Pedants this way please - A whinge about the way Jolly Phonics.

[foxytocin]

Righty. Maybe IABU. I went to dd's parents' meeting at reception where the reading programme, Jolly Phonics and some other one were discussed.

They showed the JP Dvd. on the DVD they said

the letter 't', 'r' 'f' were sounded out as 'teh' 'reh' 'feh'

so fret would be spelt 'feh' 'reh' 'e' 'teh'

It has always annoyed me when I hear children sounding out words as those sounds are 'pure' sounds. they do not have a 'schwa' in them yet even the instructional DVD teaches them that way.

kids still learn to read write and spell I know but it is jolly annoying to listen to them done wrong.

[DameEdnaAverage]

This is against the new phonics strategy.
The Letters and Sounds programme that we use to teach phonics is clear about the need to pronounce phonemes such as 't', 'r' and 'f' as simply t, rrr and fffff so that there is no additional vowel sound to confuse the children. YANBU. It is annoying.

[foxytocin]

yes Letters and Sounds programme was the one her reception teacher, NQT, says he was trained with so I do hope he will be using pure sounds.

Should I approach him and, erm, sound him out? and if so, how?

[Ceolas]

Our school uses JP to my knowledge (a-, a-, ants on my arm, etc...) but they always just say the pure sound. YANBU. That would annoy me too.

[mrz]

I'm not sure what dvd you have been shown but I have the JP parents presentation disc here and the sounds are very pure
you can listen to the audio files here

[littlebrownmouse]

The whole point of Jolly Phonics is that they use only pure sounds. The action and sound for r is the dog with the rag making the rrrrrrrrrrrr sound - very pure, f is the fish defating and making a fffffffffff sound, again very pure. Your experience of Jolly Phonics is very different to mine, but yes, I'd be annoyed as I'm a literacy co-ordinator and am always stressing how to pronounce the pure sounds to parents and others.

[foxytocin]

i should think it was the most basic introduction one. the teacher who seemed to be used most often, middle age, short curly hair, made me grind my teeth when she mispronounced most of the consonants. i don't think she was the only one doing it that way though.

every kid i have ever heard IRL sounding out words do it that way with the schwa sound. (i teach secondary and some children in lower sets do this when they are spelling words.)

[foxytocin]

have also heard younger (and more able) children not yet in secondary sounding out words incorrectly too so i suspect someone's teaching them that way.

[mrz]

Lots of teachers have had no phonics training - some report it having been mentioned on their PGCE...universities need to get their acts together

[foxytocin]

now I understand MRZ.

[moondog]

You are right Foxy in that the added vowel can confuse and is not recommended as a strategy. I have only been able to listen to one or two of those sound files on JP and they sound ok. (As a SALT I can analyse phonemes and allophones very clearly in heard utterances.)

However, it is nigh on physiologically impossible to make some sounds without some slight vowel follow on. /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/ /p/ /b/ spring to mind.

I'm struggling with people who still insist on using letter names (eg 'see' for 'cat') whaen officially they are using a phonics approach.

[moondog]

As part of my MSc in reading/language and approaching with behavioural phonics stategies, teacher interviews have thrown up some very interesting and quite worrying info as MRZ said as well as reflecting very badly on a lack of a evidence based strategy.

[moondog]

Well Team, the best teachers are those who know what they don't know and teach accordingly!

[MoonlightMcKenzie]

Well I'm in another boat completely. The Educational Psychologist and Nursery Nurse are insisting that when we teach DS, we'll need to use whole words because he is autistic and therefore visual.

Haven't yet got round to telling them he can read quite a few words now that he learnt phonetically and some of these are more than 3 letters too.

I learnt whole word words (80's education) but is the basic idea of phonetics REALLY that hard to understand? Surely you just try the sounds out yourself before teaching and listen to what the whole word sounds like if you copy exactly!?

i.e. Peranna doesn't mean pan

[MoonlightMcKenzie]

Why are they showing parents DVD's of really bad practice?

[Corporalcornsilk]

Whole words - that's interesting moonlight.

[moondog]

Team, osrry that sounds rather ambiguous didn't it?!
I meant knowing what you don;t know is essentail. Then of course you need to remedy the situation which is what you are doing!

Moonlight, this is the subject of my ABA research, using a phonics approach with even quite severely disabled kids. It's called Headsprout and has added twist of being developed according to principles of ABA.But I think you know this, yes? I'm writing it up as I speak. Fascination results and subject.

PS I wouldn't listen to anything a nursery nurse has to say about reading.

If a child can't acquire a viable repertoire via a phonics approach (and some can't) then yes, whole word reading is a viable option but words can only be learnt as whoel chunks-there are no transferrable skills.

Research shows that whole word reading strategies impede a child's chances of decoding and blending.

So the conclusion is to go for a phonics approach and then if it fails go for a who le word approach.

[MoonlightMcKenzie]

What do you mean cornsilk?

[mrz]

I don't think the Jolly Phonics DVD shows bad practice the copy I have here has pure sounds no schwa.

[moondog]

We laso use the SAFMEDS strategy a lot for reading and other stuff. No time to go into it but you can check this out. Amazing component of Precision Teaching, which is where I am at. Kids make staggering progress.I use it with my own kids too.

[Corporalcornsilk]

moonlight - ed psych and nursery nurse suggesting whole words I found interesting. My area is SpLD so I teach with a phonics based approach.

[moondog]

Corp, I find it alarming!!

[MoonlightMcKenzie]

Moondog Think the NN is just repeating the words of the EP. Trouble is, it is she who is going in to preschool to advise atm.

I'd be quite interested in something to hit them with if you have a key piece of research. I've not got much on the EP coz she's been pretty good so far.

Your research does sound very interesting. How's the editing?

[moondog]

Didden, Prinsen & Sigafoos (2000) carried out research with six 7-9 year olds and found that although acquisition of sight words is often faster when words are presented without pictorial prompts, for some beginning readers, pictures as prompts provide useful initial feedback.
Didden et al. (2006) expanded on earlier work (Didden et al., 2000) and demonstrated that children learnt to identify sight words fastest when pictures were not used alongside them, even if these picture prompts were gradually faded. However the authors stipulate that this technique does not allow the skill to be generalized to new and unknown words, despite it being a useful functional skill (Conners 1992).