DS1 Taught Phonics; How Do You Blend In The High Frequency Words?

[Highlander]

DS1 is being taught Jolly Phonics and he has very quickly learned how to decode. He really enjoys the decoding books, and I'm considering buying him the Dandelion Series.

However, he's also been given a tin of what I think are the High Frequency Words, that he can't decode, i.e. he just has to learn to recognise. He gets the Ginn 360 books and ORT phonics books from school.

His teacher has written in his home diary that DS1 is very confident decoding but that we need to 'work' on the tricky words. She said that she has given us 2 books to show the difference (erm, nothing new there). Now, part of me is thinking that she's just mnaking something up to demonstrate that DS1 has an ILP.

We do his word tin every night, but I've noticed that he's REALLY confused as to why some words can be decoded and some I tell him to just memorise. there seems to be a lot of tricky words.

If we do the tim first, then his books, he has a tendancy to 'guess' words in his books, rather than decode.

Should I ask his teacher to refrain from adding tricky words to his tin until he's completed phonics? Shopuld I ask to speak to her about it?

Or just buy the dandelion books and ignore school?

[bodiddly]

Sorry I can't help as my ds is at a similar stage but will certainly watch to see what other people have to say. What are the dandelion books that you mention?

[Cyb]

We teach Read Write Inc phonics at my school and tricky words are called RED words adn you just have to learn them. Perhaps you could mark them in some way so he can see sounding out will not help. it is important though that he does learn red words as well as those he can sounds out.

[Highlander]

That is a top idea cyb! Will run it by his teacher.

[Highlander]

dandelion books

[bodiddly]

thanks Highlander - they look quite good - not cheap though!

[mrz]

The tricky words can't be decoded until he has been taught the rules that apply so initially they are taught as sight words he memorises -with the teacher or you pointing out the "tricky" part - we write the word was as w-a-s so in this word the /o/ sound is represented by the letter "a" you might want to tell him other words that have the same rule like want and what

[juliemacc]

you dont; some words are just "tricky" eg said, was, the, which just have to be learnt as they dont follow normal blending rules. get hold of the 45 reception words and practice lots.

[mrz]

Most of the 45 reception words aren't tricky and are easily decoded but they were scrapped 2 years ago and replaced with a list of HFW (decodable) and "tricky" words that are taught prior to learning the rules

[Acinonyx]

When I am reading to dd (i.e. a book she couldn't try to read herself), we choose two words, especially nondecodable words, and I go along with my finger and stop at those words and she has to read which one it is. I find that she learns them well this way. You must choose at least 2 otherwise it's obvious which one it is and the repition over several pages commits it to memory. It was actually dd herself who came up with this game.

[popsycal]

what mrz said

[maverick]

There is still a lot of misunderstanding amongst teachers about how so-called 'tricky words' need to be taught.

Many of the most commonly used words (HFWs) in the English language are not pronounced exactly as they are spelled -they contain a 'tricky' grapheme which is not transparently decodable. This can give the misleading impression that English is a very irregular, 'unphonetic' language and therefore teaching needs to include extensive, whole word memorisation, when in actual fact it is highly regular (over 85% according to the experts)

Here is what it says about teaching 'tricky words' in the government's own synthetic phonics programme, 'Letter and Sounds' Notes of Guidance p16.

'Even the core of high frequency words which are not transparently decodable using known grapheme?phoneme correspondences usually contain at least one GPC that is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they were unique entities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ?tricky bit? in the word. Even the word yacht, often considered one of the most irregular of English words, has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes'

So, teach the regular part of the word and draw attention to the irregular part/s. Do NOT teach words as global wholes.

, , , , , and , are the only high frequency words that may need to be memorised as whole units i.e. are true, high frequency 'sight' words, though no English word is completely phonologically opaque.

If synthetic phonics is being taught in class, the use of banded, predictable / repetitive-text books for reading practice, by the beginning readers, is one of the main indicators that a teacher is continuing, perhaps unwittingly, to use mixed methods. Beginner readers have absolutely no choice but to use whole language strategies in order to 'get through' this type of reading book.

HTH