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"He was doing so well, what has gone worng?"
Teachers and parents alike struggle to understand why a capable learner suddenly grinds to a halt.
HVLP (High VAS Low Phonics)
This is today one of the most common findings in our research. It is also one of the most worrying findings because it affects some of our potentially brightest students and it is so difficult to remediate.
To quote Prof. Sumner Miller…Why is it so?
The HV means that the child has a high VAS level for her age. I used ‘her’ because girls tend to have a significantly higher average VAS level than boys; one reason why boys are outperformed by girls in classes where whole word guessing dominates but are not outperformed in phonic-first classes.
A high VAS means that when the child looks at a word she can take in a significant number of letters at a glance and can use them as a rich basis for whole word recognition. This high capacity for whole word recognition therefore means that such infants may initially be classified as being average or even above average readers in the infant years.
But infant teachers seldom get the opportunity of following the progress of these children into later grades. If they did they would note that many of their initially top-of-the-range children are beginning to struggle, particularly with long and unfamiliar words.
What has happened is that their initial success in whole word guessing has lead to their neglecting the development of their phonic skills and they have become guess-dependent. The problems start about the age of 10
By this age there are increasing numbers of 3 syllabic (9+ letters) that exceed the VAS barrier. There are also problems with new words because word-guessing requires students to match the visual patterns with a word previously stored in memory. Other students with good phonic skills begin to overtake them in both reading and spelling.
But the real kicker is that their habituation to word guessing has given them a fast (but sometimes unreliable) strategy. That speed now makes them resistant to trying to acquire and apply the (initially) slower phonic skills. They can be taught the sounds and even how to blend and chunk syllables but when they return to their books they revert to their old fast but inaccurate habits of word guessing.
We call them the ‘Brick Wall kids’. They are among the most difficult children to remediate, even on a one-on-one tutoring basis. In our current studies, we found 34% of infants fitted this HVLP description with another 4% with borderline phonic skills.
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