Phonics -v- Look and Say

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I was wondering if any teacher GNs could advise me on this subject. My little 6 year old DGD is in P1, she is very bright, articulate and really good at all her subjects at school especially number work. As I spend a great deal of time with her when her mother is at work, I am the one who will hear her reading homework. I actually thought she was doing quite well, her school are using the Biff and Chip books and I noticed no problems until a few weeks ago when she went onto the next stage (3) I think.
She now stumbles on most of her phonics and is having to sound out all the words, even the simplest ones such as 'sits' . I am now wondering if she is struggling with the phonics. She was placed in a composite class consisting of P2 and just 4 P1s. Is it possible that her difficulties have not been spotted. The first reports arrived on Friday and the comments were all excellent and the teacher says she is attaining the level of reading expected of her for her age. Surely a child that has attended school for a whole year should be able to read with a little more fluency.
I have bought some phonic flash cards, in the hope we may be able to make a bit of progress during the summer break. Any tips or comments would be very helpful.

Both my oldest GD's now 9 and 6 struggled and could not remember the same word from the previous sentence. rosequartz. Both early talkers, the eldest loved to write and draw every day before she started school, the youngest wasn't interested at all but has an outstanding memory. Their mother is drama teacher who has also taught English. They have had stories read to them since they were babies.

Eldest GD had a turning point where reading became easy for her. Shortly after she started reading Road Dahl books to herself and would spell out to an adult any words she didn't know. Her younger sister is only now just at the turning point and the other day read to me and finally showed interest in the story. My GC all started school at age five.

I can't remember my children struggling with the same words over and over again, nor have my GS's had this problem. They have all been taught by phonics, picture cues and even talking about words ie "the word said is a bit tricky, it looks like it should be spelt sed instead of said."

Oh, that's the one I was think of, On the Move

Do you remember the adult literacy programme 'On the Move' in which Bob Hoskins was a removal man with reading and writing problems? We watched it with the boys who were then very young, but they got the message.

I think that was the very earliest reading programme called something like 'Get Reading' and was broadcast in the early 1980s

Oops, my thread and I didn't reply.

I don't remember him, but it just proves the point that no one single method is suitable for all.

Does anyone remember the TV programmes about the man teaching adults to read? He had to use so many different ways to help them and I particularly remember the lady who had to actually feel 3D models of the letters before she could begin to understand.

Thanks Pentsemmon & others for informative replies.
My GD in Y1 has had all the background things, mentioned elsewhere, done by parents & grandparents to prepare her for school & reading but she does not enjoy doing the prescribed reading homework when she'd rather be doing other things like craft after school. She gets really angry about it & DD doesn't want it to become an issue between them. Her friends happily read to themselves in bed. She's complained that some of the school books are boring (yes & no!) & DD has found she does better with some fonts than others. This may be the first indication I guess of dyslexia which her father has & luckily he is able to do some simple & fun tests to give an indication of an issue. I wonder if teachers ever screen young children as a matter of course as you can see how early a child can begin to associate reading with negative feelings. Though there should not be stigma attached to dyslexia etc, I am sure there still is. I'm also sure some kids who are late readers do not have a specific learning problem but just need longer or a different route to reading, or just have other things that interest them.
My DD is also being challenged by the different methods being used for maths from when she was at school. I think I now know what partitioning is!

It didn't sit well with her lovely illustrations anno !

I thought the Beatrix Potter books were for adults to read to pre-school children. That's what I did with them and what my parents did too. I'd hate to see them in ITA!

Aka I think I remember the Beatrix Potter books being printed in ITA but of course you wouldn't want to buy two copies of them. So would you buy books for them to read while they were learning, or wait till they moved on to standard English and buy them then?
GS1 has been doing the phonic tests with the made up words and didn't seem to find them a problem. But then he has raised phonics to an art form! He can spell perfectly well in spelling tests but the rest of the time he just spells everything the way it sounds. There's an awful sort of logic to it and some of the results are highly entertaining. Once you've realised the way his mind is working it's all very readable!

Reminds me of one of my first remedial reading jobs - the school used Janet and John phonic scheme. There were pages of 3 and 4 letter phonic words at the back and the poor kids weren't allowed to progress to the next book until they could read them all.
Some children just don't have the ear for sound blends.

Yes rose -that's what I was saying earlier about the tests. They are not spelling tests, but phonics tests, where they include made-up words to try and see if the children have grasped the letter sounds. They are bonkers because children who can actually read often get the made-up ones wrong - e.g. they read "are" as the word it truly is rather than the phonic sound. There have already been problems with the very best readers being marked down.

Personally I think that there should be a combination of methods to suit the individual child; and the teacher will know best what balance is needed. Their professional judgement should be respected rather than being forced to make their methods suit the tests.

Learning to read English is challenge enough without having to learn it twice as with ITA.
Or the non-words in a spelling test for 5-6 year olds.

enough, cough, bough, through, borough, dough etc which are difficult real words to learn.

Or voo, terg, bim, geck etc. These could be words they think they have not yet encountered but which could be real to a 5 year old.

Perhaps bonkers should be included on the list.

As quote a lot of learning to read is deciphering words in books which have not been specifically provided to teach reading, that was likely to be a major weakness.

Deedaa one of the problems with ITA was the dearth of reading books in that format apart from those in schools.

Have the new bonkers spelling tests for 6 year olds been introduced yet? The ones where some words are 'made up' - surely many 6 year olds learning by the phonic method will attempt a new word and will not necsssarily know the meaning of all the words they come across?

In fact, some year 1 pupils will still only be 5 at the end of the summer term.

One of my DDs caught the tail end of ITA and thankfully it did her no harm as she was already able to read when she got to school - she just laughed it off! I have always said that it is fine for children who find reading easy as they will also find the transition to normal spelling easy; but it proved to be very problematical for those who struggled with reading as they also struggled with the transition. Personally I thought it was completely bonkers, although it is not a million miles from text speak!

My daughter learnt to read with ITA in the early 80's and her spelling has never been 100%. The school had given it up by the time my son started there and his spelling has always been better than hers. He also used to read all the time whereas she never read for pleasure (and not very much for school) until she was grown up.
When I started school in the 50's it was all phonics. It always seemed very logical to me and the rest of the class didn't seem to have much of a problem with it.

W Sussex still operate the middle school system Bez.My GD is in the middle school now and my GS in the grammar school, but the grammar school does take pupils in year 7 from other parts of the County.

My eldest son was born when gillybob started learning to read using ITA. He was reading before he went to school, and started using ITA. He thought it was good because he could write any word he wanted to and could spellit.
His brother, two school years younger, did not use ITA, but still did not have any difficulty learning to read or spell.
What this means is that both systems work for some children.

No..I bought Letterland for my school just before the government dictat on phonics cam into being. It has been updated and is perfectly good for teaching the DfE Letters & Sounds scheme!

Rose i have replied to your PM..sorry I did not see it..don't we get email messages about messages anymore??

I found the 4 to 5 year olds loved Letterland, and their parents liked it too. Then a new Headteacher banned it. This was in the early 1990s I suppose it is totally out of fashion now.

This is all very encouraging and I am sure everything will be fine; if not there is plenty of good advice here on next steps.