Failing the phonics screening

[Falcon1]

I've just been informed by DD's school (because I asked) that she only got 21 out of 40 in her phonics screening in December. The pass mark was 32. She is Year 2 (the test was delayed due to covid). She's below expectations in reading and writing and really hates/struggles with reading. Her spelling seems to suggest a lack of basic phonic knowledge. For instance, she recently spelt favourite as 'fafrt' and colour as 'coley'. My question is, is this score (and her struggles) indicative of something like dyslexia, or could she just be a bit of a late developer? I've been concerned about her progress since reception but I keep being told not to worry, lockdown has had an impact on their learning, she'll get it eventually etc etc. The school said they categorically do not support dyslexia assessments as the council won't fund them. I listen to her read every day (which is like pulling teeth as she hates it so much) and I read to her a different book at bedtime, and always have done. We have a reading chest subscription, play phonics games and do Reading Eggs (which she also hates). It just doesn't seem to be sinking in.

Very true!

So....as described above my dd struggled with phonics, but learned to read. She was diagnosed with "dyslexia" which I put in quotes because it's actually a general term to describe various processing disorders which can vary quite a bit. What we discovered by accident some years later was that my dd struggles to rearrange the letters in her head. In a family full of atheists my dd found god at 4 and started going to synagogue and learning to read the Torah. Apparently the torah is written without vowels. She struggled enormously with this and DD's religious teacher said..."look it's just like in English" and wrote a bunch of English words on the board without vowels....(eg: Rght, Ccrm, bcycl). All the kids in the class could recognize the words, but dd couldn't because she could only recognize the words as a whole. Some years later, she was taking an online history exam and the professor put in some random symbols in between the words (eg How many &()@@ countries %&&%$ are in Euro((&*(&pe?). to keep the kids from cutting and pasting on the internet. It took DD ages to decipher the words from the random symbols. This is a processing disorder that's described as a type of dyslexia.

Interestingly, while all of this was going on, I realized that I too had the same type of dyslexia, but had been taught to read by sight words so it hadn't come up. But I do remember my whole childhood asking my Italian mother how to spell Italian words and she would just say to me "Italian is spelled just how it sounds" and I would get frustrated as that wasn't an instruction that helped me in any way. I suspect that I would have struggled with phonics as well!!

Anyway, all of this is to say, that Phonics may work for the vast majority of children, but it doesn't work for all of them and I don't understand why schools (or teachers) wouldn't offer an alternative if there is an otherwise academically functioning child who is struggling with reading (or as in my dd's case, struggling with phonics, but not reading).

I don't understand why schools (or teachers) wouldn't offer an alternative if there is an otherwise academically functioning child who is struggling with reading (or as in my dd's case, struggling with phonics, but not reading).

Because we don’t have any? We had some children after lockdown who needed more catch up than we would normally have to provide but that is exactly what the national curriculum (which is statutory in England) state ls must be provided - rapid phonics catch up. And guess what? They caught up rapidly.

And once again, you cannot read without using phonics. Firstly because the brain is not capable of remembering the ‘shape’ of 100,000 different words, and secondly because the reader would need another person present to tell them what any new word said before they could then remember it - they would have no way of working out what a word was when they first encountered it.
Children may not have been taught to read using phonics, but this means they had to work out how to use the code by themselves. It is far more efficient to teach them this explicitly.

Feenie are you saying that you don't know about alternatives or are you saying that you aren't paid to spend extra time on the 1% (not sure I believe this number, but let's use it for argument's sake) or are you saying that the 1% don't matter because 99% get educated with the "standard" curriculum?

Are you not concerned about who constitutes that 1% and what the consequences are of marginalizing them?

I am saying (again) that we don’t have 1% who fail to read using phonics. I am also pointing out that the statutory national curriculum requires that children are not asked to use other strategies to decode and that any children falling behind must be given ‘rapid phonics intervention’ and then they catch up rapidly!

Elisheva....let's go with your theory that the everyone uses phonics to read. Is it possible that there are different ways of teaching phonics that might work better with the kids who are dyslexic (or don't you believe that dyslexia exists?)

There are different schemes, but the principles of synthetic phonics are largely the same. It tends to be the order in which phonemes are taught that differs, but not by much.

Elisheva....let's go with your theory that the everyone uses phonics to read. Is it possible that there are different ways of teaching phonics that might work better with the kids who are dyslexic (or don't you believe that dyslexia exists?)
Yes! Different ways, different approaches, slowing down, repeating when necessary, multi-sensory methods… This is where finding the method to suit the child comes in. Finding the way to make phonics accessible and memorable to them, not taking away the opportunity to ever learn it.

We have an excellent record with dyslexic children also, and children who achieve greater depth in reading who are dyslexic.

My DD failed the test 3 times....When we moved to a small rural school when she was 9, they had her assessed quickly and was diagnosed with dyslexia. Now she has tools she is excelling.... Spelling still way behind but I'm not getting stressed over it.

I really wish we’d got her quicker - I firmly believe we would have sorted her out, or any other school that knew what they were doing.

@Elisheva

And once again, you cannot read without using phonics. Firstly because the brain is not capable of remembering the ‘shape’ of 100,000 different words, and secondly because the reader would need another person present to tell them what any new word said before they could then remember it - they would have no way of working out what a word was when they first encountered it. Children may not have been taught to read using phonics, but this means they had to work out how to use the code by themselves. It is far more efficient to teach them this explicitly.

You can learn to read by rote, if it's a non-alphabetic language, had it involves a lot of barking at print and repetition.

It's why Chinese schools are so different, because they have to teach by sight-recognition, and it continues life-long whenever there is a new character. There are over 50,000 characters, but most dictionaries contain about 20,000, an educated person would know about 8,000 and you will need about 2-3,000 to read a newspaper.

@Elisheva

Elisheva....let's go with your theory that the everyone uses phonics to read. Is it possible that there are different ways of teaching phonics that might work better with the kids who are dyslexic (or don't you believe that dyslexia exists?) Yes! Different ways, different approaches, slowing down, repeating when necessary, multi-sensory methods… This is where finding the method to suit the child comes in. Finding the way to make phonics accessible and memorable to them, not taking away the opportunity to ever learn it.

I don't think anyone is saying taking away the opportunity to learn phonics is right. Some children, for whatever reason, don't do well with phonics at 4, 5 or 6. In many cases this results in them feeling failures, feeling stupid and sometimes other kids telling them they are stupid. They hate being "taken out" of their class and missing things the other kids are doing. This is the experience I had with GS.

What happened with starting again with look say and making it fun, playing snap, seeing how quickly he could sort words out etc got him to engage, started to make him feel that this was something he could do. As his word bank built he felt able to tackle new words, if he knew 8 words in a sentence and had to work on one that seemed doable, trying to decipher 9 words just stopped him dead.

I learned to read in the 1950s, I started with look say and this is exactly what we did, we got to a certain stage and then phonics was introduced as the "key" for words we didn't know. I suppose the barrier might have been the other way with children who hadn't succeeded with look say feeling they were stupid.

I think the point is that however wonderful phonics is (or any other system) if it isn't working for a child you need to find a way round the road block and battering on with phonics (or whatever system isn't working) isn't the best way for some children.

It might not be the best way for all children but I know looking at my GS and his friend that it is the way for some children. So I suppose in short the way that made phonics accessible to them was to remove the block they had about reading and making them believe it was something they could do.

It is important to remember that the most efficient way isn't always the most effective in every case.

It's why Chinese schools are so different, because they have to teach by sight-recognition
Chinese children start to read Mandarin using a system of phonics called Pinyin before moving on to learning the characters.

Some children, for whatever reason, don't do well with phonics at 4, 5 or 6. In many cases this results in them feeling failures, feeling stupid and sometimes other kids telling them they are stupid. They hate being "taken out" of their class and missing things the other kids are doing. This is the experience I had with GS.
But this isn’t because there’s something ‘wrong’ with phonics or something ‘wrong’ with your gs. He wasn’t taught properly in the first place, which led to him feeling like a failure etc. And then it was apparently left to you to sort it out as the school did not know how to support a child who was having difficulty reading which, when you think about it, is shocking.

As an aside, I am honoured that the theory that everyone uses phonics to read is being attributed to me. I might have to ask for a pay rise 😁

Pinyin is a way of writing how the characters sound. Which can assist rote learning.

But as the language in day to day use is written in characters (not pinyin, or any of its predecessors) then it is useless for actual reading. The characters - how they sound and what they represent - just has to be learned. The way characters are written can sometimes give a clue, but it's not reliable enough to be an escape from the task of sight learning every single one

Some children, for whatever reason, don't do well with phonics at 4, 5 or 6. In many cases this results in them feeling failures, feeling stupid and sometimes other kids telling them they are stupid. They hate being "taken out" of their class and missing things the other kids are doing. This is the experience I had with GS.

But that simply doesn’t happen where phonics is taught properly - and according to the NC and the latest Ofsted schedule (in England). Why is that? And in schools where phonics is poorly taught and staff are poorly trained, they are only too happy fall on old myths which there has never ever been a single shred of reading science evidence for. ‘Ah yes! Some children just don’t learn this way.’ and to use mixed methods which often confuse the very children who were confused in the first place, despite them being the children they themselves have failed. So, so frustrating.

Interestingly, I’ve not heard this for years on this board. I’d dared to begin to think the myth was dying out because of a better statutory curriculum (for learning to read, anyway) in 2014 and an Ofsted schedule that had caught up.

As an aside, I am honoured that the theory that everyone uses phonics to read is being attributed to me. I might have to ask for a pay rise 😁

That’s amused me no end this morning 😊

The characters - how they sound and what they represent - just has to be learned. The way characters are written can sometimes give a clue, but it's not reliable enough to be an escape from the task of sight learning every single one
Yes, it is a fiendish language to learn! But they only (!) have to learn around 8000 characters to be ‘educated’, apparently a vocabulary of 2-3000 is enough to read a newspaper. English simply isn’t comparable. You would need to learn a minimum of 30-40,000 words by sight to be ‘educated’.

@Elisheva

It's why Chinese schools are so different, because they have to teach by sight-recognition Chinese children start to read Mandarin using a system of phonics called Pinyin before moving on to learning the characters.

Some children, for whatever reason, don't do well with phonics at 4, 5 or 6. In many cases this results in them feeling failures, feeling stupid and sometimes other kids telling them they are stupid. They hate being "taken out" of their class and missing things the other kids are doing. This is the experience I had with GS.
But this isn’t because there’s something ‘wrong’ with phonics or something ‘wrong’ with your gs. He wasn’t taught properly in the first place, which led to him feeling like a failure etc. And then it was apparently left to you to sort it out as the school did not know how to support a child who was having difficulty reading which, when you think about it, is shocking.

As an aside, I am honoured that the theory that everyone uses phonics to read is being attributed to me. I might have to ask for a pay rise 😁

It isn't about phonics being wrong or needing to defend it. It is about a child learning to read. In my GSs case 28 children in his class did fine, two of them didn't and they were, and still are, bright boys in fact they are in higher sets at the local comp than many of the children who did well with phonics.

I don't think there is anything to gain in blaming the teacher, she seemed very good with the children, the vast majority did well. I think the significant point was probably that they were both young in the year and wanted to play so they either weren't ready to engage or chose not to engage and so the others moved on and they were left behind.

Being bright boys in Y1 they became very aware of that, I swapped notes with the other family and the stories are very similar. They started being taken out of the class for the extra phonics. They hated it, to them it was a mark of shame, they also hated missing what the class was doing which looked more fun. It didn't help that they didn't like the woman who did the extra phonics. The block was there, it wasn't phonics fault but it was a fact.

Both sets of parents followed school advice, no tutoring, not doing anything at home that wasn't the same as school. As they entered year 3 both families were despondent, one choose to engage a tutor who specialised in helping children with a similar issue. In my GSs case I was the designated helper.

Both boys came on in leaps and bounds, they were happy, the extra phonics stopped, they were even happier. The school was happy, extra phonics had fixed it but it hadn't had it. The issue wasn't phonics the issue was their confidence and their willingness to engage. I actually think they were being sacrificed on the altar of phonics but they managed to get free. Obviously they cracked phonics on the way but for them it wasn't the starting point.

It is the story of two bright, lovely boys and reading and it has a happy ending. I'm not sure about the other boy but my GS is an avid reader, his favourite subject is philosophy and he reads books that A level students at his school study, he reads them for fun.

Don't you think that sometimes it is worth considering a restart with a different approach?

Schools who have children in Y3 who cannot read are getting something badly wrong somewhere. I wouldn’t be making excuses for them if I were you. It’s just not okay.

The school failed your gs. They failed to teach him appropriately in year r, apparently didn’t notice that there was a problem until year 1. Put him into an badly run intervention with a TA who didn’t know what she was doing, and then let him fall further and further behind without doing anything.
The fact that he ‘cracked phonics’ without being explicitly taught would indicate that he doesn’t have dyslexia or another processing difficulty.
He is fortunate to have had you there - imagine what is happening to the children who don’t have you to fill in the gaps?
Again, the fault is not with phonics, it is with the way it was taught.

@Feenie

Schools who have children in Y3 who cannot read are getting something badly wrong somewhere. I wouldn’t be making excuses for them if I were you. It’s just not okay.

They were doing what they are supposed to do, he was failing to learn with phonics and the cure was more phonics. They aren't supposed to do what I did, well they are in that I taught him to read and they should have done that but they aren't supposed to do it the way I did.

@AuntieStella

Pinyin is a way of writing how the characters sound. Which can assist rote learning.

But as the language in day to day use is written in characters (not pinyin, or any of its predecessors) then it is useless for actual reading. The characters - how they sound and what they represent - just has to be learned. The way characters are written can sometimes give a clue, but it's not reliable enough to be an escape from the task of sight learning every single one

Many people believe that the traditional Chinese script is not based on sounds. In actual fact, it is! The Chinese writing system is ‘morphosyllabic’ but, because of the large number of Chinese character (sinographs)needed to represent the words in Chinese, it is difficult to learn which is why pinyin was invented.

Its estimated there are about 60,000 sinograms which sounds like far too much for anyone to remember but, according to studies done in the late twentieth century, 2,400 sinograms cover 99%. of words occurring in texts. This is about the upper limit of human memory: The problem is that even 2,400 sinograms is extremely hard to learn and takes years to achieve, which is why Mao’s government thought it worthwhile to invest in promoting Pinyin.

The difficulties of learning the traditional Chinese writing script shows us why Whole Language approaches don’t work. Just as it is extremely hard to learn 2,400 sinograms, it is impossible to remember all the words in the English language as wholes (over a million words in the Oxford English Dictionary). This is why teaching children to read using phonics is the only way to teach all children to read and spell effectively.

They were doing what they are supposed to do

They couldn’t possibly have been teaching phonics effectively - or they wouldn’t have had non-readers in Y3!