WIBU to suggest teachers watch YouTube video to improve their teaching methods?

[BettyFlour]

Before the summer we attended classes at DS's school and had taster sessions in phonics I.e to pronounce the letter M as 'mmmm' not 'muh'. It was excellent.

We have since moved and have started DS at another primary (Reception) and the teacher pronounces S as "suh" not "sss" etc.

The correct pronounciation of phonics can be the make or break for some kids in learning to read.

I have found a youtube video which teaches the correct pronounciation very well. I'd like the Reception teacher to watch it. How do I approach this with the Headteacher? WIBU to even think of suggesting it? I feel IABU however, I want the best for DS. Other children would obviously benefit too.

[TwllBach]

She's just a little girl I teach mimi not my dd but you are right, although she is very good at remembering how to spell things as opposed to knowing how to spell things, so my best guess is that she asked once at home and was told cuh o wuh and it's all got a bit lost in translation

[overmydeadbody]

I agree with miow too, they do sometimes creep in due to laziness, it takes a lot of concentration to always remember to say the phoneme correctly without the uh on the end.

[overmydeadbody]

Is the teacher is question quite old?

I would bring it up with the head of early years at your school, not the Youtube tihng, but just that you have heard the teacher pronouncing the phonemes wrong and you are concerned about this.

It is a big deal if teachers teach the sounds wrong in reception, and it shouldn't happen, whatever scheme they are using.

[ClayDavis]

I think the Jolly Phonics video actually does use 'suh' in a couple of places. It took me by surprise as the handbook is quite clear that it is 'ssss'.

The endless wittering on about searchlights and how you can't read using phonics on my BEd was what lead me to discover synthetic phonics. A large part of me was sitting there thinking 'this is total rubbish, there has to be something else.'

[chompychompychompchomp]

Maybe not 'suh' but definitely 'buh' 'duh' etc. Check out their songs:

[YouTheCat]

We have 30 minutes of phonics in small groups with year 1 and 2 on four mornings a week. The school started this scheme a couple of years ago and last year's year 2s did very well with about 75% getting a level 3, and only 5% not achieving a level 2. This is an inner city primary with many children with English as an additional language.

They run workshops to introduce parents to phonics too so that it is all backed up correctly at home. A few staff have done intensive phonics training, which they then impart to the rest of us.

Much as I dislike phonics, because I find it quite slow for the children at the higher end of ability, it does seem to work well.

[Redlocks30]

What an odd thing to say about the Jolly Phonics scheme, chomp! Have you had much experience using it?

[chompychompychompchomp]

My niece, who is six, used to pronounce her sounds this way because her school (same one that my daughter used to go to) uses the Jolly Phonics scheme. I know a friend's son does a different scheme at his school and he learns to pronounce his sounds without the 'uh' at the end. It's the school's fault, not the teacher's, for subscribing to a particular phonics scheme. My friend is also niece's childminder, and she has been 're-teaching' her for a while now; her spelling has improved greatly!

[TwllBach]

I watched a little girl spell cow C O W U becuase of the 'u' on the end when people say letters. I am teaching phonics atm, with no formal training as my training is 7 - 11. It can be difficult, but you have to pronounce it properly.

[manicinsomniac]

youthecat - this particular lecturer lasted two weeks in a secondary classroom in the 70s then left teaching to teach potential teachers - and openly admitted that! Wny he was ever considered suitable to do so is beyond me!

[YouTheCat]

Blimey! I can't believe a PGCE lecturer thinks children are taught to read in reception. Have they been out of a classroom for long? Certainly the foundations are put down in reception but there is still plenty to do in years 1 and 2 with regards to phonics and reading.

The Letters and Sounds does have (mainly) the correct pronunciation in the accompanying videos.

[RedHelenB]

Not being funny, but I'm almost 100% certain that the dvd that accompanies the gov letters & sound doc has the correct pronunciation so you could be teaching your Grandma to suck eggs!

[manicinsomniac]

I don't think YABU if you are polite about it.

I was reading this thread thinking, 'oooh, where, I'll watch it, send me the link' and I've been a teacher for 7 years. I'll definitely be watching it now I see you've linked it and recommending it on if it's any good.

My PGCE course was for 5-11 year olds. I am specifically not qualified to teach foundation stage and, when I told a lecturer that I wouldn't feel confident teaching a child to read, I was told 'this course doesn't do that. Children learn to read when they are in reception, we only go from Year 1'. Riiiight. The youngest children I teach now are 9 and they still can't all read (well they can, of course, but some have reading ages of 5 or 6). I feel very unqualified to help them at times.

[CrohnicallyLurking]

For anyone who thinks that phonics isn't important- how do you read user names on here and 'pronounce' them in your head? It's highly unlikely you've seen the word 'Crohnically' before, or 'Maguli'. Yet we each have some idea of how the word would be said.

When a child is learning to read they come across many words which they haven't seen before. Phonics is a method of working out how the word might be pronounced, so they can see if it matches a word that they have heard.

Even whole word learning methods rely to some extent on phonics, it's working backwards and realising that often the same letter pattern makes the same sound (rather than learning sound/letter correspondences explicitly). For example, a child who knows the words book and look could make a reasonable guess at the pronunciation of took as it has the same letter pattern at the end.

And for anyone that thinks it doesn't matter whether you say 'mmm' or 'muh', I was working with a child earlier who was trying to spell the word 'bigger'. He sounded it out as 'b' 'i' 'guh' (writing the letters b,i,g as he did so)- hence spelling 'bigger' as 'big'.

[YouTheCat]

I teach phonics. God, I hate it so much.

But OP is right about the pronunciation. It is very important for blending and also can help with spelling.

The teacher is probably aware and has had training. I know plenty of teachers who still get it wrong. OP just reinforce the correct way at home.

[HumphreyCobbler]

sorry about all the typos

[HumphreyCobbler]

The fact that english has a complex phonic code is all the more reason to teach is explicitly.

Adding an uh to the end of each sound is distorting when you try to blend sounds together to make a work.

cuh/a/tuh is not the same as c/a/t. Why wouldn't you expect a teacher to make the correct sound rather than the incorrect sound? I really despair when I hear that professionals are still doing this kind of thing.

"Actually some children with auditory processing and poor discrimination find phonics really difficult". This is very true and all the more reason to use the ACTUAL sound rather than the sound with a schwa added.

[ArgyMargy]

The video is helpful but the later sounds show why it's difficult to apply in English. There are so many letter combinations that sound the same, and combinations that sound different when part of different words. Ou and ow are just two of the latter. And consonants often sound different when they are the first letter of a word, or within a word, or the last letter of a word.

Anyhoo, I'm sure it's a great system.