Does anyone else get fed up with the phonics method?

[ProbablyJustGas]

Maybe I'm a bit more stuck in my ways than I thought, but does anyone else get frustrated trying to stick to the synthetic phonics system when working with young DCs reading and spelling?

My stepdaughter's name ends in a y ("ee" sound). She knows how to pronounce her name, and how to write her name, but insists her name is spelled with a "yeh". This is because she's been taught that the letter "y" is a "yeh". I think that's misleading - the letter is "y", and the sounds it makes depends on where it is. "Yeh" at the beginning, yes, but "ee" when it follows a consonant at the end of a word ("carry"). If she's spelling her name out loud with sounds, she should say "ee" and write "y".

She has trouble writing my name, which starts with a "g" like in "general". In her mind, "g" is a "geh" and only a "geh" even though we tell her all the time that it has two sounds. She may not come across too many books with words like "gentle" or "scary" right now, but she will someday.

I didn't grow up with satpin and jolly phonics, so the method is just maddening to me sometimes. I don't want to undermine her teachers - DSD is finally making some progress reading with phonics when she can be arsed with decoding - but it feels like she's missing some important facts about the alphabet sometimes.

It's curmudgeon week on my end...

[Sunscorch]

She's learning simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences. She will learn that graphemes can have more than one sound (and vice versa).

She just hasn't got to that point, yet.

[stealthsquiggle]

how old is she?

It's a brief phase of confusion, IME - DD's name ends in a y, and yes, for a while, she would say the letter sound as she wrote it, but she very soon (a couple of months ago, and she is YR) learned about other words where 'y' at the end of the word says 'ee' . She is now, more or less off her own bat, learned the letter name alphabet and has no issue with the concept of letters having both names and sounds.

Your DSD may be missing some pieces of the puzzle right now, but the system really does work and she will get there soon.

[Feenie]

What you're saying then is that you're fed up with phonics - and can't wait until she does more phonics

[ProbablyJustGas]

She's six and in Primary 2 (Year 1, I guess). I'm really impatient. :(

I wish I remembered learning to read, so I could understand what she's going through better, but was one of those kids who got trained before kindergarten. I remember recognizing whole words like "exit" from an early age, but also learned the sounds around 4 or 5 in order to figure out new words.

ATM, we stick to DH doing most of the reading homework with her while I stick to math - I have a bit more patience for helping her build understanding there. :p

I think American kids are still taught the alphabet names first, and then the sounds that go with them. My cousin has kids roughly the same age as DSD; it'll be interesting to see if they're doing the same things in class when I go back for my next visit.

[ProbablyJustGas]

@Feenie, yes I'm fed up with her sticking to satpin etc! She's very into her comfort zone and needs a lot of encouragement to expand it. Once she's committed a fact to memory, that's it. It's a fact. 7+1 = 8. Letter "a" makes "ah".

She'll do very well in her math if she can get a handle on greater than/less than.

[CecilyP]

It's not really a problem with phonics - after all, they can't teach everything at once - it sounds more like a problem of convincing DSD that letters make certain sounds if you tell her rather than the teacher; when teacher hasn't actually covered it in class yet.

[startail]

Just try spelling "thought" out phoneticly to a dyslexic child who's mapping between phonic sounds and letters is reasonable, but who's knowledge of letter names or phonic blends is shaky and who's sort term memory is non existent.

I very quickly gave up and never answered any spelling question from DD1 without a pen a piece of scrap paper.

[MothershipG]

YY startail phonics really didn't work for my dyslexic DS either.

It is a great system for most kids, but not all, and if they'd never done it I wouldn't know what a split vowel digraph is...

[mrz]

It's th or (spelt ough) t startail very simple really if the child has been taught and it doesn't require the child to know any letter names whatsoever.

It's actually the most effective method for dyslexic children

[startail]

a split vowel digraph?

I haven't the foggiest idea, it sounds painful.

[mrz]

Letter "a" makes "ah". except when it follows w or squ when it might represent o

[stealthsquiggle]

"She'll do very well in her math if she can get a handle on greater than/less than"

I would forget the homework and do cooking, building with lego blocks, or almost anything else until she does, then. Learning that 2+2=4 when you don't get the "twoness of two" is an entirely pointless exercise.

Do they use number lines at school? Do you use number lines with her?

(same as phonics - once you understand how it is taught it all makes sense - as mrz says, for a child who has learned that ough says 'or', 'thought' is easy to read (harder to write, as you have to decide which of the sounds that says 'or' you are supposed to use, but that comes with time))

[learnandsay]

confused, where did the last post come from?

[stealthsquiggle]

from OP's post of 15:49:12

[FamiliesShareGerms]

Oh, don't get me started on phonics!! DS is in Yr 1, is free reading, but bottom set for phonics sessions because his hand writing isn't fast enough yet to keep up with the higher sets. So he's spending time "learning" words like "like" and "sail" even though he knew these a couple of years ago. This is the subject of ongoing discussion with his teacher, who probably thinks I am just being precious.

One thing we do agree on - and it'd be interesting to know what other schools are doing - is that practising for the new Govt phonics test is taking up teaching time that could be better used. Especially as they are learning non-words eg "nom" as well as real words because this sort of word will be included in the test to make sure they aren't learning parrot fashion to recognise words (I kid you not).

[kipperandtiger]

It felt like learning a whole new foreign language at first, and a bit frustrating considering I did grow up in a household speaking two languages, and never had a problem learning to read in English the "old" way. But I gradually accepted that this is how schools teach now, (flash cards and words on the blackboard long gone!) and that it does have advantages for some words - eg it's easy to spell "hospital" (but not "water") at first - and once I got over the fact that they didn't give out many resources to teach the parents how this new "language" sounded (took me a little while to be sure how "a" was supposed to sound!) I've accepted it now. Sometimes, I do have to stop myself covering my ears when I hear "ker-or-duh, cod, ker-air-tuh, cat" ad nauseum when we get home from school.......(and just tell myself it'll be worse when they discover rap music).

Alphablocks on Cbeebies help keep us both sane.

[Feenie]

There's no practising for the test, FamiliesShareGerms - the only way to 'practise' would be by teaching a daily phonics session properly, which is what schools should be doing already.

Reading non-words is a standard strategy check in phonics teaching - it's how children learn to read new words, which are all unknown to them.

[Sunscorch]

kipper, it sounds to me like your child is being taught phonics really badly, if ker-or-duh and ker-air-tuh are what they are coming out with.

Consonant sounds should be short and snappy, with no -uh on the end.

[ProbablyJustGas]

@stealthsquiggle: yes, she uses a number line at school and at home with us. We also use things like sweeties and pennies to help with addition. It's larger numbers she mixes up rather than anything 0-20 these days, although she had some trouble with that earlier this year. She added 10 to 20 on the way to the childminder this morning, by counting up 10 from 20, but thought 30 + 10 made 23... May have been the time of day.

@mrz: I don't know if she's been taught "ough" - haven't seen it in her school books, it might have been sent home during one sound lesson last year. There's a bit of an accent issue in our house too. To me, thought is "th-aw-t". And "ough" is for "aw", "ow" or "uff" (fought, plough, rough). DSD and her dad meanwhile only use a long "oo", even in "book", "look" and "took" (northeast Scotland...), but I use a short "oo".

@startail: DSD's short-term memory is a bit lacking, to the point where she says "I'm not a good rememberer." DH and I have thought of dyslexia before, but heard she is too young to reliably test for it just now.

[CecilyP]

^kipper, it sounds to me like your child is being taught phonics really badly, if ker-or-duh and ker-air-tuh are what they are coming out with.

Consonant sounds should be short and snappy, with no -uh on the end.^

Fair enough, Sunscorch, but how else was kipper supposed to convey it in writing?

[Feenie]

c-ah-t

[stealthsquiggle]

sounds like you need to talk about 10's and units then - which is hard to do in the car, IME

I hear you on the accents - my DNieces have one British parent and one American one, and they live and go to school in France - I have no idea how French schools teach reading, but it has worked out somehow as older one reads at the same level as DS (who is the same age) in English, and given that she has been moved up a year at school, presumably reads well in French as well.

We don't have any such accent problems, but if my DD is struggling with sounding out a word, I tend to go back to her "sound book" and she will tell me what a given sound says - if I tell her I tend to get it wrong . More often, however, she will sound it out perfectly and then rather than blend will guess some completely unrelated word (this was a phase, I think, which she seems to be getting over now).

[mrz]

magic e

so a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e

[FamiliesShareGerms]

Feenie, they are practising for the test, they did a mock at the end of last week (teacher explicitly said that's what it was). And they have spent time recently recapping common words "because they will come up in the test next term".

We've told DS the test doesn't matter, but school are definitely building it up as something very important.

[NightLark]

Clicked on the title - I am fed up with phonics because I can't do phonics, was never taught phonics, could read before starting school and have no clue how to help DS. I mean, why 'pie' but 'piece'? (from current book). I feel like I am undermining school whenever I read with him.