School Report - Secure at Reading Level 1 - pls explain

[carocaro]

What does that mean?

I have Googled but can't find anything specific about the levels. I just would like a guide of where my DS should be for his age, roughly, I get they are all a different places.

He's finishing year 3, is dyslexic.

Feenie I don't mean to split hairs. It appears I genuinely got it wrong about what the professionals deem a phonics program to be.

I have been well and truly been put off by synthetic phonics programe after 2 years of read, write, inc and toe-by-toe totally failed to teach my DD the 44 sounds.

But AcceleRead is nothing like toe-by-toe. And I genuinely had no idea that the synthetic-phonics-brigade would consider AcceleRead a phonics program.

All I do know is that Read, Write, Inc is not the saviour some people appear to believe it is. And that bad initial teaching is not the only reason children don't learn to read.

I agree with you that bad initial teaching is not the only reason. But all of the children I've taught who have had reading difficulties have all learnt to read using systematic daily phonic teaching.

IndigoBell AcceleRead is intended for use mainly with older children who already know the sounds (if schools are using it with children who aren't at this stage they aren't using it as it was intended) It uses phonically regular text to teach children to segment words for spelling (the write part)and as it is phonically regular it is easy for children to decode.

"Program uses talking word processor and carefully structured phonic-based sentences. It is multi-sensory and aims to improve reading, spelling and listening skills. Sentences cover all phonic patterns identified in National Literacy strategy plus the first 45 High Frequency words.

The program is particularly suitable for children in KS2. The program starts at CVC level and basic keyboarding skills are required"

Feenie I can't find the thread, but one poster on here last month proudly proclaimed that she got all her kids learning to read by year 5!

Not sure if that was you or someone else. But to me getting children to read by year 5 is not something to be proud of. Getting them all to read in the infants is.

All I want is to get my daughter to read this year (year 3) seeing as both school and me failed to get her to read last year.

But if she stays on read, write, inc and learns to read in another 3 years I definately won't be calling it a success. I would be saying that if you try to hammer a square peg into a round hole for long enough eventually the hole will change shape and the peg will go in.

If she doesn't learn to read till year 5 I would expect lasting damage to her self esteem.

mrz I know AcceleRead is a KS2 reading intervention. I just didn't understand that teachers thought it was a phonics intervention - but now I do.

IndigoBell we don't think it is a phonics intervention, it is a phonics intervention just not at the basic level you would normally think of when first introduced to SP.

It was me. And all our children can read by Year 2 - apart from the very few children with suspected dyslexia.

I also said with daily phonic intervention those children took off in Year 4 and were fully caught up with their peers on entry to Year 5. All of those children did well in Y6, one exceptionally well. I wouldn't say their self esteem was damaged - just the opposite when everything clicked for them.

Dyslexia Action also recommend individual daily phonic work - we're talking about a specific learning difficulty which can be overcome using this kind of systematic
phonic teaching.

But if you, or anyone else, can come up with something which works more quickly, I would use it in my school like a shot, if we could afford it.

Actually, the of the three boys I talked about earlier in the thread (Sat 10-Jul-10 16:40:18) who had had such success, with Reading Protocol (another synthetic phonics programme), two of them are at the end of Y3. They were 2c on entry to Y3 and have rocketed to a 3b in two terms. So we are getting better at catching them earlier.

They are twins, and the other boy is their older brother in Y4, who has made similar progress.

I have one child in my present Y2 class unable to read and that is down to non attendance
I have a child who will probably be assessed as severely dyslexic at some future point who has just achieved 2b for reading in his SAT test...

mrz. Isn't 2b in Y2 just a little behind the expected level (as opposed to quite a lot...)? Do you think he will fall further behind as he moves through the Key Stages?

IndogoBell. I agree with Feenie and you. Bad teaching is not the only reason children don't learn to read. But it is one of the main reasons and is the one to eliminate first.

The essential thing to know about synthetic phonics is that it isn't a particular 'programme' but is a set of teaching principles. So long as a programme, and, importantly, the way it is taught, conforms to the principles it should be effective.

For children, like your dd, who are having problems one would look in the first instance for a way of working with the child which conforms to the SP principles, but which targets the child's specific difficulty. If rapid, automatic recall of letter/sound correspondences is identified as the specific problem then that is what one would work on, intensively.

(BTW Toe by Toe is held by some to be an effective programme but, for a child who finds this recall difficult, it just doesn't have enough repetition practice to promote automaticity. Which is one of the reasons why I don't like it very much. Toe by Toe is fine for not particularly severe difficulties, but is not an infallible cure-all.)

It's only if really intensive work fails that an SP practitioner would possibly consider whole word learning (which is really the only other alternative) and even then it is completely counter - intuitive. How could a child possibly remember a word when presented with a very complex set of symbols (i.e a string of letters) when they couldn't even remember the sound represented by one or two symbols? (I know some children can do it, but they have exceptional memories, not poor ones...) The memory limit for 'whole words' is nowhere near the number of words in an average reading vocabulary, so whole word memorisation is disabling in itself...

You can find the SP principles on the home page of the RRF web site if you are interested. One of the co-authors of them is the developer of Jolly Phonics; I hope that is authoritative enough

www.rrf.org.uk

Ok, I get it now. Thanks for all your patience. You are saying that any reading progamme which talks about sounds rather than words is a synthetics phonics programme - not just programmes which use flashcards and teaches blending. In that case I think synthetic phonics will help her.

We have started on EasyReadSystem about a month ago (which now I know you would classify as a phonics programme). It's too early too tell, but I think it is working. She actually voluntarily read a few words to me yesterday for practically the first time ever.

That's good - I hope your dd takes off from there!

no maizie 2b is the expected level in Y2 which he has achieved ... I know he had good phonics teaching in reception (I was his teacher and this was built on in Y1 and Y2 resulting in a child who reads quite confidently and I expect him to maintain expected levels at least in KS2.

mrz "I have a child who will probably be assessed as severely dyslexic at some future point who has just achieved 2b for reading in his SAT test... "

Why do you think he will be assesed as dyxlexic in the future??????

because he demonstrates all the classic indicators that are usually associated with the label dyslexic (SpLD)

• Has particular difficulty with spelling.
• Puts letters and figures the wrong way round.
• Has difficulty remembering tables, alphabet, formulae etc.
• Leaves letters out of words or puts them in the wrong order.
• Still occasionally confuses 'b' and 'd' and words such as 'no/on'.
• Still needs to use fingers or marks on paper to make simple calculations.
• Poor concentration.
• Takes longer than average to do written work.
• Problems processing language at speed.
• Has difficulty with tying shoe laces, tie, dressing.
• Has difficulty telling left from right, order of days of the week, months of the year etc.
• Has a poor sense of direction and still confuses left and right.

Mrz - I hope you don't mind if I copy your classic indicators onto a Yahoo Support Group in the States that I am involved with. I think they encapsulate the differences.

Some of the points you raise really stand out as contributing to reading difficulty - ie points 8,9,10.

point 1 - a 'linguistic/synthetic phonics' programme such as Sound Reading System has a superb record in teaching spelling skills logically (prison, youth offender centres as well as primary schools).www.soundreadingsystem

point 2 - is completely eliminated if a child is taught to track left-to-right and rigorously maintains this discipline right from Reception/Year 1 (see piperbooks.co.uk -nb I am involved. It's likely that eye muscles are also strengthened and 'convergence' problems lessoned or eliminated in many cases.

point 3 - i'll pass except to say that I had the classic case of a 7 - later 8 year old- unable to comprehend either days of the week or to understand that he didn't come to school on Saturdays...
It took a long time with Synthetic Phonics (they mixed all sorts of strategies in the school)and I only had him once a week, but he ended up really enthusiasic about his reading. His 2 older brothers are still stuck with semi-literacy skills, I believe.

point 4
if you use a 'slider' - ie sliding along the graphemes using a card as the child says the sounds, this problem is eliminated. see www. Promethean Trust [they call it a cursor].

point 5 - b d confusion
this just doesn't happen when 'b' 'd' are introduced a long way apart. Also, Debbie Hepplewhite's instruction to always start on the line helped the children I tutored enormously - when I was a remedial teacher. Many 6,7 year olds had 'b' 'd' confusion

point 6 - pass - but a good observation

point 7 - poor concentration is greatly exacerbated when a child doesn't understand the alphabetic principle - some children take a long, long, time and much practice (I'm sure you know this....)

point 8 - yes, I think that it will always take longer

point 9 a huge amount of overlearning and patience is needed.

point 10 and 11 - already covered.

Thanks for the patience - if you've read to the end!