SHOULD A LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY BE SPENT ON AN UNINFORMATIVE TEST AS THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK?

Australia is considering Phonics Screening Check, used in England.  Academics, there are highly critical of this non-essential national test instigated by politicians and professionals on the periphery of the school/classroom (e.g. speech therapists).

I will begin by explaining the Phonics Screening Check.

-          In England towards the end of year 1, children are checked on the ‘sounding out’ or blending of 40 phonemic words.  20 are pseudo (nonsense) words, for example, ’f-e-p’ and they are placed first on the check, followed by 20 known English words, for example,

c-a-t, f-l-i-p. Note: pseudo words are a part of the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test used by ‘periphery’ professionals.

-          This check is given to all year 1 children towards the end of the school year, regardless of the time spent at school, and regardless of whether they are considered age-appropriate competent readers.

-          Children’s pass mark must be 32. If they ‘fail’ they repeat the test the following year.

That piece of ‘checking’ cannot happen unless the teaching of Synthetic Phonics teaching happens (see: lizsimonliteracyconsultant.blogspot.com October, 2017).

In England, publishers have eagerly publishing books and video games that cater for this type of contrived, limited word learning.

As the Phonics Screening Check is being seriously considered as a national test in Australia, let us firstly analyse it.

Margaret Clark et al, point out the pass/fail decision will result in parents being told their 5-6 years old are failures. So young to have this ‘badge of honour’ hanging around their necks. My philosophy of teaching is that children begin with what they know and teachers continue to build on that knowledge (and skill development).

Margaret Clark et al are concerned about the lack of any diagnostic features as the check is a numerical recording only. Furthermore, there is no suggestion of alternative interventions other than the continuance of Synthetic Phonics.

If governments want a check on children’s progress after a full year at school, I would suggest that a teacher who is concerned by the lack of reading progress of a child/children in his/her class administer this diagnostic assessment that Marie Clay, devised (1993), ‘An Observation Survey of early literacy achievement. Teachers learn to assess individual progress and that information guides their teaching. The 5 aspects of the assessment cover all the early functions of a child learning to read independently, for example:

-          Concepts about print, e.g. ‘knowing where to start reading, line by line direction, etc’.

-          Letter identification, where children recognize all letters both the lower-case and 
           uppercase.

-          The word test, assesses a variety of word patterns, phoneme-grapheme match e.g. ‘and’ 
            and sight words e.g. ‘was’.

-          A Hearing and Recording sounds in words (a dictation task).

-          Writing words assessment.

-          Running Records, which are taken as a child reads, ‘smoothly’ if they are understanding 
           and ‘word on word’ which may indicate a problem. Further, children are asked 
           questions to check their comprehension.

The Observation Survey is an informative assessment, with no confusing elements such as the inclusion of pseudo words. Teachers are trained to analyse each part of the assessment and are trained to use appropriate intervention strategies. This would have more ‘bite’ than the simplistic Phonics Screening Check training.

During my appointment, recently, as a Literacy Consultant in an Adelaide school, the principal asked me to diagnose 5 children he was concerned about (the information of this concern came from knowing teachers). I applied the Observation Survey. This is what was found from one of the children’s assessments:

LETTER IDENTIFICATION Confusions                           G  Y   HW    F                                               Y  Q   M      G Unknown capital   I   Confusions                        n    e    p     b      e                                            h    l     q      d     i Letters unknown     v Useful STRATEGIES USED: X knows many letters. He can move from alphabet names to sounds. Problem STRATEGIES USED: The lower-case  letters to work on immediately are h, l, q, i and the  confusion between d and b. RECOMMENDATIONS: X has not learnt all letters in Jolly Phonics programme. Try another way.  Alphabet books (must be similar to PM’s), finger writing on desk, back of chair, teacher/assistant’s  back. Independent Activities – alphabetic jigsaws etc. Although there are 5 capital letter confusions (Y, Q, M, I, G) only attend to  ‘I’ as he will need to know that letter if he wants to write the pronoun ‘I’ when beginning a sentence. Place a ‘b’ on his desk for him to trace his finger around any time during the day, saying ‘b’ quietly.

CONCEPTS ABOUT PRINT – Directionality Ö     Bottom of upturned picture Ö    Knew ?         Match Hh (not Mm) Did not find line, word, letter alterations. Does not know punctuation     , “  “ Knowledge, what is a word/letter not secure. Does not know capital letter. RECOMMENDATION: X concepts of print are not secure, this learning will be improved through Shared Reading, explicitly highlighting these concepts one at a time and repeated for a week. Also, working with an assistant who also highlights these concepts.

WORD TEST – few words known – me, not, too Not able to get to most words without using sound-out method m-o-t-h-e-r, a-m, a-w-a-g, c-i-l-b-r-e-n, w-i-d-h confusions         lick    with                            help    here unknown – meet Useful STRATEGIES USED: has a small collection of 2-3 letter words. Build on these by making  analogies. Problem STRATEGIES: not listening/looking for first sound, first letter Lack of knowledge of words will interfere with comprehension,

WRITING VOCABULARY   - 11 correctly written words Confusions -   A   too   het   he   ti     it        got                         a     to     am   in   of    like    go                        r          he    ret    let      rot   sot                                                                          are       me   car   look   for    so  unknown – my, went, going, this, came HEARING SOUNDS IN WORDS        (a Dictated piece)     9/37 sounds SPELLING      Writing collection of words that often do not begin with the sound, end with the sound. Left many words that he was unsure of.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                RECOMMENDATIONS: It seems that X’s strength is writing words, so this must be utilized. He learns to decode/encode words flowing from sentences, not as individual words. All word learning is done within a sentence. He is to say the word slowly to hear the sounds. He is to look carefully at sight words, find the ‘tricky parts’.

RUNNING RECORDS: TEXT reading Useful STRATEGIES USED: prediction: ‘Monsters’ (title of book) Problem STRATEGIES: not 1-1 matching, not at Level 3 reading COMPREHENSION – not enough correct reading to ask comprehension questions. RECOMMENDATIONS:  X to be considered as a new reader (not attended school for a full year). Begin with Interactive writing and make small books for him to take home for reading. Read these books during his day at school. For more information about Interactive writing, see Should Synthetic Phonics be controversial, lizsimonliteracyconsultant.blogspot. October 2017)

NOTE: Shared reading each day with a particular focus for the week; each day the focus would have a different emphasis and would be followed up by an activity that relates to the focus of learning and be included in Independent Activities. This would allow Text, Word and Letter problems to be catered for.

Rather than being told, your child has failed the phonic test, a parent conversing with the teacher about intervention strategies that will be put in place based on the analysis of performance, is a positive approach.

Reading is about making meaning and yet the Phonics Screening Check has not shown any reading comprehension improvement when a child is tested on comprehension in future national tests (Margaret Clarke et al).

-          In the Phonics Screening check there is no analysis of the child’s strengths/weaknesses (how can they when the test is contingent on one part of literacy learning) and no consideration is given to a child being utterly confused by the inclusion of pseudo words!

-          Margaret Clark et al, points out that “political intervention in England plays fast and loose with evidence.” With this an appropriate Shakespearean quote comes to mind,

There are more things in heaven and earth [education ministers] than are dreamt of in your philosophy [about literacy learning].

GENERAL COMMENT

It is an insult to the professionalism of the education community that teachers have implanted on them a Mickey Mouse assessment and further told to teach only phonics and to teach it a certain way and neglect learning about word patterns per se.

I would want to know far more than whether the children in my class can make phoneme-grapheme match.

Train teachers, how to implement diagnostic assessment, especially for children who are not progressing normally. Provide teachers with the resources where they confidently make decisions about each child’s true literacy understandings and whether to provide challenges or whether to intervene by giving children strategies to help themselves.

Margaret Clarke et al, 2017 Reading the Evidence: Synthetic Phonics and literacy learning: an evidence-based critique, e-book, Australian Literacy Education Association.

Should SYNTHETIC PHONICS BE CONTROVERSIAL?

Margaret Clarke et al, 2017 Reading the Evidence: Synthetic Phonics and literacy learning: an evidence-based critique, e-book, Australian Literacy Education Association, is a worthwhile read. In London, end of October 2017 and the ghouls and ghosts and witches are in the streets. In keeping with the theme, I have just completed reading Margaret Clark’s e-book about England’s experience with teaching synthetic phonics (first implemented 2005) and phonics screening check. Latter, see BLOG title Should a large amount of money be spent on an uninformative test as the Phonics Screening Check?) Synthetic Phonics is a teaching method put in place when children begin school; children are taught letter sounds before they learn to read. Children learn immediately, words that have phoneme-grapheme match c-a-t and they pronounce the words by synthesizing, blending phoneme sounds c...a...t. In Reading Recovery (a 1-1 intervention programme, Marie Clay, 1993) it is called 'hearing sounds in words', saying the word slowly rather than sounding out each letter c,a,t. The aim is for Synthetic Phonics to be first, fast and only way to teach a young child to successfully read, which could be described as akin to rote learning.  I am assuming it replaces the learning of individual phonemes (letters) one at a time. Children can quickly learn a range of words, just for example, using the phonemes ‘m’, ‘s’, ‘a’, ‘t’.  Ostensibly Synthetic Phonics is most suitable for children who are have had little literacy experience before beginning school or have a disability (e.g.  dyslexia). The argument for adopting teaching phoneme-grapheme matching only, is that it will alleviate confusion for these children. But for these children ‘fast’ seems erroneous as these populations would probably move at a more repetitive and slower pace. The ‘only’ requirement causes a niggle. It seems there is the presumption with Synthetic Phonics that children have not read before attending school. It seems to discount children listening to their parents reading stories, children taking a book in their hands and turning the pages ‘reading’ from memory, interpreting pictures looking at advertisements and repeating catchy phrases; in fact, these are examples of children reading. Children who have had rich literacy backgrounds when beginning school would need to move into analysis of word patterns, for example, sight words ‘was’, ‘the’, as they appear on the pages of written texts. Almost immediately, they learn to employ a variety of strategies when spelling and reading. All learning must meet the needs of individuals not the ‘one size fits all’ mentality. Consider, a child beginning school, s/he must have their name recognized– this helps them to feel as though they belong in their new environment. If the child’s name is Dan, he will fit into synthetic phonics ‘only’ learning, but if the child’s name is Sarah, what happens? The same with the word ‘I’ which is one of the first words they write and can you imagine sentences that do not include ‘was’, ‘to’, ‘the’, ’like’, 'blue'? A good reader adopts problem-solving strategies when confronted with unfamiliar words. For example, a reader will be aware of the meanings contained in the sentence and predict the word, being aware of the first letter, middle and ending to confirm his/her prediction. A strategy they will use is looking into words. This, especially, applies to sight words which the English language, being an analytic language, has an overabundance. There are much better ways to develop reading understandings than using phonic books that are contrived, Kit is in Don’s cot. Pod tops Sid (from Margaret Clarke et al). What does it mean? Big print (Big Books) teach children so much about what reading is about. They have repetitive, catchy, “I want to read” ideas and language. Interactive reading of Big Books stimulates children as they read creative stories that stir their imagination. For example, the Tricky Truck Track (Era Publications, Adelaide) includes repeated word sounds, poetic, rhythmic language constructions and humour … Mick drove a truck, a truck full of ducks, a truck full of ducks up the Tricky Truck Track. Big books are literary books used to teach varied aspects of reading at the letter level, words (sound, sight), word meanings, sentence meanings and text meanings. Furthermore, children’s learning from big books are reinforced during practise games, activities and tasks. If phoneme-grapheme constructions are the learning focus in the early weeks of children at school a teacher would highlight these words with transparent, coloured, removable tape and children would view and discuss models of word patterns presented to them during the reading of sensible, continuous print. Phonemic teaching and learning methods are suited to orthographic languages such as Italian, but a language like English, which is determined by logo-graphics requires more than a purely phonic approach (Simon, 2004, Strategic Spelling, Every writer's tool). Phonemes are based on sound which, many times, do not reflect conventional English words. So, the argument for phonics to promote reading and comprehension is not justified. Also, phonics learning, learning about words in general, is more associated with spelling.  I will bring to the fore, Interactive Writing for children beginning school. Interactive writing is a supportive method a teacher uses with new or unsure writers. During this teaching and learning situation ideas are nurtured and children are shown how language composes a story. With teacher support the class share, with each other, the same pen to construct text they would not be able to do alone. The children first think of an idea and each child has a turn jointly constructing sentences on a large white board situated close to eye level. Writers and readers learn about: The correct place to begin a sentence, the role of a capital letter, spaces between words and sentences finishing with a full stop, the writing making sense.  During the writing on the board and the rereading of the idea, phoneme and grapheme connections are made and sight words can be delved into. Children are helped to make correct letter shapes, discuss the difference between a letter and word. At the end of a week, the children’s ideas are gathered into a small book form and each child takes home a copy as part of their reading programme. The children read these books with confidence, fluency and understanding. Margaret Clark and other educationists questions the veracity of evidence that politicians and professionals on the periphery of the school/classroom (e.g. dyslexic tutors, speech therapists) call upon to prove that Synthetic Phonics, develops comprehension thus inevitably, raising national and International reading tests scores. A very simplistic view. The worry is that in England, large sums of money have been given over to training and resources for teachers to implement Synthetic Phonics only (and the Phonics Screening Check) where it may have more affect in other training avenues. In the International PISA test, 2015 for 15-year-olds, students were tested on their scientific literacy ability. The test required students ‘to read scientific explanations of phenomena alongside data, charts, and tables and interpret the information, analyse it and give a written rationale for their interpretation and analysis’. If students have not been taught this way of thinking they will fail the test. It seems that putting the vast resource allotted to synthetic phonics and phonics screening check would be more effective if higher grade teachers were trained to help students tackle the different ways to work on texts. In the NAPLAN (national) tests, Australian children failed because of their poor vocabularies and inability to read complex syntax structures (nominalized phrases, see my BLOG February, 2016). Learning to read does not stop at year 2. As children move into the higher grades, reading materials change from speech-like language to being more abstract; teachers teach children the complexities of advanced texts – also they show children how to transform what they have read into another form.   Again, professional training in ways to teach children to read more complex texts, see how grammar functions, to assist reading and understanding e.g. morphological knowledge, would be more appropriate. When considering Synthetic Phonics, I am reminded of my experiences as a literacy/education consultant in New York/Jersey City, U.S.A. American teachers were given a foolproof way of teaching…they were required to use a manual which contained a story for each week and scripted lessons. Sounded appropriate, until I realized that teachers' pedagogy did not include planning their own programme. There was no inclination towards promoting a social and intellectual environment in the classroom. They did not assess their children, instead, relying on District, National and Federal Tests. In general teachers ‘taught to the test’ and coupled with the teaching by the ‘manual’ made classroom teaching and learning rather mechanical. Australian consultants were at the forefront to change teaching practices mainly in the low-socio economic areas, for example, teaching literacy through the reading of Big Books and using the books as models of ideas, sentence structures, word studies and much more.  Unfortunately, USA has now moved to other methods and I believe, they are similar to Synthetic Phonics in the lower grades. I can confidently say that U.S.A. remains low in the PISA (International) Tests.