to not be surprised my son is having help with Graphemes...!

[cjt110]

So they teach the kids the phonic sounds...

Great stuff. Then what our school calls tricky words - stuff you can't sound out and just have to learn, like the word "the"

Got a letter that he is having some extra help with Graphemes this term. I had no clue what this was and looked it up

Basically it's when they have learnt the sound in phonics but in a word it acts differently... For example the a in was sounding like an O instead of the A they have learned.

I have noticed his reading is good, and the only words he tends to muddle up are words like was where he says "WAZ" -wu-ah-ss ad opposed to wu-oh-ss. I've thought a few times before we got this letter, how on earth do they teach the kids some words because the letter, or combination of letters sound nothing like the phonic!

I'd love to hear from anyone who knows about this, or has had their child have similar support and how you supported it at home. We got a letter saying this is what was happening and that's it. No discussion, no guidance for us at home etc

I had the same. I don't understand how to explain it to him, the 'why' it sounds different. Nothing about extra support, it is a hard thing to grasp, I wouldn't be worried but I would ask the school how to help support him at home. Our school has a reading lead so would go to the teacher and them for advice.

Glad it's not just me who feels lost over it @Yellowcakestand.

I don't get too much time on a morning - I drop and go, and husband collects after school. Maybe I could pop a note in his bookbag for the teacher?

That’s not what a grapheme is. A grapheme is the written representation of a phoneme (sound). So a grapheme is a letter/ spelling pattern.

The word was is one of the “tricky words” you described, like the. It’s a phonetically irregular word so not all of its graphemes (letters) match its phonemes (sounds). Two out of three of them do though. So generally it’s just explained to children that the a in was behaves/ sounds a little different and we just have to remember it. There are less than 20% of words in the English language that are phonetically irregular so having a sound foundation in phonics will help children learn to read 80% of the English language.

Perhaps make an appointment to call in and discuss with the teacher where exactly your son’s difficulties lie and how you can support him at home because there seems to be some confusion about the letter sent home.

Oh so a trigraph is a grapheme?

I say to my infant class that there are some words we just need to learn and remember as phonics won't always help us. In the case of 'was' I sort of tut and say, "Oh dear, this 'a' thinks it's an 'o' in this word'. You should find that with regular practise he should start remembering/recognising the words we can't 'sound out'. There are games you can play too, in the car/bath, etc. Eg, I'm thinking of a tricky word, it starts with 'w' and ends in 's' but what's the letter in the middle? It's so hard getting to grips with all the irregular words in the English language!

It’s not so hard to explain why some words have unusual spellings.

• even at a young age, they’ve heard different accents
• it’s easy to explain that people have moved in and out of countries all over the world, bringing parts of other languages into our own
• explain that not that long ago, most people couldn’t read so spellings weren’t learned, and it’s no wonder that people would then have their own ideas how to spell them

It doesn’t help them learn the “tricky words” but it’s easy to explain reasons why we end up with irregular ones.

@Yellowcakestand A trigraph is a 3 letter graphemes like igh or air. A digraph is a 2 letter one like ay or ee.

grapheme not graphemes

Sounds like the school is over-teaching the phonics approach to reading.

Many irregular words come up continuously in fiction/non-fiction books:

the, was, are, they, my, I, to, done, some, what, who etc.

This is why children should learn to read by actually reading books instead of ploughing through tedious phonic exercises.

The point is they need to do both hence why the focus on reading every day with parents as well as at school.

Trust the system I say having been there done that and wondered if she would ever read aged 5 when she was struggling pulling it all together. She was tested on reading age at just 11 moving to high school and reading age was 17 3/4!!!

Keep at it and practice practice practice - them hearing you read chapter books also stretches them but allows them to enjoy the story too - doesn't matter what it is really - we found the awful fairy books helped my DD be determined to read them herself age 7

There are many key words that just have to be learned as a whole, at the word level, and the phonics approach just isn't helpful for them.

I would have thought it would be better for these words to be on flash cards to be learned by rote as a kind of game but not by sounding out each individual letter, if you know what I mean.

I can't even work out how to pronounce grapheme. I suppose there is no hope for me?