The first year reading or "phonics check" has apparently

produced some unexpected results. If the report is correct just over half the state's children failed the test.
It was forty word test and to "pass" children were expected to be able to read twenty eight of these words.

Easy fake words: pib, vus, yop, elt, desh, chab, poil, queep, stin, proom, sarps, thend

Easy real words: chip, jazz, farm, thorn, stop, truck, jump, lords

Harder fake words: kigh, girst, baim, yune, flods, groiks, strom, splaw

Harder real words: fair, flute, goat, shine, crept, shrubs, scrap, stroke, index, turnip, waiting, portrait

 Now please note there are some "fake" words there. It was the child's ability to "decode" a word which was being tested. Only 43% of children managed to get to that mark of twenty-eight out of forty.

I could read long before I went to school - and I mean actually read. Our house had labels all over it. My mother's "infant school printing" remains deeply scored into my memory. Both my parents were teaching me to read. I don't think they consciously set out to teach me. The Senior Cat says that was not the case. I wanted to learn to read. 

I know I would ask for words. It would be written on a scrap of paper. If it was an object it could be attached to it would be attached to that object. There were lists attached to the fridge and the kitchen cupboards.

And I was taught to "sound out the words". I was taught to decode the new words I came across. Yes, by the time I went to school I was an independent reader.
Of course I still came across words I didn't know but I had the skills to at least try and work them out for myself. 

I know that, for my mother, it was a means of saving herself the time of having to read things to me. It was the Senior Cat who read my bedtime stories to me. Right from the beginning he would put his finger under each word as he read to me. 

Those things were a wonderful start. At school I read even more. I was in trouble not because I could not read but because I could read too much. I had read our "reader" for the year from cover to cover before the end of the first day. 

We had to do a "daily sentence" in our "daily diary" too.  Other children were asking for "I played with my dog". I was getting frustrated because the teacher didn't want to write, "I went to the Maritime Authority office with my grandfather." I remember being told, "You can only have that if you can spell it." I spelt it.  Phonics helped. It was the same for my brother. My sisters also had a good start. Our parents were firm believers in getting excellent "word attack" skills.

For a while there was something called the "whole word" approach. My parents quietly went on getting the teachers under them to teach phonics. 

When I taught a profoundly physically disabled child with no speech to read I would say to him, "P.... listen to the sound. Say the sound inside your head." I knew the day that his hard work and mine paid off. He was able to indicate to me that he had come across a new word - and worked it out for himself. After that his confidence knew no bounds. He knew he would be able to read.

So I wonder about  the children who failed this test. No doubt they aren't getting the same amount of help at home. The help we got was exceptional and few children ever get anything like that.

Young T... across the road has just started school. His mother is a paediatrician and she is well aware of the need to read. T... did an on-line reading program before he went to school. There was nothing forced about it. He had  indicated a strong desire to learn to read for himself and the program was fun as well as educational. I am sure if he was given the words  in the test now, in "Prep" he would do better than the majority of Year One students. He's highly intelligent, wants to learn, and has been taught some phonics.

I wonder what the children who were tested are being taught and when they are being taught it. Are we too busy teaching them other things - things they could learn themselves if they had the reading skills?