Help with teaching phonics!

[Rory786]

Hi everyone,
My reception aged child finds sounding out the CVC words really difficult.
I will say:
Ma Aah Teh

hoping she will hear MAT but she will come out with a random word. Any tips greatly appreciated.

Don’t add the ah sound. So it’s the shortest possible sound for each phoneme (the sound each letter makes). So ‘m’ is more like mmm, a is a not aah and t is t - like a quick sound not tuh. Google how to say phonemes correctly as that’ll help you model it correctly for her. Being able to say each phoneme right means blending the words together becomes easier.

Have a look at Ruth Miskin on youtube. She uploaded lessons with the pure sounds.

Yes, it sounds as though you just check how to pronounce the sounds correctly...it just takes a little research and practice! This video might help, and there are others on YouTube, linked to phonics practice.

By sounding out ‘mat’ as ma-aah-teh, you are adding what’s known as a ‘schwa’ sound - an unstressed vowel at the end. When your child blends the sounds together, the word will not make sense. For example ’cuh-a-tuh’ will not sound like ‘cat’! You want to enunciate the phonemes as a pure, clean sound - it can sound a bit daunting at first, but listening to videos with correct pronunciation will really help. Good luck!

As above.

Once you have got the pronunciation right, vary the gaps between each sound. The first few times say it really quickly so you are hardly leaving a gap between the sounds and you feel like you are almost saying the word. Then begin to split it more obviously as the child gets the idea.

You can also use phoneme fingers to show how many sounds are in the word as you segment it so M-A-T would be three fingers and then you clap it together to blend it.

Hi OP. I don't want to hijack your thread but my DD is at a similar stage to you, although has just cracked the CVC words. I think the advice above is spot on.

I just wondered (while all the experts are here!) Whether you should encourage children to stop sounding out? So my DD can quite easily read eg dog, cat, bed yet when reading sentences she will read like "The d-o-g dog s-a-t sat on the b-e-d bed". It makes it really hard to get meaning from the sentence. Should I encourage her to sound out in her head?

@upthewolves that’s fine. She will naturally move to sounding out in her head later. At the moment she needs to hear the sound said aloud to blend them.

@echolimayankee Thank you!

@upthewolves The other thing that might help is, once she has sounded out a sentence, get her to read it back again straight away fluently so she can process the meaning. (If she needs to sound out again, you could read the sentence back to her).

I ask children to find repeated words in the book...so is the word cat on this page...oh, Yes, there it is, look, there it is again. Turn the page...is it on this page? No....next page, look cat again! Its a quick hunt for a word and is an exciting little activity.

Thank you everyone so much!