'm not sure where you e read that Lizzieant because it's not true. Neuroimaging shows that it's poor readers who rely on other ineffective strategies whereas skilled readers are able to instantly and effortlessly decode text.

[[https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading]][/quote]
I'm afraid it is true. Poor readers do rely on other strategies, yes, but things are a lot more complicated than that.
dyslexiaida.org/dyslexia-and-the-brain-fact-sheet/
www.dyslexia.com/research/articles/when-dyslexics-become-good-readers/