Phonics test result - really worried

[TTCNumber3uk]

My DD is 6 next month and has struggled with phonics and reading massively since reception. Unlike my DS who flew through reading she just can’t get the hang of it. We just got her end of year one phonics test back and she got 14 (the expected age mark is 32). We read at home, practice writing etc I don’t know what else I can do, does anyone have any suggestions?

im feeling awful as the first time today I snapped and got frustrated while doing reading together and her completely messing up the words and I know I’m a horrible parent I’m just so worried

Wow thank you so much for all of these replies it’s been extremely helpful! We have got a drop in with the teacher next week I’m going to go and I’ll definitely use some ideas of games that’s been suggested on here over the summer holidays

You could try a phonics app, we looked at reading eggs briefly. It will repeat the sounds and embed them, I don’t think it lets you move on until you get it. It will also be less stressful and she’s more likely to do it willingly if it’s gamified.

Mine scored similar when they did a practice phonics test at Easter. So I went back to focusing our efforts on learning the phonics sounds, rather than reading and writing. I got a sheet with all the year 1 phonics sounds on, (‘ai’ ‘ou’ ‘ir’ etc) wrote them all on flash cards then did lots of games with them. Once they knew all the sounds we moved onto reading them in words. It worked and they passed the screening - but more importantly ds enjoyed it and it’s really helped with reading! He was/ is struggling a lot with reading and writing and we were (are?) wondering about dyslexia, but just focusing on learning those individual sounds helped massively.

this was our situation last year.

ds did the year 1 phonics screening test and scored 4 out of 40 (pass mark 32).

school had me in for a lesson and taught me how to teach ds phonics, this is so we were both teaching the same way at school and at home.

the teacher also did extra phonics lessons with children who were struggling throughout year 2.

hes now at the end of year 2 and has re taken the test and scored 36.

i would ask the school to teach you how the school teach phonics.

as thick as it sounds, i didnt know how to do phonics. There have been many times over the years were I couldn’t pronounce a word so I’ve had to Google how to pronounce it.

since being taught how to do phonics, it’s made me realise why I occasionally pronounced things wrong.

2 things. Firstly get your dc an eye check if you haven't already.
Secondly, I can highly recommend the dyslexia gold online programs. I used them for my son years ago and he made brilliant progress with them. And they are not dry like toe by toe. I think your dc would need to start with the reading unlocked program.
https://dyslexiagold.co.uk/ReadingUnlocked

This too! I did not ‘get’ phonics at all. The school had lots of info on their website about it and how it works so I read that and it actually ‘clicked’ for me. Before I really didn’t get it, or the point of ‘alien’ words etc. It was then so much easier for me to teach it to ds.

Play word games. Get some phonics cards put them on the walls as a password and change them each week per group

Letters and sounds website has the list and games she can play

Oxford owl has books

Read to her or take a page each

Look at monster phonics - makes more sense than Oxford owl

Phonics.lead here.

1. Eye test and hearing test
2. How is her comprehension? Does she understand the books you read to her, can she remember what they are about and talk about them. Does she understand the books she reads herself?
3. If that is all OK then likely either late developer or dyslexic tendencies?
4. Dyslexia often runs in families and is often undiagnosed. How did you and her dad get on with learning to read?
5. Meet with teacher. What support will she get with phonics next year? Daily 1:1 intervention? Extra 1:1 reading from school staff or volunteers?
6. Do you understand phonics? What will you do to support? Lots of reading to her so she sees how fun reading is and develops her vocabulary and has a love of reading. Lots of speaking like a robot - would you like some t-oa-s-t? So she hears how words are broken down. Flashcards for the sounds she doesn't know etc. (No more than 5mins a day with flashcards and make it fun!). Do you listen to her read her school reading book at least 4 times a week? You must do this!
7. DON'T PANIC! A score of 14 is easy to convert to a pass in Year 2 with the above in place. Do expect her to possibly be slightly below age related expectations by the end of y2 though, but if you keep on supporting she'll catch up.

Mine failed phonics 3 years in a row. They weren't bothered. We moved to a rural school and they had her diagnosed with dyslexia within 6 months.

Whilst I think there has been some great advice on this thread, I also think there's some misinformation OP and you should consider posting on a different board where you will get advice mainly from educators. Parents have a lot of opinions on phonics and whilst many parents are very well informed, others just have general feelings from their own children going through school and don't know about the bigger picture or what research shows. I'd speak to the class teacher in the first instance.

If she is sounding out correctly and it is mainly blending that is the issue I would firstly suggest a hearing test. Also, how is her speech? Unclear speech sounds can inhibit blending.
Finally, when you say she says a totally different word is it completely different or does it start with the correct initial sound?
You might need to go right back to basics and just play lots of oral blending games.

Phonicsplay is a really good website with games to practice phonics at home

Also worth bearing in mind that though the pass is say 32 most kids will be getting almost all correct. If you look at the stats. And here most kids moved onto free reading during y2.

My DD didn’t get phonics at all. Turns out she has Auditory Processing Disorder. Her hearing works fine (she had multiple hearing tests) but her brain struggles to process what she is hearing. A bit like dyslexia for hearing.

I agree that your first port of call should be the class teacher. It could be for any number of reasons including dyslexia, but they will be able to access the people you need to be talking to.

Lots of misinformation on this thread. Phonics is not a method of teaching reading. Phonics is a body of knowledge (how the phonemes are mapped by graphemes in the written word), a set of skills (phonemic and phonological) and an understanding of how the alphabetic code works. It’s essential that children access this somehow, whether by working it out for themselves, which is what used to happen, or by explicit instruction. To suggest it is an optional strategy is ridiculous - there is plenty of brain research to show that this is absolutely not the case.

Re your dd, you need to understand what her issues are with accessing this essential body of knowledge - is it the quality of phonics teaching, or a difficulty in processing it? Either way, high quality catch up sessions are the way forward. Don’t listen to parents who say that she can just miss out on learning it completely. Talk to the school - how do they plan on ensuring she catches up? The curriculum demands rapid catch up sessions for children like this - what are your school doing about this?

Recommend Danicng Bears to use at home - much less dry than Toe by Toe and highly effective.

https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/product-category/dancing-bears/

The school will have to tell you by the end of the year - it’s statutory to report it.

And every single word that your child has never read before is an ‘alien’ word - and children need to know how to tackle them.

We were told by Year 3 it doesn’t count in UK and reading and comprehension does, so some parents including us started small chapters books and asking DC to read words. No blending etc but follow school curriculum during term time but holidays or weekends just read books. DC read well in Year 3, Michael Morpurgo etc. The pure phonetic system didn’t gel.

No, she clicked eventually. Otherwise, your dd would never ever know how to read any unfamiliar word. Ever.

Phonics are the building blocks of reading.

If you can't decode, how do you read words you haven't seen written down before?

To suggest it is an optional strategy is ridiculous - there is plenty of brain research to show that this is absolutely not the case.

What people here are doing is saying that for some children phonics is not the best way for them to learn to read. This is a child who is trying to learn by phonics and for whatever reason is not picking it up, so surely it is better to try a different method than keep plugging away at the same one that isn't working?

This would be a little like me saying I always switch the computer on by the little button on the front. Therefore because that works most of the time I am going to keep pressing it despite it producing no results. If however I follow the cable back, I may discover that it has been unplugged. Once I plug it in, I can revert to pressing the front button and it will now switch on.

Until I'd put the plug back into the socket, no amount of pressing the on button would work.

In the same way, helping this child to learn to read by looking at other possibilities may open up the world of reading to her and enable her to then go back to phonics later with the confidence of being able to read, and use her reading ability also to help her understand phonics.

And after all, when I was at school, we all learnt by whole word recognition. We all had our little tobacco tins (!) with words on, which we'd use to remember them. Later we came to phonics and used them to work out words we didn't know, but learning the words enabled us to get a long way into reading (I told upthread that I was reading Lord of the Rings, when I got it).

Now research has shown that on average more children learn through phonics. And that is true. However when I was at school children did learn to read through whole word recognition, and you cannot dispute that the majority of children did learn to read.
And some children will not learn best through phonics.

So it is an optional strategy. It is one that the teachers are advised to follow because it has the best outcome for the most children, but anyone who says it is the only strategy that can possibly be used is wrong.

There isn’t another method to learn decoding. That’s it.

However when I was at school children did learn to read through whole word recognition, and you cannot dispute that the majority of children did learn to read.

The whole word strategy taught them to read just those words, and they worked out phonics for themselves to be able to read other words that they weren’t taught. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to read anything else. Nowadays, we tend not to leave teaching phonics to osmosis. But there isn’t another method.

While you can't diagnose your child with dyslexia and she is still very young and no doubt will catch up it may be worth trying a set of overlays if you can afford them. I know someone whose child's reading improved massively using one colour, so it could help.